Inspiration is a mystery

THERE'S something a bit other-worldly about Antony Warnes' painting process.
The Katikati man started painting portraits in his early twenties after "hearing a voice and seeing a light". More than 40 years later, his inspiration is still just as mysterious.
"It's just in my head, it just happens," he said.
"Nothing [in particular] motivates me. Sales don't motivate me, like 'oh my god, I must be good', nothing like that. It just happens for no reason."
Whatever his inspiration, there are plenty of people who are pleased he finds it.
Although Warnes has staged most of his exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia, he has collectors in at least 27 countries including Japan, Israel, Germany and China.
He's been exhibiting at Harrisons Gallery in Tauranga for 44 years and his work will appear in a new exhibition there which opens to the public on Saturday.
Persistence & Perseverance features Warnes' work, as well as that of Tauranga artist Beverly Hollister-Jones and Northland artist Colin Unkovich.
Warnes' subjects range from his popular seascapes - inspired by his time spent at sea fishing - and boats, to impressionist-style landscapes inspired by the great masters.
But Warnes, 68, isn't keen to put a label on his work. Looking every inch the artist dressed in all black and a leather jacket, he says he doesn't like to define his work.
 
Though he used to be a social butterfly, the Katikati man - who lives at Forta Leza Country Inn - now largely keeps to himself.
"I do hide away. I try to be reclusive."
He doesn't drive - he hasn't had a car since he had one stolen in his early 20s - and likes to take long walks, hitching rides into town.
When he's got "painter's block", he likes to pass the time helping out doing odd jobs at Forta Leza.
"Sometimes I get a head block, and I can't think. After 40 years, I get days I can't be bothered. I should bother because I've got a big clientele. I don't paint every day but some days I do a lot of work."
Thinking of his overseas collectors and many people in the Bay of Plenty - his biggest clientele - doesn't motivate him either.
"It's just another day at the office. I can't say I paint to a market.
"I've got no worries about selling art. I'm lucky because I've got good collectors."
The Wellington-born artist, who never married, moved to Tauranga when he was seven. His art career started as a young boy, when he sent his cartoon drawings to Walt Disney, who wrote back to him saying he would like to keep his drawings.
He said he'd had a good life, but he believed he would have been a better artist if he had more heartbreak in his life.
"I'm too comfortable. I've got nice things, I don't want for anything. I think I would have been a better artist if I had been made to starve or been miserable. I have had no doom and gloom at all."
Like a true artist, Warnes has no plans to ever stop painting.
"I've been involved in art for 60 years. You do it till you are dead, painters don't stop. You don't just hang up you brush and go 'that's it'."
Perception & Perseverance is open to the public from Saturday  to July 18 at Harrisons Gallery 106 Eleventh Ave Tauranga.