 fine arts contemporary NZ Maori painter - oil colour/acrylic, and sculptor
Te Atiawa, Ngati Ruanui, and Tauranga Moana Tribes
Maori artist Darcy is an art award-winning contemporary New Zealand artist whose painting and
ancestral masks have been exhibited in Australia, the United States, Britain, France and
Germany.
'My paintings are about identity, the ancestral lines that connect me with the
universe. I want to paint the spiritual richness that speaks of the timeless culture that
I know.' Darcy Nicholas was born in 1945 and brought up in Taranaki, New Zealand in a tightly
knit Maori community.
A colourist and interpretive portrait and figurative painter, he painted full-time from
1973 until 1981, when he became Director of the Wellington Arts Centre. The Wellington
Arts Centre was a pilot programme employing up to 200 artists per year from a wide range
of art disciplines.
In 1984 he received a Fulbright Scholarship to observe Contemporary Native American and
African American art in the United States. The work of Native American artists like
T.C.Cannon,, Dan Namingha, and Fritz Scholder inspired him to liberate his sense of
colour. He continued painting through Britain, Europe and Asia.
He was invited on three occasions to Zimbabwe as one of the international jurists for
Zimbabwe Heritage. Nicholas became aware that the carved and painted mask was a huge
omission from the Contemporary Maori Art movement. Ancestral faces had become a feature of
his art, so he literally tore the face from his painted canvas and created a series of
powerful painted wooden masks.
In 1986, Darcy was appointed Director of the Central Regional Arts Council. Three years
later he was appointed to the Iwi Transition Agency as an Assistant General Manager. In
1992 when a new government closed the Agency, he returned to painting and sculpting full
time.
He is currently Group Manager of Cultural Development at Porirua City in the North
Island of New Zealand. His art is in private and public collections throughout New
Zealand, Australia, the United States, Britain, France and Germany.
Nicholas is an artist who is not afraid to use contemporary materials and new forms
of imagery in Maori art.
Darcy has been able to widen his boundaries while still retaining the important links
with the marae (tribal centre) and whanui (tribal families). He has exhibited widely on
the international arena in Australia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Hawaii, the US, France and
Germany.
'I hope we never lose the multiplicity of our heritage. We are what our ancestors
have made us. The earth and the stars are our ancient ancestors and we are part of them.
The earth is my primeval mother and I am her son.'
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