PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland
Purchased from International Art Centre, 2002

There are few things I can say about my work that are better than saying nothing - Ralph Hotere, 1996

Tumoana - Drawing for a Church Window at Mitimiti is from a series of works painted in 1982, the year of his father's death. The works feature places along the west coast of Muriwhenua, including Hione, the cemetery at Mitimiti. Although Hotere spent much of his adult life in Dunedin, Drawing for a Church Window at Mitimiti series illustrates the artist's ongoing connection to Mitimiti: the place of his birth, the place where his ancestors are buried, and the place where Ralph himself was laid to rest in 2012.

The name Mitimiti translates to lap, or to lick up and refers to the site at which spirits leaving the earth at Cape Reinga would stop and quench their thirst on the stream water seeping up through the sand.