With tūī and a greedy korimako feeding on the flowering flax outside my kitchen window over the last few weeks I have had excellent reference material for the Breaker Bay painting. I did think of including korimako in the painting but have noticed that they never feed at the same time as the tūī, so I’m guessing they do not get along. It also has been interesting watching the mountain flax/wharariki flower, and observing the colours in each flower, the detail and the purplish hue of the stems.
A while ago I explored the Arthurs Pass area with my good friend Dulkara, we walked up the Taramaku River, bush bashed through the thick & steep bush up to the open tops where we spent three days traversing the ridges. On the second afternoon, after lots of up and down ridge-line scrambling we approached Lake Morgan...
Camp Stream Hut, a historic musterers hut on the Te Araroa trail near Tekapo with Roundhill in the background. A magical place to visit, especially in the late afternoon although once the sun falls it becomes bitterly cold. On this particular trip the walk out was sodden with snow melt and my feet lost feeling in the last main river. Brr…
Inspired by an almost dreamlike trip along ridge lines, past Lake Morgan and to the top of Mt O’Shanessy the painting is slowly taking shape. I really wanted to capture those warm, golden, summer West Coast rays that you...
