Courtesy: the artist and Page Galleries, Wellington.

John Walsh (Te Aitanga a Hauiti / New Zealand Irish) lives and paints on the South Coast of Te-Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Walsh grew up in Uawa Tolaga Bay, on the East Coast of the North Island, and his painting practice increasingly addresses the devastation of this once idyllic environment, resulting from intensive monoculture pine forestry.

“Uawa Tolaga Bay is my home, my mother. My art, landscapes, stories, sensibility, come from roaming these hills, fishing, surfing this coastline. All the micro-environments of eels, whitebait, birds, worms, all obliterated by this profit above all else pine industry.”

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