Asher Newbery is one of those people who you stop and listen to; he doesn't shout to the stars about his work but if you listen closely enough you might just begin to imagine a constellation.
He talks of people, places, legends and his Tuhoe heritage. His love of music, his creative family and time on the marae. As he speaks his paintings transform from abstract to actual right before your eyes and taniwha, elders and mountains leap out.
They are stories - Newbery's explanation to you, me and more importantly to himself - about his whakapapa, his Maoriness and his place in the world. And there are a lot of them, a whole big, light-filled studio filled with paintings. Huge rolled-up canvases like giant's scrolls stacked up against the wall and his latest works on mdf laid out systematically on the floor.
