Morningside’s House of Flowers

Having brought up four sons on her own for the past 17 years and having had to move house every two years or less due to the tenancy situation in Auckland, Brigid finally managed to buy my first house, in Whangarei. Her family had a home. Their home.

The houses in the Morningside area had a look of bland, often neglected and seem as though many reflect the stress people are under. Brigid wanted to brighten up the community somehow.

It started by Brigid putting in flower gardens and fruit trees around the house. One morning Brigid came to the decision “I’m going to paint the house!”

Bridgit had gone online to look at the flower motifs painted on houses in Romania by local women. Originally they did this to cover the coal stains on the walls but it quickly became a competition among them and suddenly everything had flower motifs on it, even dog kennels.

Stencils under the windows seemed a good start. Brigid created her own out of cardboard using a Stanley knife and then took it outside to start, using a palette of Resene Deep Koamaru, Resene White, Resene Nero and Resene Daredevil. Brigid taped the stencil to the wood and painted it on, then removed the stencil and free handed details onto the design. The result was good and it was still within the realms of respectability and wouldn’t upset the neighbours. Brigid walked away for a day to let it settle.

Using the cardboard stencil was finicky so Brigid decided to freehand the rest of the window framing all around the house. It certainly gave the house a lift. However, the process was stiff and structured. Eldest son Brook visited and suggested painting vines up the chimney. And that was the real start. Brigid began to just paint.

Brigid knew she wanted flowers and stuck to a certain number of colours but let the paintings just come. An added bonus was the feedback coming from the community. Stepping onto the street one day to have a look from a distance, a biker passed on his feedback “not everyone likes it, but the majority of people absolutely love it. And everyone is talking about it. It’s really brought the community together and communicating so thank you.” People were yelling out “We love your house!” as they drove by, and several dropped off spare paint that they had to aid the process.

Son Brook put the house project up on IMGUR and over 387,000 people viewed it and several thousand expressed their liking for it. It’s inspired others to paint their letterboxes and fences.

She quickly realised that the scale was right she didn’t need to keep getting down off the ladder to check it and Brigid completely lost herself in the painting, waking at six in the morning and painting through to 5pm.

Brigid is now introducing birds to the painting and one butterfly which was a request from a Chinese neighbour, painted so the neighbour can view it from their home. The colour palette has expanded to include many new favourites – Resene Deep Koamaru, Resene Daredevil, Resene Double Parchment, Resene Japanese Laurel, Resene Nero, Resene Surfs Up, Resene White, Resene Wellywood, Resene Sassy, Resene Crusoe, Resene Portage, Resene Pursuit, Resene Blue Diamond and Resene Kingfisher Daisy.

Brigid expects this project to keep evolving, adding new details and removing others.

When asked why Brigid has painted her home, she simply replies “because it looks happy and wonderful and uplifting and because I can!”

Painting: Brigid Sinclair
Project: Resene Total Colour Awards 2017