Kuparu

When I was asked in May 2018 to do an intuitive painting for a friends grandson who was twelve years old, I never expected to recieve a vision of a fish! This was a particular shaped fish, and although I didn't know the kind of fish at the time, it didn't take long to match the right name to the image I saw. I soon found out this fish was the Kuparu also known as the John Dory. 

But what relevance does the Kuparu have with this young man? In the research I did next, I came to learn that the John Dory is a coastal fish and is found especially in the East Coast of New Zealand. It so happens that one of the hapu this boy belongs to is Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, the descendants of Hauiti, from the East coast Region. On the arrival of the British explorer Captain James Cook in 1769 and Tupaia the Tahitian who accompanied Cook on his voyage around the Pacific, this local hapu gifted some Kuparu to the explorers. Several casks of them were pickled. 

When his grandmother saw his painting, she could immediately feel the connection to her grandson who she says darts around like a fish and is gentle and serene. It was a beautiful painting to do and I am very pleased with how it turned out.