Five Surface Active art prints on a sunlit gallery wall.

The New Zealand wildlife art prints of Surface Active

December 30, 2021 / / No Comments

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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Surface Active Retrospective exhibition poster. New Zealand Nature & Kiwiana t-shirts 1986—2021. A closeup portrait of Chrissie Terpstra and Shaun Waugh. Their heads are bursting through a big sheet of paper. To their right are four Surface Active t-shirt designs on ghosted short sleeve t-shirts.

Surface Active: A Retrospective of New Zealand Printmakers Chrissie Terpstra & Shaun Waugh (1986–2021)

November 16, 2021 / / No Comments

This is the first retrospective dedicated to the works of the design pARTners behind Surface Active—The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company—who mined their love of nature and of home, wonderful beautiful New Zealand.

Now, post 2020 lockdown, you can shop our range wildlife art t-shirts and wall art at;

• our international online retail store, SurfaceActive.NZ,

• our New Zealand-based store on the Digitees platform based in Papamoa, or

• view the range at our New Brighton Store, where I do the printing of the shirts myself (the online store is under construction, please email enquiries to hello@surfaceactive.nz).

Over the summer months you can shop at our New Brighton Seaside Market stall every Saturday in New Brighton mall; 10 am–2 pm, or check out our exhibition of shirts and wall art at Brighton Gallery on the corner of Carnaby Lane, New Brighton Mall (next door to PaperPlus) open 7 days; 10 am–4 pm.

You can also view our original native animal wall art and clothing at our exhibition at The Creatives Edit—The New Brighton Art and Craft Collective, 105 New Brighton Mall (Monday–Saturday). Browse here to view our range of large and small format, signed, original prints.

Surface Active Retrospective exhibition poster. New Zealand Nature & Kiwiana t-shirts 1986—2021. A closeup portrait of Chrissie Terpstra and Shaun Waugh. Their heads are bursting through a big sheet of paper. To their right are four Surface Active t-shirt designs on ghosted short sleeve t-shirts.
RETROSPECTIVE: A Retrospective Exhibition of Surface Active—The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company T-shirts 1986–2021 by design pARTners Chrissie Terpstra and Shaun Waugh.
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