Acrylic, Ink, Gouache, Mica & Texture on Canvas
Tasmanian Oak Frame
62.5x62.5
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When I was just sixteen, a sacred moment carved itself into me —unexpected, quiet and profound — reshaping how I saw life, love, spirit. I fell witness to the whispered legacy of our ancestors, woven through the stories we tell ourselves of divine connections and destiny.
Soon after, the dreams began. Always of Mt. Taranaki — his silhouette etched against a twilight sky, watching, waiting. Night after night, for three long years, the vision and the view was always the same. The message always steady, clear, and true. His silence louder than any voice I’d ever known. His glow brighter than any light I’d ever seen.
Ko te maunga, ko te kupu, ko te tohu. (The mountain, the message, the sign.)
And then — as if a cord had been violently cut — it stopped. No gentle fading, no farewell. Just absence. Just loss.
Yet even buried deep, the mountain never truly left me. I think he still breathed in me — his voice curling like smoke in the corners of my dreams, in places I couldn’t reach. Somewhere in the marrow of my memory, my original DNA, his voice lingered — telling me who I was, and who I might yet become beneath his gaze.
Still, I turned away. I could not dwell on what was lost, or what might have been. But in the truth of facing myself — he was always there. The door was always open.
When I turned forty-seven, I stood in Rangiātea, cradle of Polynesia, birthplace of the great voyage. Alone in the waters of our marae, I whispered to the old ones —those whose breath still stirs the tides, whose hands shaped the stars.
Surely I was meant for more? Surely they saw more in me, and for me? I told them I was ready. That I was lost, but willing to be found. I asked to be led — to the path meant for me, to the self I had not yet dared to become.
And then, thirty-one years later, the mountain came to me once more. In dreams. In the wind. In silence. In song. In the way the light touches the water, and reflects like a mirror of our truth.
And everything began to shift.
Ka hoki mai te karanga. The call returned. And I, no longer a child, stand ready.
To listen. To follow. To surrender.
To remember who I have always been.
Mō āke. tonu.