Encounters and Departures

The shoreline is a place of meeting — arrival and departure, constant tidal pull, the shifting dance of light and colour. There has always been a quiet draw toward the horizon — that place where land gives way to ocean. In this collection, Mila Renault explores that pull, and the vessels that have long carried it.

From an early age, Mila returned to painting ships and seascapes in watercolour. Only decades later did this instinct reveal its origin — a family story held for generations, tracing a passage from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic.

From the Shores becomes a contemporary dialogue with this legacy. Where her ancestors — the Renault maritime painters of 19th-century Livorno — rendered ships with technical precision, Mila turns toward the emotional weight of the journey. Having crossed oceans herself, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, to make a home in Aotearoa, these works move beyond seascape.

They are a quiet reckoning with movement, memory, and belonging.

Working in watercolour, Mila allows form to soften and disperse — a shift away from rigid draftsmanship toward something more fluid and intuitive. The works hold a gentle tension between departure and arrival, between motion and stillness.

This is painting as a way of locating oneself — of arriving, staying, and, finally, feeling anchored.