About me
I live and work in Auckland, New Zealand. I am a serial dabbler in the arts, with an interest in writing, poetry, public speaking and painting
CLIVE ELLIOTT
Writing
I’m a co-author of two of New Zealand’s leading legal texts in the intellectual property area – the Lexis Nexis loose-leaf texts: Copyright and Design; and Patents and Trade Marks. I’m a frequent writer and commentator on intellectual property and information technology issues and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Intellectual Property Forum.
I’m the author of “The Power of Wellbeing” published by Cogent Publishing. I also self-published books on poetry, photography and a short story “A Cat’s Tail”.
Public Speaking
I regularly write on and lecture on the art of advocacy, both oral and written. An example is a webinar I gave in 2018 “Mastering Advocacy: Effective Written and Oral Advocacy and How to Maximise Both”. The theme of this webinar was how to prepare effective written submissions and how to combine them with powerful oral submissions, to achieve maximum persuasive impact. https://www.nzbar.org.nz/resources/mastering-advocacy-effective-written-and-oral-advocacy-and-how-maximise-both-june-2018
Later in 2020 I gave a follow-up lecture to the New Zealand Bar Association on the topic of effective writing techniques for submissions and other communications in adversarial settings.
I have a blog which covers legal and public policy issues. I’m a regular commentator on issues such as freedom of the press, surveillance, democracy and privacy and right on specialist IT/privacy issues such as an article on my blog about Bluetooth contact tracing, which is accessible at http://www.cliveelliottqc.com/category/blog/
I am a regular commentator on National Radio https://podcasts.google.com/search/clive%20elliot?hl=en-NZ and television in New Zealand, particularly on legal and privacy topics.
I routinely post on LinkedIn about media and other appearances: https://www.linkedin.com/CliveElliottKCsPosts
I have been interviewed on various videocasts, including in October 2022, by the leading law firm consultant Simon Tupman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QiK8VMoNUY
Pre-covid I did an annual roadshow around Australia visiting the five major cities and presenting on recent developments in the law. Below is a photo taken in Melbourne in 2019. In 2020 and 2021, due to Covid travel restrictions the roadshow was conducted by webinar, with about 300 attendees.
PAINTING
I firmly believe that art must speak to the soul and our wider perceptions and senses rather than offer something overly rational and logic. There must of course be an element of science involved in any painting and forensic skills are critical to achieving the right result. However, as I see it, the true skill of the artist is to communicate at a more subliminal level. Indeed, the successful artist allows his or her method and forensic skills to remain in the background, almost entirely hidden from view.
My goal as an artist is to try and capture a little piece of that magnificent natural beauty that exists around us and preserve it in a time capsule so others can ponder and experience the wonder, before it evaporates away into the endless sands of time. This brings to mind one of Paul Cezanne’s observations: “I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms; and the progress needed is incessant.”
In terms of my philosophy, it is pretty simple – to try and locate that place between imagination and reality and to create an image or physical experience that somehow catches some point between the two. My paintings move between the realistic and the abstract. I try to explore the endlessly changing relationship between light, colour and texture by using different materials and substrates.
I sincerely hope you like my work.
