Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
Another sketch from an early morning wandering around Palmerston North Square with a sketchbook. This time it's Te Peeti Te Awe Awe's turn, his memorial is just meters from the clock tower I sketched last year.
I was intrigued by the inscription on the memorial that he had served with the crown during the New Zealand Wars. A Rangitane chief and kūpapa maori – in other words maori who fought on the British side in the New Zealand Wars. He certainly had his reasons, one being to get land taken back by northern tribal invasions in the early 1800's. He used his new alliance to improve the lives of his own hapu, but wasn't afraid to oppose the crown either in holding on to tribal land.
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