“My art relates to his songs, and those same elements of thunder, lightning, rain — the same weather forces.
They share a sensibility in his music, and her art and love of surfing the wild areas of the East Coast.
Joseph picked up the drumsticks in 2020 and through the band, met her husband and Hydra keyboard player Tristan Abraham.
They had just returned from their honeymoon the weekend before Cyclone Gabrielle struck, and Tristan wanted to check his workplace in North Clyde and to lift stock out of danger, if possible.
“We went down to help and saw the floodwaters come in from Ruataniwha Road.”
The awe of nature was everywhere that morning — they just got across the bridge before it closed, and raced down to Whakamahi, checking on family on Kopu Road along the way.
They stopped just short of the river raging over the bar and Abraham Joseph began taking photographs.
“That is where I found the inspiration — from the weather.”
Reflecting on that time a year later, with her artwork waiting to be hung for the show, she said, “As a longboarder, I was thinking how it feels when you are out in the water.
“That is what excites and inspires me. I wanted the feeling of being submerged in it.
“It is a celebration of the sea. It was like a beast. A surreal scene. Things were moving so fast.
“It looked amazing, seeing the river water smashing into the sea.
“It felt like every cell of your body was involved, the wrapping
of self around, whirling and twirling in that motion.”
The pictures she took from that morning at the bar inspired her waterscapes with thick brushstrokes loaded with oil paint on large canvases.
“After that, we found out how full-on it was.”
From mid-February and through the winter last year, she worked on her canvases in her studio space.
“I could not do anything but draw and paint during that time.
“It was all about using all the materials I had here and I had to be careful about finances.
“I see the ocean as a fluid friend that helps me traverse relationships and find a sense of self.
“As a keen longboard surfer, riding waves on the sea is not only revitalising and inspirational, it is creative and very much in the moment.
“Over the past few years, I have come to know the sea as a charismatic entity —
hypersensitive. The sea’s moods can swiftly swing in any direction, if conditions shift,
when big swells roll in whipped up by sudden southerlies, the ocean’s clean rhythmic body can quickly contort into a blustering rage.
“It was during the height of the cyclone that I saw the ocean become absolutely boundless.”
Her long-time curator and supporter Paulnache, in Gisborne, is helping hang the show this week and she hopes there is an opportunity to tour it later.
