Nature Falls

Mark Wooller’s work is extremely satisfying to absorb, his highly detailed painted illustrations are packed with references to dense native bush and delicately crafted typography. 

His palette has a historical tungsten hue, the paintings often portraying local landmarks and place names in a way one might imagine a visual description of a map someone might produce upon arriving to a new land. 

Based in beautiful Matakana, Wooller’s studio resides amongst his garden and native bush on a three-acre section. Curious to find out more, I devised some questions to discover more about the man behind these whimsically descriptive paintings.

Can you tell us about the significance of your studio and home?

My studio and garden are integral parts of my art practice. I arrived here 23 years ago to a field of pasture, like a blank canvas. Today, my studio sits above orchards, sub-tropical and perennial beds. 

Replanting and restoring the native bush has been a steady process. Recreating the biodiversity from mosses, ferns and climbers has been a major project which gives me much inspiration for my work and is an important way of respecting the whenua.

What influences the compositional approach in your work?

I’m inspired by the colours of the landscape around, the greens of the bush – so many different greens, from the green blues of the vines to the buttery greens of young kauri foliage. The blues of the Waitematā changing by hour and reflecting.

I started painting at around 10 years of age. My learning came through observations. My parents regularly took me to the Auckland Museum and Auckland Art Gallery. At that time, in the early 1970s, Colin McCahon and other prominent artists like as Don Binney, Hone Papita Raukura (Ralph) Hōtere were exhibited.

I suffered at a young age from stuttering, and soon realised that language and the spoken word was not going in my direction. Art soon became my passionate and outlet, a way of expression. At school art was the subject I excelled at. Even though my dream was to attend university to pursue art, my academic side let me down.

Instead, I chose a trade, that being gardening. The painting always continued alongside working in the tree nursery. I had my first exhibition of my work in a flat in Herne Bay in 1984 and have been painting and exhibiting ever since. I started painting full time in 1998.

Your work serves as historic documentation of sorts, what spurred this interest for you?

As Tāngata Tiriti, my heritage in Aotearoa New Zealand is from the 1880s onwards. My ancestors in NZ were builders, housepainters. I grew up in Te Atatū, where the Waitākere were our backdrop and framed all the landscape vistas. Much time was spent in the bush, waterfalls, and beaches of the west coast. Titirangi was like an artistic mythical place to me as a child, with so many creative types. It felt so different to the Pākehā culture of Te Atatū in the 1970s.

You use original Māori place names in many of your works, how did this come about and how do you find out what the names are?

The use of te reo Māori place names in my work is important. Te reo is beautiful in its ability to express so much about the place, a time, and usage of the location. For example, Waiwhakaata, we have so much to learn from its meaning of ‘water reflecting image’, rather than the European named Freemans Bay. Especially, prominent when early Auckland used the bay as a rubbish tip and then covered the bay entirely, highlighting Western notions of land use.

The map works series of paintings often reference the original survey maps where the original Māori names have been recorded, often phonetically. Using the original names gives the chance to explore and learn the meaning of why names have altered and why it is now time to return to the original names where possible. These paintings blend history, place, and connection. I love to reimagine how landscapes once looked. Large stands of kauri to the foreshore, palms and ferns cloth mountainsides.

Your latest series for the Aotearoa Art Fair depicts many water falls, what do these waterfalls represent?

The waterfalls are abstract and not based on any particular location. Their form is also influenced by McCahon. McCahon made reference of CA Cotton’s book of geomorphology and here, I have also resourced the book. Reading and looking at the images the book contains, I use this as a point to launch from. How would I be inspired to create an artwork from a book that the giant of NZ art also referenced, what would I make, what would I see, this is the result.

Black Door Gallery is pleased to present a suite of new paintings by Mark Wooller at the upcoming Aotearoa Art Fair, which will be held at the Cloud, Auckland (November 16-20). The artists new works feature waterfalls which cascade over amorphous regions of native bush, within Woollers signature depiction of untouched land, cloaked in dense primeval foliage.