Palmerston North artist Darcelle Nesser with her bollard My Neighbours' Trees in George St. Photo / Judith Lacy
Palmerston North artist Darcelle Nesser with her bollard My Neighbours' Trees in George St. Photo / Judith Lacy
It's a tale with nearly as many worlds and creatures as a Tolkien novel, but at its centre is Palmerston North artist Darcelle Nesser.
She's the artist who painted 10 bollards outside Harvey Norman in George St.
The bollard with the trees is key to this story, which also has Tolkien and a Finnish film director as main characters. There's also an octopus, but more on that later.
Nesser fell in love with the film Tolkien that captures the early life of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, an orphan who initially struggled at the University of Oxford but went on to write some of the most loved fantasy novels.
Inspired, she contacted the director Dome Karukoski for three words to incorporate into her next bollard and received poetry, memory and isolation.
If she could have reached out to Tolkien she would have, but he died in 1973. The next best option was someone who dedicated quite a bit of their life to recreating the image of the writer and academic, she says.
The bollard, My Neighbours' Trees, was painted on the first day of this year. Nesser says it - like the other bollards she has painted - also gives a glimpse into her life the week before she painted it. She can see the distinctive cypress trees from her bedroom window.
Darcelle Nesser with her Tolkien-inspired painting at Hobbiton in Matamata. Photo / Supplied
As Karukoski was unable to visit New Zealand to see not just the bollard but where The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies were filmed, Nesser decided to create a painting based on the words the director had given her. She then took The Walnut Table to Hobbiton at Matamata before sending it to Finland. Karukoski posted on Instagram he was "deeply honoured" to receive the painting.
Nesser has been learning about Tolkien, the son of an English bank manager who was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. As a child, Ronald created his own language.
Darcelle Nesser's painting The Walnut Table, which she gifted to Tolkien director Dome Karukoski. Photo / Supplied
For the painting, Nesser incorporated W words Tolkien had to define when he helped compile the Oxford English Dictionary in 1919-20: warm, waistcoat, walrus, wait, walnut, wander, want, and wild. Look for the walrus in the red waistcoat and the sunrise-coloured dragon, bringing warmth.
So that ticked off poetry (poetry needs words). In March, Nesser went off the grid for a month to complete a 10-month course on introductory astrophysics. The painting includes her isolation room during that time. As for memory, she has depicted a walrus thinking.
"I like to pack in as much study as I can into a painting."
Nesser started painting two years ago. She is a radiation therapist at Palmerston North Hospital, and thought it would be meaningful to write her autobiography while working at the place she was born.
She discovered she couldn't remember parts of her life so decided to paint what she could remember. She quickly realised she loves painting, put the book on hold, and asked friends for three words she could turn into a painting.
She then reached out to people who interested her and her gifted paintings have gone to Italy, the UK, France, Hungary, Portugal, the US, and South Africa. She does not sell her work.
Like most things in her life, she reaches out and sees what happens.
Nesser started her three words project in mid-2020 and plans to continue it for as long as her life will allow. She likes to make each painting more complex than the one before and puts a lot of study into each one.
She grew up in New Zealand and Australia and is also a qualified vet nurse. Her mojo is doing things no one has done before. Her life was so uncertain at 16, after a tough childhood during which her creativity was not encouraged.
She didn't think she would make it so many times, didn't think life would work out. It did and has and she doesn't want to waste it.
As Tolkien wrote in The Fellowship of the Ring: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Her written ponderings on her life so far have not been wasted. After watching My Octopus Teacher, which documents the year spent by filmmaker Craig Foster forging a relationship with an octopus in a South African kelp forest, she asked him for three words.
For the first time in her three words project, she received a phrase, "then I remember".
"I have always been fascinated by life underwater, there is so much we simply do not know and will not ever know."
In the Academy Award-winning documentary, we learn Foster had worn himself out from working too hard. His relationship with his son was suffering and he didn't want to see a camera or editing suite ever again.
While diving, he came across an octopus who slowly began to trust him and decided to visit her every day. His energy returned and he picked up the camera again and started doing what he loves and knows.
Foster says the octopus was teaching him to become sensitised to the other, especially wild creatures.
One side of Darcelle Nesser's autobiographical painting, Then I Remember, which she sent to South African filmmaker Craig Foster. Photo / Supplied
Nesser painted Then I Remember for Foster. It is her autobiography inside a painting. One side contains handrolled paper coils that have her life story handwritten inside them.
"To read this story one must destroy the painting. Or one may choose to keep the painting alive but keep the story hidden forever."
She poured her soul into that painting and found it hard to let it go. However, it taught her about saying goodbye.
While painting the bollards, she met many interesting people and they talked about all sorts of things. She says the summer street art project is probably the greatest thing that has happened in her life. It has made her realise she is part of this community.
