Fifty three species of New Zealand birds have become extinct since the arrival to our shores of the first people. The bones and preserved museum specimens giving us a partial understanding of some of them but we cannot bring back their songs, their personalities, their idiosyncrasies.

 

“Unquestionably the best of our native songsters” - a description of the now extinct Piopio from an excerpt from Walter Buller’s journal from the 1880’s. He described the Piopio in this way as he sat quietly in the early morning, semi dark, of his campsite and as “unquestionably the best of our native songsters”. It was “melodious with five distinct bars, repeated six or seven times in succession, with a variety of sub songs and mimicry.

 

Within ten years of this observation, the Piopio was gone forever.

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This diary entry had a significant effect on me and began in me a desire to know and understand these birds that are now gone.

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Despite it being the stories of the sounds of these lost birds which captivated me, it did kindle in me a desire to try to capture their spirit. Conversations between extinct birds and their existing and threatened counterparts is a theme of

some of my artwork.

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Presenting existing species intermingling with extinct species pulls them out of their static extinction state. To have them interacting in my art is my way of acknowledging them and hopefully gives them an extra dimension.

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Conservation art is also a theme that appears in my work. I try to present visually the important relationships that tie ecology together - subtle visual patterns representing the symbiosis and integral relationships between our flora and fauna and earth, sea and sky.