Maori art -Darcy Nicholas
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.'
If you would like to keep up with Darcy Nicholas's latest art works, our website will be showcasing them as they become available, so please visit us regularly or even better, subscribe to our mailing list. Darcy's paintings can be viewed, along with other fine art, at R.Ponders' RONA GALLERY, Eastbourne, Wellington.