Five birds. One world. All of it cloud, blue and something that feels like a held breath finally released.
The ruru sits quietly in the upper left, watchful, steady, completely unhurried. This is the guiding presence. The wise soul who oversees from a place beyond the everyday. An ancestor, perhaps. A loved one no longer physically here. An energy that has always been with you, even in the hardest stretches. The ruru holds the feeling of being accompanied. Of never having walked alone, even when it felt that way.
At the centre a pīwakawaka lifts into the air, tail fanned wide, catching the light. Hope, movement, renewal. The moment when lightness returns after a long time of waiting. There is joy in this bird. There is also trust. The kind that only comes after you have been through something real.
Below, another pīwakawaka anchors the scene with pure, playful presence. Curiosity. Momentum. The simple, essential magic of being here now.
On either side, two tuī. One steady and grounded, holding space through every kind of change. The other alive with colour, positioned among the flax, carrying the quiet strength of someone who holds everything together while staying open to what is still becoming. Between them, mandala forms drift through the atmosphere like memory, like prayer, like the patterns that repeat across a life when you learn to look.
The clouds are not background. They are the painting. Emotion, memory, atmosphere, grief and joy existing in the same breath, past and future sharing the same sky.
This is a painting about continuity. About being held by those who came before, supported by those beside you, guided by what is still unfolding.
Hope doesn't arrive loudly. It never has. It comes softly, when the space is ready. When you are ready. And here it is.
This mixed-media painting is 36 x 48’ or 91 x 122cm.
