Stuff Digital Edition

World famous from Waitara

Prolific artist Darcy Nicholas is bringing his paintings home to Taranaki. Virginia Winder learns all about the ‘Māori Picasso’ and his globe-trotting life.

When he was a boy, Darcy Nicholas thought a couple of teachers at Waitara High School were being insulting when they called him Picasso.

‘‘The art teacher made a joke when I was talking too much: Picasso, let’s have some quiet will we.’’ The social studies teacher continued: ‘‘Picasso, can you keep quiet please.’’

Nicholas was not amused. ‘‘All the kids laughed at me and I felt insulted. I had no idea who this Picasso was, so I complained to my dad.’’

But when his father went up to the high school to have a talk with the principal, Mr Massey, he learnt the supposed slur was a compliment. He came home and told son: ‘‘Picasso was a famous artist, Darcy.’’ His teachers told the students about Pablo Picasso and they never laughed at the young artist again.

Picasso is woven through Nicholas’ long artistic story.

Sitting on a couch in Koru on Devon Gallery in central New Plymouth, the Wellington-based Taranaki-born artist (Te tiawa, Ngāti Ruanui, Tauranga Moana) refers to the painting behind him. It is called Picasso was a Māori Painter and includes a woman’s face with elongated eyes inspired by the Spanish artist. ‘‘This is a woman of much wisdom and vision,’’ he says, explaining how the stretched eyes appear throughout his body of work.

The painting is one of 25 in his latest exhibition, called We are all mana whenua of this planet

Earth, running from yesterday to early January alongside works by Kris White (Sit), Richard Landers and the Koru Collective of artists.

In Nicholas’ show, his largest in New Zealand for many years, people will see more hints of Picasso. ‘‘I have deliberately taken Picasso’s idea of distortion ... ’’ That has extended to his carving. ‘‘If you have a look at Kairau Pā, the carvings there, it is the same thing – I have distorted everything. All based on Picasso. I told the elders that,’’ he says. ‘‘Picasso was one of my great models. When I was studying art, myself and Selwyn Muru and Buck Nin, we used to sit there and talk about Picasso and Matisse and all those other artists,’’ he says.

‘‘I used to have an art teacher who used to have coffee with Picasso and Matisse in Paris in the late 1940s.’’

Sam Cairncross went on to tell his student: ‘‘Darcy, if you want to be an artist of any value, you have to compete with the best in the world.’’ So, he did.

One of his patrons, a man who owns thēairportA in Vancouver, Canada, started calling Nicholas the ‘‘Māori Picasso’’.

Nicholas, who mostly exhibits overseas, has travelled the globe meeting people from many different cultures and some have visited him in Wellington, where he lives.

He thinks of the New Plymouth show as bringing his artworks home to Taranaki.

He was born at Waitara in 1945, the 11th of 12 children in a family that extended to another five whangai children, and his parents were fluent in te reo Māori.

‘‘I was one of the little ones who saw everything happening.’’

That included listening to elders, some of whom were born in the 1800s.

Nicholas says he has seen and thought in images for his whole life. ‘‘My cot had pencil drawings all over it.’’

When he was about 9, he met Māori contemporary¯artistO riwa Haddon, who was related to his dad. ‘‘He said: ‘one day my boy, you’re going to become a great artist’. He gave me a cuddle, a pat on the head and that was it.’’

Nicholas sold his first painting at age 9 and has never stopped.

But there have been some diversions on the way.

One was led by Waitara man Haumoana White, who encouraged 17-year-old Nicholas to join the police force with him.

‘‘Ten years I was there and they got me to develop the identikit programme, I did a lot of patrol work, and then I was called in to form the youth aid section, myself and [Sir] Kim Workman.’’

Then in 1973, after spending time in Australia doing a series of paintings, Nicholas decided to leave the police and become a fulltime artist.

His new move began with an exhibition of 35 paintings in his own Pride Gallery in Lower Hutt.

An African American man walked in and bought the lot before the show had even opened.

‘‘There is a universality about my work ... we are all living ancestors, you are also your mother, your father, and all your ancestors. So, a lot of my paintings will show multiple images within the image, and we all belong to this land and we have to look after it.’’

