Nick Atkinson: Young artists learning to back their own creativity

Yonel Watene's self-portrait with his three brothers, Estate No 1, is arresting in its bold workmanship.

Ten years ago Yonel Watene was a 16-year-old Takapuna Grammar student with a solo show of bold, almost tribal paintings at Devonport's Depot Artspace.

The opening is said to have been rammed.

Those early pieces continue to inspire gallery founder Linda Blincko. She still has two from that period hanging in her office. She first saw the larger canvas on Watene's flip-phone after one of his mates cajoled him into the Depot while walking past. This led the school-age painter to borrow $20 from his mum to transport some of his work to the gallery in a taxi van. Blincko hastily bought Shaman of the Skies and French Flag Triptych. The teenage artist now had a gallery.

In those days he painted and drew on the roof of the then-disused Victoria Theatre. His style was raw and drawing was the focus, feeding off the action and energy provided by a vibrant live music scene and hours spent skating and swimming.

At school, Watene was a year below the boys who would become The Checks.

"They would always back themselves pretty hard," Watene recalls. "They'd be doing songs during assembly. They always did what they wanted to do. I was walking around with these big paintings asking myself, 'What am I doing?', but then I would think about all these people really backing themselves creatively."

While the recording studio inside Depot Artspace hosted debut sessions by The Checks, Gin Wigmore and Finn Andrews of The Veils, out front their schoolmates were exhibiting ambitious, genre-bending art. Though the musicians went on to tour the world, their visual cohorts' success has grown in smaller increments.

Today, Watene's joined by four other young artists opening a show called The Driving Force at the same gallery. Two are from Hokianga, fruits of the Depot's expansion up north where they've opened a gallery in Rawene, No1 Parnell Street. One of these artists, Sash (Sasha Wilson), will park a customised car inside Depot Artspace for today's 2pm opening, its interior "Sashed" with wild upholstery of fur and plastic flowers.

Blincko hopes to find out about "that impalpable thing that motivates the work" of these talented up and comers.

She may get five different answers from this diverse collection that includes an enormous forest interior from Paris Kirby and a melting, volcanically surreal landscape painted by Nicholas J. Boyd, but it's the arresting, unique work of Yonel Watene that stands out. Estate No 1, his self-portrait with his brothers, is sure to be snapped up smartly. The show runs until March 18.