John Walsh b. 1954

John Walsh grew up in Tolaga Bay on the East Coast of the North Island. Of Aitanga-a-Hauiti and New Zealand Irish descent, Walsh began drawing as a youth and demonstrated exceptional talent from an early age. After studying at Ilam Art School in Christchurch from 1973-4, Walsh returned to his home and began painting portraits of members of the local community, eventually receiving the BNZ Portrait Award in 1977. He was part of the early Māori arts movement Ngā Puna Waihanga (Māori Artists and Writers Society) throughout the 1970s and 1980s before becoming the inaugural Curator of Contemporary Māori Art at the National Art Gallery (now Te Papa Tongarewa), in 1993.

Walsh held his first solo exhibition when he was 40. At the time he was Curator Maori at Te Papa. After ten years in this public position, Walsh committed to painting full-time. His paintings are characterised by a layered mythological quality, with his own cast of characters dropped into dreamscapes of bush, sea and sky. His paintings appear translucent, effortlessly emerging from the seemingly still-wet paint, showcasing his technique of conjuring slippery layers of paint and chasing his ideas around the surface in a series of swift movements.