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Kyla Cresswell grew up in Invercargill, Murihiku Southland. She majored in Printmaking at Dunedin School of Art, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1996. Her practice relates to the land, exploring nature’s tenacity and fragility in the margins. Recent work investigates wetlands, waterways and remnant endemic bush.

Kyla’s background includes founding and directing a Wellington works on paper gallery, curation and tutoring. Working from her studio in Ōtepoti Dunedin, she teaches printmaking through her portable print studio Little Prints.

Since moving back to the south, fragments of southern landscapes and waterways frequently feature in her prints. She relishes a fine drypoint line, a subtle emboss, the crispness of silverpoint and the rich depth of a mezzotint black.

Kyla has been a member of PCANZ (Print Council Aotearoa New Zealand) since 2006 and is the current Lower South Regional Representative.

Her mezzotints were featured on the cover and within The Joy of a Ming Vase, a collection of poems by Ruth Dallas, published by Otago University Press in 2006. In 2011, Kyla’s work was included in Printmaking Handbook: Non-Toxic Printmaking by Mark Graver, A & C Black Publishers Ltd, London.

Kyla was the William Hodges Fellow (2022), an Artist in Residence at the Dunedin School of Art (2024) and Parkin Drawing Prize finalist (2024).

Having exhibited widely nationally and internationally, Kyla has work held in private and public collections, including the Southland Museum and Art Gallery Collection, the Eastern Southland Gallery Collection, Invercargill Public Art Gallery Collection, and Hocken Collections Te Uare Taoka ō Hākena, University of Otago.