Artist All Hours
Maria File
by Rachel Smith
There is no clock off time for an artist. “I was up from 11pm
last night. At 2am this morning I started this,” Maria File
says, pointing to a black and white abstract painting that
leans against the wall.
The painting is one of around 20 works in progress scattered
around her living space – some she has been working on for a
few weeks, others a few years. Maria does most of her painting
here, her home designed with a future gallery space in mind.
It is open and light, and the perfect spot for painting, day or
night.
“I love it here - I paint every day,” Maria says. “Everything I
paint and sell goes towards the land – getting it ready for my
grandchildren.”
How it all began is like something off a TV drama. It’s the
1960’s and 13 year old Maria is happily living on the streets
of Wellington. The police spot her one day and give chase.
Maria heads somewhere they are unlikely to look for her - the
National Art Gallery. She stayed there all day. “It was like –
what is this? How do they do that?”
While it may have been Maria’s first encounter with art of this
scale, creativity had always been a part of her everyday life.
“My first introduction to design and colour was my
grandmother’s tivaevae and my mother’s 'ei katu,” she says.
Maria did the same, crafting anything and everything as a child
and as an adult.
It was when she was 36 years old and her children were school
age, that Maria saw an advertisement for an art course which
included the powerful words of ‘Polynesians Welcome.’ She
enrolled in the class at Whitireia New Zealand, the only Pacific
Islander and mature student in a class of predominantly young
Pākehā.
“You can change your life. My family, they gave me the
motivation and a drive to succeed,” she says. “It was a daunting
first experience but I had an awesome tutor and it opened so
many doors.”
42 • Escape Magazine
One year of art study became
four years with a focus on
carving, and a year of creative
writing, followed by teachers
training. Maria taught high
school art in Wellington from
1998, all the while continuing
to produce her own work. In
Maria File
2003 she became unwell and
went to stay with her mother,
Christmas Heather, in Rarotonga. 16 years later and it is still
home.
“I started from nothing. I started off painting wood offcuts.
Some weeks I made money and some weeks I didn’t,” she says,
initially selling her work at Punanga Nui market.
In 2012 Maria opened a co-op gallery in Muri. She quickly
realised that her own work would fill the entire space, marking
the beginning of the Maria File Gallery. Her business has
steadily grown, now at a point where Maria employs staff
to run the gallery and market hut so she can concentrate on
painting full-time.
Around 10 small canvases are laid out on a table in the centre of
her house. Each is based on her tribal designs - representations
of Polynesian, Mangaian and Rarotongan icons, reflective of
her family connections to Mangaia through her grandmother,
Mama Tu Heather and to Ariki Numangatini, and to Ariki
Tinomana of Rarotonga.
“They are icons I have developed over the past 20 years,” Maria
says, representations of people and loyalty, and the world
around her. “The designs just pour out of me – it’s meditative.”
“Art forms come in many ways – it’s not just paint on canvas. I
get as much buzz out of doing something small like a tea towel
as I do a big painting.”
This could be painted canvases, prints, cards, cushion covers,
tea towels, painted wooden mokos (geckos) and whatever else
may take her fancy at the time.
These days, when Maria is painting she is drawn to large scale
works. Standing in front of the canvas, she is there again in the
National Art Gallery.
“When I tackle a large piece of work, it transports me back in
time to when I saw the larger than life paintings that took up a
wall space,” she says. “It was a cathartic moment in my young
life.”
Find Maria’s work at Maria File Gallery and TE ARA - Cook
Islands Museum of Cultural Enterprise in Muri and at
Punanga Nui on Saturday mornings.