1928 Essex Super Six right hand side front three-quarter view

From Photo to Art: The 1928 Essex Super-Six Experience

Welcome to a journey where the past meets the future, where the classic lines of a 1928 Essex Super Six four-door car, whose chief selling point was “affordable luxury,” intermingle with the art of modern graphic design. I recently had the incredible opportunity to photograph this rare American vintage beauty in the car park of the historic Richmond Workingmen’s Club in Christchurch. Note that the gallery of images from the photoshoot is at the foot of the page.An Essex Super Six USA bonnet emblem badge

Capturing the Essence:

A classic 1928 Essex Super Six four-door car photographed head-on
The 1928 Essex Super Six was designed to be an affordable luxury car, making it accessible to a wider range of car owners. It was equipped with a powerful 153.1 cubic inch inline-six engine that delivered 55 horsepower, providing ample power for its time.
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Five Surface Active art prints on a sunlit gallery wall.

The New Zealand wildlife art prints of Surface Active

Since Chrissie and I were a kids we have been enthusiasts of the natural world and as design pARTners since 1985 our New Zealand nature wildlife art designs are an expression of this.

I finished four years of study in Graphic Design at Auckland Technical Institute in 1983. After a five year career as an advertising art director in Auckland, Christchurch, Hong Kong and Reykjavik I was equipped through illustration, graphic design, drawing and painting to achieve our aim of creating a variety of stimulating visual images that originate from the experiences and knowledge of the natural world that Chrissie and I bring to our collaborations. We create wildlife art of native birds, reptiles, mammals, insects, trees, plants and landscapes at locations all over New Zealand that I photograph, and we research the image libraries of renowned New Zealand wildlife photographers in search of reference for iconic imagery.


The Surface Active New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company range of t-shirt designs has been developed since the year 1986 when we first started screenprinting on the kitchen table in our flat, with frequent updates of new designs between 1988 to the present. We display our latest limited edition wildlife art prints using specialist room mock-up software. Please revisit every few weeks, I’m sure there will be some fresh images for you to look at. As full-time professionals 1988–2003 Chrissie and I designed over 100 original wildlife art designs with New Zealand, Antarctica and African “big five” megafauna themes. Since 2003 we have continued creating new designs and during lockdown 2020 and 2021 we created a new design every few weeks.

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Pomeroy’s Press newsletter front page, masthead, leading article, Pomeroy’s family greeting, photo of Steve and Victoria Pomeroy.

Pomeroy’s pub newsletter

The restrained look for Pomeroy’s English style pub newsletter is pure news


POMEROY’S OLD BREWERY INN, CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND


THE QUARTERLY POMEROY’S Old Brewery Inn and restaurant newsletter had a name inspired by their brand, “The Pomeroy’s Press”, it was well-edited by Chrissie Terpstra who was also chief reporter between 2005–2010 and was designed and laid out with a look that made the news.
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Auto Restorations Siata Balbo, First in Class Classic car magazine advertisement hand held

Classic car restoration advertising

First in Class: Auto Restorations’ proud history of internationally recognised accomplishment in Concours D‘Elegance gold awards

Auto Restorations logoFirst a 2010 advertising campaign of half page colour ads for Auto Restorations’ services in a glossy Trans-Tasman Classic Car magazine. The theme is to dedicate a series of ads to celebrate their 16 international award winning restorations, a little known fact and a newsworthy story with which to get the attention of their audience.
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