Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I think it was when I was at school I knew I was going to be an artist.
About fifth form I think.
Yeah, I just discovered painting and I used to be an abstract painter.
I used to stick bits of paper under my mother's car to catch the oil to let them paint themselves.
That's one of the first times I thought I really want to be a painter.
I went to art school in Dunedin.
I was 17.
I was intent on being a painter and I was excited about being a painter going to art school, but
when I got there it was very formal and it taught me about colour and exercises and
I went there as quite an abstract painter and I didn't enjoy it.
I didn't like it at all, so I ended up moving on to computer art and acting and playwriting at university.
I dropped out of painting after the first or second year.
It took me until I left art school and university to come home and then I picked it up again, taught myself.
The whakapapa (genealogy) is connected here, in this land because
our ancestors have always lived here, since the beginning.
And they've always been here and they've always connected here, that's why we're still here.
On Hauturu (Little Barrier Island) as well.
They're in the land and we're here with them.
It's a long time that my family have been here.
My grandmother said "From the beginning of time, we've been here."
So that's what we always used to say "Yeah, yeah, we're still here."
I think that it will always be that way here at Pakiri.
When I came back from art school I was really poor too, I had nothing.
So I'd go and find old bits of wood out of dumps and
I'd go to Resene paint shops and ask for all their throw-out paints, their mistints.
And then I just saw all the clays, all in the land here.
They were beautiful colours too.
So I just got them and started mixing them with glue, PVA glue.
I used to use tar as well a lot.
So it was lots of throw-out stuff
That's when I turned to the pigments too, because of the colours, and I just used to make big buckets of them.
Yeah, just paint on whatever I could find.
Probably some of the most lovely paintings that I've done, really when I look back on it.
You know, just see what you can make out of nothing.
I painted on old blinds and sheets. The worst one I ever painted was on a sheet.
I built a frame out of wood and just had to staple-gun a sheet
because that was all I had but I wanted to keep painting.
These people bought it. I always think "I wonder if they've still got it."
Mostly the trees I think, and the colours of the land. Not so much the landscape.
Sometimes it's more the feeling of the environment.
Sometimes the wairua (spirit) of the land itself.
I try to paint that in paintings rather than paint "of" this, you know, just to paint it.
That's quite easy I think. But to make it have a feeling about it, is what I try to do.
Sometimes you pull it off, sometimes you don't.
But you know when you do, because it affects other people.
Sometimes it can get too... it's not heavy, but...
...the same sort of wairua (spirit), really, of the place.
Then I go travelling, too, because you can only paint it so much
and then, for me, I need other inspiration too, so I go travelling.
I like travelling to Spain and Rarotonga, I painted there and Aussie, to break it up sometimes.
My favourite poet was Lorca, and that's why I travelled to Spain originally.
It would have been 10 years ago.
I stayed in the village where Dali lived, Cadaques.
There was a woman, every day, she was in her late eighties, about 89, selling fish.
Years ago, I'd made friends with all the old fishermen there, the locals ...
... and they'd all died when I went back
She was there, and I got my friend to translate for me
and I just sat down with her and said 'What's your life?'
She told me her life, that she'd lived there all her life
and she used to walk over a mountain for 4 or 5 hours with big bags of fish to sell.
She was the last old, really old, woman there, and a local.
But she just reminded me of my grandmother, and the people here.
So I just did this big painting of her and her life.
Then I sent her photographs of it and wrote her a letter.
She was like "No-one would ever paint me in my whole life!"
We're good mates now. She's still there.
But she's just a local, like tangata whenua of that place.
Same as our people here, just a different culture.
I felt real aroha (love) for her.
It's not easy I think, when you're young and you decide to be a painter.
Because it's not an easy road, but it is if you keep at it.
I just encourage, especially young Māori women painters, too
I encourage them to be so proud that they choose to be painters
and to really believe in themselves, right from the beginning
and don't doubt yourself, because I spent too long doing that.
Young people, don't ever doubt yourself, just do it.