Menu
![]() ![]() While the uncanny verisimilitude of the portraits of New Zealand’s most famous artist, Charles Frederick Goldie, is what immediately strikes any viewer, for Maori the experience is even more profound: they believe the wairua or spirit of the subject somehow resides in each picture. ![]() This ancestor, the Nga Puhi chieftainess Ina (Ena) Te Papatahi, is surely present in more than pigment and oil. Her hands-every vein and knuckle-are so perfectly rendered I wonder for a moment if I once held them in my own. Each wrinkle and eyelash, the curve of her cheekbones, the chisel marks of her moko, are so lifelike she appears to lift off the canvas and hover just before it. Her face has the texture of finest silk. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |