Works in a Series

When I was a young teen I had a fairly ordinary experience (for a kiwi kid), which profoundly influenced me. I participated in a father and son possum bust; a nighttime culling on a local farm to curb the invasive possum population. Each boy in the group, with over a dozen onlookers with torches spotlighting the action, had the opportunity of shooting a possum from the tops of a tree - a rite of passage for a young man. I was excited to undertake this and when my turn came, g

Before human contact New Zealand’s wildlife evolved in isolation over millions of years, a distinct ecosystem of varied inhabitants consisting mostly of a wide variety of birds. Some had become permanent ground-dwellers (there were few predators to evade) while some grew vast; the Moa stood up to 3.7 meters tall, or the Haast’s Eagle which had a wingspan of 2 to 3 meters and is the largest eagle to ever have existed. Others grew eccentric and inquisitive like the Kākāpō whose

There is a quiet struggle going on in the creeks behind the factories, in the long grass of new suburbs, within the dissection of land for commercial and residential use, it is a battle for survival over increasingly limited resources. A displacement of our native wildlife for agriculture and suburban sprawl and as the world becomes smaller, the need for a home for each of us (animal as well as human) is becoming more intensified. Left unchecked and with enough resources, pop

A rat dressed as a stormtrooper had me contemplating the language and tools utilized in the depiction of opposing forces

The same year (2018) the format was expanded for another show called Works on Paper. It included A1 sized sheets of watercolour paper (840 x 590mm) which allowed for a greater scale of work than the limited size of an A6 postcard. 30 artists were each given 2 sheets of A1 Hahnemule watercolour paper to create their works upon. I had the idea of creating a Star Trek landing party bravely beaming down onto a strange new world. The initial sketches depicted native New Zealand bi