In these current works, a dreamy, strange light carries us down a road to mysteries which are only partly explained.  They are of forest or ngahere, past ancient trees and fortifications, to a broken cannonade. What happened here? Why is there sunlight over a once blood- stay Ned paddock? I’m obviously dealing with Maori- European events, but why are the paintings so… uncanny?

Perhaps it began at the knee of Sir James Henare, who moved me to tears with his sacred stories about Northland? I wept, and he perhaps knew I understood the profundity of living here?  So even though I lived isolated from bigger art markets,  I have felt enriched by living in a region with a deep history over 1000 years old.  Later, his widow, the gracious Lady Rose Cherrington, blessed me to investigate the solemn 1846 battlefield of Ruapekapeka.

Nevertheless I am Tau iwi-  of a new tribe here.  My interests are broad, seeking in nature.  I have travelled and lived in much of Aotearoa- New Zealand, and recorded my impressions. Seven years in Fiordland confirmed my “New Zealand-ness” of subject. There I showed the plight of endangered native birds, set against primordial settings. Previously I had done many “Colonial Bride” works on doors and roofing iron, even on an old dinghy, to identify with part of my (originally) European background- or what I called: “Pakeha whakapapa”. The unusual substrates formed primitive links to the mud, the living here, that I too had shared with older tribes. 

So these new works continue that tradition. They are concerned with the power and impact of landscapes filled with mystery, loss, change and uncanniness. There is a sense of dislocation: how do I belong here? What happened? What does this mean? And it is found in all of my art. 

These new  works started with a return to a particular Battle site in Northland, Ruapekapeka. But I decided to broaden the description to any Pah site, any contested land, often now abandoned and largely overlooked: lonely, charged places. Hence I am not doing real land here, rather they are dreams of any damaged land, any broken cannon, any weed- filled trench. Loss, emptiness. 

I dream a lot, and question things: where is the redemption in such losses, whether they are to indigenous peoples, or to rare birds, or even to ways of life lost in time?  These are my musings.