Samoan artist makes Big Apple

Anna Crawley with one of six works she will be exhibiting in New York. Picture / Richard Robinson

It can take guts to give up the day job to become a fulltime artist but a little bit of family history has made Samoan painter Anna Crawley fearless.

Crawley, whose work has been selected for exhibition by an elite New York gallery, gave up her job in financial services in Sydney less than two years ago to return to New Zealand to paint fulltime.

It was her mother and grandfather that led her to make the commitment.

"One day while taking care of my Mum, who has slight dementia, I realised you have one life and you must live it fully and well before it is all over ... I don't want to get to 80 and regret I did not do art fulltime."

Then Crawley learned that her mother's father was part of the Mau movement in Samoa that fought New Zealand administration. He was shot in 1929 for what he believed in.

"That knowledge makes me fearless."

For years Crawley, who is largely self-taught, had been painting on the side with some success.

Now she is living off the proceeds from a group exhibition in Auckland last July, and is staying with her mother in Mangere "for free" while she pursues her passion.

Crawley was born in Samoa and came to New Zealand as a 10-year-old with her parents.

For the first two years they lived in a three-bedroom house in Grey Lynn with up to a dozen family members.

Her brother Vena Crawley is one of her main supporters and has donated his airpoints to get her to the New York opening at Agora Gallery next month.

"It's not because she is my sister. I really believe in her work," he said.

Crawley's work will be shown as part of the exhibition Down Under and Beyond: An Exhibition of Fine Art.

While there she will stay with a cousin who had earlier taken some of Crawley's work around New York galleries.

Her cousin struck gold with Agora Gallery, a fine art gallery dedicated to the promotion of national and international artists and providing fine art to established and new collectors.

Each year the gallery searches the world for emerging and semi-established artists to participate in their annual May exhibition, selecting 10 artists who are represented for a year and included in all the key New York art publications.

The gallery's director, Angela Di Bellow, said Crawley's paintings exhibited strength, with radiant forms emerging and dissolving out of equally radiant ground, and conveyed an infinite number of emotions.

Crawley's work features multi-layered motifs and themes of culture and tradition clashing.

"Much of my life until now has been focused on pleasing other people. I now want to speak my mind and live my dream to paint. It is a drive and a need," she said.