Welcome to my world: the art of Sam Taare

TAARE MAGIC: Surrounded by vibrancy enough to blow your hair back, graphic designer Martin Page has curated a show of 30 paintings by East Coast artist, the late Sam Taare.

For his illustration of the East Coast region in Rangitukia kuia Keri Kaa's award-winning book, Taka Ki Ro Wai, graphic artist Martin D Page paid homage to outsider artist Sam Taare.

Painted in naive style, the inset map illustration of the East Coast's Waiapu Valley even features a patterned border characteristic of Taare's works. Page is now exhibiting 30 paintings by the late Sam Taare, also of Rangitukia, for the 2016 Auckland Outsider Art Fair.

The event showcases artists who have no formal training and who do not follow the style of any particular school. More than 15 Auckland art galleries have hosted works by New Zealand's outsider artists.

Welcome to My World: The Art of Sam Taare, is the title of the exhibition Page has curated at Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery. The title is a good fit on several fronts: Taare loved Jim Reeves' music and featured the Welcome to My World singer in many paintings.

The exhibition is a window into Taare's world view that embraces the East Coast, occasional religious icons, and figures from popular culture. Bob Marley, Princess Diana, the Lone Ranger and, of course, Jim Reeves are among them. Taare loved them all and in much of his work has set the figures in a kind of East Coast homeland.

To enter Taare's world, Page listened to a Jim Reeves' recording of Welcome to My World.

"That was the only Jim Reeves song I was familiar with," he says. "It was like method acting, a way to feel like I was in Sam's shoes."

The method helped him find a way into creating a look and feel for the exhibition's title graphics. Stylistically, Taare's work seems to owe something to Walt Disney, he says.

"I know there were picture theatres all the way up the Coast. My partner Tania's grandfather would ride in to the pictures a lot, mostly to see Westerns."

Cinematic imagery is part of the collective cultural sensibility, says Page.

"Sam did a lot of Western style paintings and landscapes with horses."

Horses are a notable feature of East Coast life, he says. Even the men of 28 Maori Battalion C Company from the East Coast region were known as Nga Kaupoi, the Cowboys, because horses were commonly used for transport in that region.

Page and his partner had recently moved to Te Araroa when the graphic artist first encountered Taare's work in a New Zealand subscription magazine. In the show's exhibition catalogue, Page says he had little interest about the magazine's stories of the pending financial crisis and escalating house prices.

And then he came across a piece about Sam Taare. The article began with a personal account of how the writer came to be touched by the "Taare magic". Stumbling on Sam selling his work at one of Gisborne's Saturday morning markets, the writer purchased Heading for the Works, and the painting was used to illustrate his story.

"That was my first sight of Sam."

Heading for the Work depicts jostling cattle driven through the main street of Ruatoria. Page was struck by Taare's composition, his unique use of colour and his inclusion of kowhaiwhai in the border.

"This embellishment, together with the subject matter marks the work as Nati (Ngati Porou). It is firmly of this place, specifically the East Coast, and in a way quite unlike anything I'd seen before."

A "definite lack of ego"marks out Taare's work.

"It's not about him. It's a selfless way of showing something that's part of the collective; of Nati as whole and reflects a distinctive way of looking at the world. While Taare's work does not follow the traditions of Maori art, it is an extension of that way of seeing.

"People genuinely like Sam's work. Whether some people see it as art or something cute or folksy, I don't know. I love his passion, his dedication and his honesty."

What: Welcome to my world - the art of Sam Taare
Where & when: Gus Fisher Gallery, until December 17