a biography

At a very early age Griffin was covering the long laminated bar, which acted as a room divider between kitchen and lounge, with drawings. Sometimes they were ajaxed off, sometimes they survived a few days. On this surface, she had her first lessons in drawing.

The Melbourne art school Griffin attended for four years and the ‘scene’ influenced her early colour-field work, but figurative narratives were her real artistic interest. 

Griffin came to New Zealand in 1974 and moved into a warehouse studio in Kiwi Road, Devonport. Shifting to Ponsonby, she worked as a news photographer and began exhibiting paintings and drawings at the Denis Cohn Gallery, mixing with a range of other young artists in a lively Auckland art scene.

Griffin continued to exhibit from 1978 till 1994 and was awarded Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grants in 1983, 1984, 1989 and 1990. One grant took her to New York. Her public artworks can be seen in Auckland, especially a large painted mural of the history of New Zealand women winning the right to vote in 1893. This large artwork is at the New Lynn Community Centre.

Recent exhibitions have been of large scale drawings and another of black and white photographs taken in the decade of 1974 - 1984. Both these exhibitions ran concurrently in different galleries with the name of ‘What We Saw’. Another exhibition of large paintings at the Mahara Gallery in Waikanae was called the ‘Transit of Venus’.

One of her large paintings, ‘Battle of Wills : Our Wonderful World’ (2013) about New Zealand women winning the right to vote in 1893, can be seen in the Women’s Suffrage Select Committee Room in Parliament House, as a part of their collection. Much of her drawings of earlier times and paintings of later ones are in private collection. 

Griffin describes her art as imaginative reality…