Ta Tipene O'Regan is the long-standing Chairman of the Ngai Tahu Maori Trust Board. I was provided with the opportunity to paint Sir Tipene to celebrate his long term leadership with Ngai Tahu.
Getting someone’s likeness is obviously crucial. I met Ta Tipene at Ngai Tahu in Christchurch and was fortunate to spend 3 hours with him discussing his past and future involvement with Ngai Tahu, followed up with a very nice lunch.
After photographing him and doing a number of sketches. I flew back to Auckland. The next 2 days I worked on the concepts for the painting.
After one of these was accepted by Ta Tipene, Lady Sandra and Ngai Tahu, I started the oil on canvas painting. My thoughts here were composition and colour. The cloak was to shroud him and protect his knowledge and mana.
The portrait of Ta Tipene was unveiled in Queenstown, NZ on August 8th.
I was delighted to have one of my closets friends, Graeme Sinclair join me at the unveiling. Many people will recognise Graeme from his television show, Gone Fishin'.
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Being quite new to the local community, I have been looking for opportunities to get more involved and so, I'm collaborating with other artists to help raise funds for Hospice.
We were so intrigued with these snubbed headed birds that I decided to do a painting of one .