Embrace
Oil on Canvas, 180 × 125 cm, 2025
Formed through a conversation between the physical and spiritual, this painting became a realisation of the in-between, revealing itself to me over time. With purpose and intention, I drew on my emotions and memory and remained open to receive from a higher source, connecting with my Wairua (spirit), Tai ao (environment), and Ira atua (spirit realm).
This painting is made up of many layers, with wide brush strokes and blocks of colour. I extend the colour field to merge and collapse within the same space, creating shifting spaces so the viewer can look through the painting, beyond the surface. Within these layers, I gesturally paint figures of birds that fly between the colour fields like messengers of each realm, providing a passage between the seen and unseen.
Stepping back from the painting, I found a deeper meaning and connection an embrace in the form of my father holding me as a child. Guided by a higher power, my father, who has now passed, became present, and this connection evoked memory, spirit, and a higher knowing. A horizontal streak cuts through the composition with a sense of velocity, echoing movement at the speed of light. My father once told me that when he passes, he will be with us at the speed of light. In this work, his presence becomes visible both as a return and a continuation.
As someone of both Māori and Chinese heritage, this connection between worlds is something I feel deeply. The painting reflects my lived understanding that ancestors remain present, that Wairua (spirit) moves with and around us. The birds can be read as messengers or kaitiaki, carrying energy across realms, while the act of painting becomes a way of listening and allowing space for that presence to come through. This work sits within a continuum of whakapapa (descent from ancestors), where past and present are not separate, but in constant relationship.
My approach is informed by artists such as Joan Mitchell, whose gestural language holds emotion and memory, and Cy Twombly, whose marks suggest a kind of poetic presence beyond language. I am also influenced by Cecily Brown, where figuration emerges and dissolves within movement. I resonate with their practices by allowing the subconscious and the unseen to shape the work.
Embrace is ultimately about a connection that continues beyond physical absence. It holds grief, love, and memory within a single moment, where the painting becomes a meeting place between worlds, and where my father returns not as an image I constructed, but as something that arrived.