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Download AudioA leading Tainui artist is crediting her grandparents with setting her on the path to an art career.
A survey show of the work of Hiria Anderson-Mita opened last week at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery -Te Pūkenga Whakaata in Wellington.
She says her work now focuses on her whanau and community, drawing together threads of history and hapu life.
She says when she returned to live in the whānau homestead in Ōtorohanga and found her childhood drawings in a shed, she realised how much her dyslexia affected her life.
“I did a lot of drawing and I was very quiet and insular and so all my language went through a drawing.My grandparents were also creative in the traditional art forms of whakairo and raranga and so I hung out a lot in their circles and their friends who had come into mahi with them,” Anderson-Mita says.
Hiria Anderson-Mita: where we are/what we are doing runs until June
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