What is this big beautiful painting? (featured in above image)
Tane Moana (Te Araroa) is a 4 panel piece, a tad shy of 2m sq. It’s an image of the largest Kauri on Northland’s east coast. The tree’s name is Tane Moana and it’s on the Te Araroa track near Tutukaka. There is a boardwalk right up to the bottom of the trunk which gives you a great sense of the volume and scale of this significant totem.
What is the largest painting you have made?
I’ve painted several sizable works over the last 20 years, a couple of flax leaf pieces approaching 4m wide and over a meter high. I often use multiple panels to achieve large scale as in this harakeke work pictured with the then Prime Minister (Helen Clark) at an event in 2006. My latest four panel work is of Tane Moana, the largest Kauri on Northland’s east coast. I have a horse fetish and have painted one I particularly liked, slightly larger than life, also in 4 panels. I worked as a mural painter and commercial gilder in the 90s so have worked on a much larger scale, though these are separate from my contemporary body of work.