Maria Tauau's art works featured...

Favourite pic of Maria Tauau's artwork

Today I'd like to feature the art of my lil' sis Maria. Like me, she took art through high school to a senior level Year 13 and mastered in Printing where she gained an excellence endorsement. I actually believed that her art hadn't yet reached it's potential in seeing how gifted she was and encouraged her to try painting instead and from there she took off.

You can check out her commissioned art works on three covers of our books i.e. Pacific Hibiscus - a poetry collection (2016), A Midsummer night's dream with a taste of Polensia - Pasfika play (2016) and Sense of Belonging - a community anthology of shorts stories and poetry (2018).

I've encouraged her to carry on with her studies to a Masters level with her art and wish her well in her endeavours to continue putting her artworks out there for our communities to appreciate too. You can also find some of her ink drawings at Middlemore hospital (South Auckland) in the antenatal unit featuring her Samoan/Pacifika styled works of art and we've taken some of her art to Samoa to grace the walls of our new home there.

The above multimedia artwork featuring three Samoan/Pasifika women is so far my mum and my favourite art pieces of Maria's at this time. It features a Samoan taupou wearing the traditional tuiga (ancient headpiece for ceremonial occasions) and the frangipani and hibiscus flowers that are some of our favourite flowers in the Pacific.

I'm hoping at some future time and space to bring together our art works and have a two women exhibition with her to feature some of our art to display for our communities and also for local schools to visit but that's in the planning stages. But for now we're working on another cover of an upcoming book that will feature Maria's talent with more to come...