When he was younger, he asked his mum to teach him te reo Māori but she declined, saying: You learn all that Pakeha stuff and get our land back. ‘‘And, just by chance, in the late 1980s, that is the job the Government gave me.’’

He became deputy with Wira Gardiner in the Iwi Transition Agency and his job was to establish the 14 tribal groups from Wellington and the Chatham Islands up to North Taranaki, so they could make the land claims.

‘‘I am still involved hugely in resolving a lot of that stuff and in order to do it I had to learn the history of all the tribes.’’

He learnt those stories with help from researchers, tohunga and elders, always seeing information in pictures.

‘‘It is the only way I can remember it,’’ he says.

His own life story is also captured in pictures.

In the Koru on Devon exhibition, he has a painting called The Scottish Woman, which is about his late wife, Anne, who was born in Aberdeen and came to New Zealand as a 3-year-old.

She lost a long battle with ill health in February.

They were married in 1968, had children,

Elaine and James, and travelled the world.

Anne accompanied Nicholas on his Fulbright Scholar tour of Native American reservations in 1984.

‘‘I have a huge amount of love for this planet and the people of the Earth.’’

Nicholas has gained much recognition as an artist.

In 2010, he was awarded a Queen’s Service Order for his services to the arts and to museums and, in 2013, he received Creative NZ’s Te Waka Toi Supreme Award, for his lifetime contribution to Māori art.

‘‘I have had an interesting life. ‘‘I got into the international scene because a guy called Teddy Goldsmith saw my work.’’

The Anglo-French environmentalist, writer and philosopher spied one of Nicholas’ paintings in a shop in Auckland and flew to Wellington to meet the artist.

‘‘I had no idea who Teddy was. ‘‘He said why don’t you come and exhibit in London? I said I don’t know anybody there. ‘‘He said: I’ll fix it up.’’ Nicholas later learnt Teddy was the older brother of Sir James Goldsmith, one of the

richest men in the world at that time.

The Goldsmiths were great friends with John Aspinall, who owned a private zoo and casinos in London. The exhibition was held at the latter’s Mayfair club and 140 of the most wealthy and influential people in Europe were on the guest list.

‘‘When I walked in, everything was sold. I asked: who bought this? Teddy laughed and looked at me saying, I bought the whole lot. It all belongs to me but I would like to auction one off, do you mind?’’

Nicholas replied: ‘‘Only if it goes to a children’s charity.’’

During the auction, two wealthy men kept upping each other’s bid until the price reached £1 million but the painter can’t remember what artwork it was.

‘‘I have no idea. There has been so much water under the bridge.’’ Where his works end up can be a mystery. ‘‘In some areas, I am not allowed to know who bought my work. I got used to it.’’

But he did find out Mick Jagger bought a mask.

‘‘Through my life, I became part of the world; I took an interest in other cultures.

Japanese culture I just love. I have always said to people the only true peace you can have is to shake hands with your enemy and call them your friend.’’

His own corner of the world, in practical painting terms, is small. Using acrylics, Nicholas paints in a once-spacious art studio attached to the house.

He says he had the room built but it is now ‘‘a mess’’ and is filled with items his wife gathered over the years. ‘‘She just piled it into the art room. It used to be a lovely space ... now I am confined to a little corner.’’

He uses the kitchen table for drawing and makes his sculptures on the decks.

There are only paintings in his latest exhibition, where people can absorb his work.

‘‘What they will probably pick up is colour is my music and my language is visual arts.’’

Some of his works feature pictures taken straight from his treasured grandchildren, especially when Ruby, now 16, and Lucius, nearly 13, were younger. ‘‘They would say: Papa that’s my drawing, and I would have to shout them something.’’

Nicholas wants the best for his mokopuna.

‘‘The only future we have for our children, our grandchildren, and generations to follow, is to stand together, respect each other and understand each other,’’ he says. ‘‘That is the basis of all my comprehensive travel all around the world.’’

Puzzles

en-nz

2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281895892266855

Stuff Limited