Winifred Belcher - Artist

Background

Born:
1950, Bunnythorpe Substation Fielding, Manawatu province, Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Heritage:
Native Aotearoan with Maori blood-lines from my paternal side. Primary tribes - Te Arawa and Tainui.

Parents:
Dad- A.D. Foley (Irish immigrant Grandfather). Electrical engineer/ surveyor, specialising design, construction transmission and retic. Dad is as old as this country’s hydro generation industry and an icon with it as the founder of a large international clan business.

Mum- J.V Foley, nee Chatterton. She is a “Hydro-man’s” daughter with British colonial stock. She is a great reader, grower, gardener, genius for raising great kids and an icon in our family/ extended clan. I am firstborn of their five children.

Offspring:
Two daughters-
Sara Melissa (Kuramaikearoa) Belcher. M.Sc. Zoology/ Ecology studies. Married to Nick Moylan, software developer and computer-man.
Samantha-Kate (Mereikura) Belcher. Sculptress and artist. Her credits on movies “Return of the King” (LOTR) and “King Kong” via WETA WORKSHOPS / STUDIOS.

Education

Primary school (state) – Te Kuiti, North Island’s King Country province of New Zealand.
Tertiary- Waikato University
Education was state-style Interwoven “whole-of-life”, with formal and informal cultural heritage education.
“Kai ora ra na tatou – e Koroura, nga whaunaunga, nga tohunga, kia te whakamataurangatanga, nga tikanga Maori, ake ake ake amine”

Arts Education
Born gifted, facilitated nurtured.
At age 13 a gifted mentor/ teacher in year one of high school said “there is your space, there is your gear, there is the library – now create”. Thenceforward……seek the teacher for everything you’ll ever need to know. You will be found. Miss Lucy Marsden ensured I would go to University not to be taught art, but to gorge on all it takes to feed young geniuses insatiable appetite and will to learn.
“Kai ora, Lucy. Ki te Maramatanga – ake ake ake amine.”

All is ongoing, my work ensures that.
“Kia ora e Atua aroahaiina. Amine”.

CV / Resume

Born Artist – writer e.g. read unabridged Kenneth Graham by age four (thanks magic-mum). All benefits of devoted nurture, facilitation, education, for whole of formative life. Turned professional at age 28. Top level by age 30, beginning inspired produced self-started ‘law preservation’ project. Visuals and manuscript for the first stage completed 1988 (had two teenage kids by then).

Visuals and manuscript acquired far produced for this project where acquired in 1989 by the National Art Gallery by national collection.

In 1999 I received my first major commission “Karanga”, for Auckland City Council.
Constant works on major and minor commissions and more self-started heritage projects etc (see portfolio and timeline for details).

Hobby-work: By age 14 I had produced a number of illustrated manuscripts. At age 15-16 I wrote “Uncle Stew’s Mystery Box”. In 2006 the manuscript was “discovered” and published (again thanks Mum ‘glass box’- all those years).

Life plan- to go into full-on production of kids’ books at age 70…Hmm, Maybe sooner.

Have obligation to reproduce Heritage work in book from. Interested publishers please contact me.

Enjoy the portfolio. Please read on.

What I Do and How I Do That

What I do

I mostly I work on Commission. Visuals always come with script accompaniment though there will always be things beyond explanation. All real artists speak of “Things taking over, coming through, when we go into ‘the zone’”. Mine’s a highly tuned, trained, and skilled ‘sensitive’s’ advantage; culturally and ethnically imprinted in certain bloodlines.
Research, research, research….. triggers synchronicity.

My artworks are authentic for I.T. purposes: My culture sustains as primarily rooted in Oral Tradition which relies on mnemonic (i.e. Visual-Audio triggers to prodigious memory/ imaginative/ intuitive/ strongly Lateral Think-tanks).
My craft specialise in weaving-with-paint the detail and data of Legend, Past and Future, and into any given now. Customised.
My brush is my Tohunga’s (Magician’s) staff, for conjuring new legend from old, then directing that potential into “tomorrow”.
I have slaved for that particular Special Effect all-my-life.

Io

1984 – Master panel of Lore Preservation Project One “Great Io making the Earth”. “Io” is our name for the Supreme Being.

Karanga

1989 - Great “KARANGA”, commissioned for Auckland City’s brand new Aotea Centre for the performing arts.

“Michelangela! When will it be done!”
“When I am feckkin’ finished!”

2006 - This very large work was acquired for Auckland University’s collection, very specifically for the great foyer of the School of Engineering”. Karanga is a great big statement for Mother-Earth and music. But all say she has never shone so beautifully nor sung more joyfully than she does, hung banner-like, across the horizon of tomorrows engineers (well, back in ’89 – “yeah – I-knew-that!”).

“Ki te Ao Marama, ki naga Rangatahi, ki a Koe, e Whaea Papa, ake, ake, ake, amine.”

2006 – (yes “SNAP”, Karanga – did the age of Aquarius Dawn 2006 in New Zealand or what!) - Inspired young Curator/ Magicians at the National Museum ‘Te Papa Tongarewa’, in Wellington (opp.end if Island to Auckland, SAME month, April, as ‘Karanga’s installation in Schl of Engineering) - used “Great Io” as the arts/ culture component of their grand exhibition on G.E. Otherwise all sciences and tech. They digitised the Supreme Being! They unravelled HIS chromosomal DNA (Yo! It’s in there), then ‘piped’ Him up into a column of screens.
He must have been stoked, the Exhibition went brilliantly and Nothing Terrible Happened.

“Ki a Koru e Leonardo, Michelangelo…Ti HEEEeeee MAURI ORA nga RENAISSANCE- tanata- tohunga, ake, ake, ake……”
(Which, roughly translated means, “you guys eatcherHEARTSout!”).

Technicalities

“Why couldn’t you just be a physicist! Your stuff’s bloody UN-photographable, it won’t stand still” Quote, Don Murchison, Auckland City Gallery Chief Conservator, 1990. His fault. He gave me state-of–art product. Magicians 10th power to my palette.
Kia ora ra, Look Don, No Hands, miss you in Canada or wherever now. Keep touch.

My now distinctive tricks with ‘glow’, ‘incredible depth’, and photon play. Nine primaries palette with magic 10th – transparent suspension medium. Acrylics best suit my styles and techniques. (Brand-specific.) My now distinctive tricks with ‘glow’, ‘incredible depth’, photon play are otherwise the result of 11th power, ME.
Time, patients, experience, “magic”.
‘Immortality’. Top Quality Guaranteed.

“A painting is not finished until you’ve taken out the Best bit”. Great English light- maestro, J.M.W Turner (1775 – 1851)
“When it sounds right, like Mozart, eternally dancing from the Light you’ve fiddled in….that’s the score. It’s done”. W.M. Belcher (1050 - )