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Painter Myah Flynn, (23) who is studying a Master of Design at UNITEC NZ has not only been awarded the country's Biggest Student Art Prize this year but she was also chosen to display her work in top retail store Bo Concept.

In late August, Flynn was awarded first prize at the sixth national Mazda Emerging Artist Awards. The award comes with a prize of $10,000 cash and she was chosen for the honour over 57 other Fine Art students from throughout New Zealand.

Judge and art critic for the National Business Review John Daly-Peoples described her winning piece as "a work which could have come from the walls or ceiling of a grand eighteenth century palace full of classical nymphs, gods and goddesses".

She describes her style as an amalgamation of figurative and abstract elements, inspired by 18th and 19 century classical art. "It's very lush, over the top and excessive," she says. After finishing at Katikati College, she moved to Auckland to study animation at Unitec, but says the course wasn't for her. She decided to do a painting major instead and says she has never looked back.
"I'm a romantic at heart and am really inspired by eighteenth and nineteenth century classical art," says Flynn. "It took me one month to paint but prior to that I did a lot of research on the idea," says Flynn.

Judge Daly-Peoples says, "Flynn has produced an enigmatic and edgy piece of art. "The work is bound together with luscious colours which are abstract gestured sweeps of the clouds or the gods."

Mazda New Zealand Ltd instigated the Awards in 2003 with the aim of encouraging New Zealand's emerging art talent, since then more than 750 students have entered the competition.

Flynn's paintings also caught the eye of Bo Concept staff who collaborated with Unitec School of Design to source artwork to display art in their flagship urban design store in Auckland's Mt Eden.

Bo Concept is the brand name of Denmark's most global retail furniture chain and the idea is that the art work would enhance the furniture settings to create a more alluring environment for customers.

Bo Concept staff toured the School of Design studios at Unitec's campus in the Auckland suburb of Mt Albert and identified three students whose work they wanted to display in the store.

Flynn was chosen along with fellow design students, Annie Cameron and Zeke Wolfe.

Flynn exhibited three large two by one point five metre paintings in the design store.

One of her paintings has been sold to a Bo Concept customer.

"The painting I sold was a very deep, pinkie, burgundy depiction of an underwater seascape with mermaids and other sea life," she says.

Bo Concept did not take any commission on the sale of the work which Flynn says is "very generous".

Winning the Mazda Emerging Artist Award and exhibiting at Bo Concept is only the beginning for Flynn.

"I'm working on an exhibition which I hope to do early next year and am extremely lucky to have some supportive patrons who I work with closely and who are sponsoring that project for me," she says.