PROVENANCE

Purchased from International Art Centre, 1997

Private Collection, Bay of Plenty

King Country Farmer features the artist's friend and colourful local Sonny Te Ahuru. He was from a well known Kakahi whanau.

It is the store that one meets the personalities and the characters of the village. There is Rosie and her husband Mac, the hardest - working farmer i know, for ever bringing another field into production out of the wilderness of scrub and blackberries. There is Mrs Long, the retired postmistress, who makes jam and marmalade she doesn't want, for the sheer joy of making it. She presents many jars of it to my wife, together with jars of pickle onions. There is Mr Ham, my farmer neighbour with his kindly ways and beautiful maori voice. There is my old friend Dick Barnett. Although sorely crippled I have seen him putting in fencing posts and moving from one post-hole to the next on his hands. His is the most outstanding example of sheer courage that I know. There is Jimmy Spiers, a Scot who has lived all over the world, speaks Russian and German and prefers the quiet of Kakahi to any place on earth. There are the Allen Twins, as alike as two peas, and their wives who are sisters. There are Bennetts from across the river, Dempseys and Johnstons who farm on the outskirts of the village, our good friends Polly Te Ahuru and her husband ( Sonny ) and a swarm of Maori children.

Text: Kakaki, New Zealand, Peter McIntyre, A H & A W Reed, 1972.