Hastings-based artist wows at Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Awards

Hastings based artist John Brown's painting took out the major award at the Whakatane Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Awards. Photo / Supplied

Creativity based on history, iconography and landscape has seen a Hastings artist land a major award at the Whakatane Molly Morpeth Canaday Awards.

John Brown won the major award, winning $10,000 for his work The Battle For Tuber.

Brown moved from Auckland to Hawke's Bay four years ago and it's his first time entering the Molly Morpeth Awards.

"This is one in a series of paintings that looks at a theory the Greeks might have been here in 350BC, well before the Maori."

The artist received inspiration from a variety of history books, but one controversial work in particular titled To the Ends of the Earth co-authored by Maxwell C Hill, Gary Cook and Noel Hilliam.

"It's a bit of a conspiracy theory, but there's a fair few untold stories around New Zealand that could prove to other people being here. So I just took some theories out of this book and turned them into a different New Zealand history."

Being Greek himself, Brown took the ideas from the book and intertwined the both the Greek and New Zealand identities.

While it's believed that Polynesian ancestors of Māori brought kūmara (sweet potato) with them as a food plant on arrival in New Zealand in the 13th century, it's believed that early Polynesians had voyaged to South America, and took kūmara from there to Polynesia, but Brown's painting shows another theory.

"This book is saying that the Greeks brought it here from Easter Island. So the painting basically represents a crest, the Eel being New Zealand and the Cobra the Greeks/Egyptians and they're fighting over the ownership of the kumara or the introduction of it to New Zealand."

"It's just a theory, but an interesting one and it's been quite good to create artworks out of."

Guest Judge Dr Christopher McAuliffe picked Brown's work from a pool of 78 finalists.

He said seeing Brown's work was like pulling off a highway to look at a historical monument.

"I'm drawn magnetically by the promise of events of great moment and the superstitious notion of being there, right on the spot where it happened," he said.

"The result is usually disappointing because most of the time, a monument says more about what people want to believe than what really happened. And these days the monuments of our pasts and especially those who the colonial era, are subject to challenge; something to be amended, corrected or simply torn down in belated shame."

Brown will be hosting an exhibition of his artwork which has never been before at SPA_CE in Napier on May 24 this year.