Well-known writer Albert Wendt studied art at teachers’ college and then taught it for a few years before putting it aside to concentrate on writing. In 2000 he returned to making art, starting with $300 worth of paper, pencils and crayons, then picking up brushes and acrylic paint in 2004. Writing in The Contemporary Pacific in 2006, Wendt described the feeling of creating, when ‘the colors and shapes and feelings are falling into place perfectly, the high is all-enveloping and I don't ever want to get out of it. ... Early in my writing life, that's how I felt when I was writing really well. Not even my logical mind intruded, it was all done by "feel and touch," the atua's mana surging unimpeded and easily through my mind and hands, as if by preconceived plan.’

Wendt is shown here with one of his works at the McCarthy Gallery in Auckland in 2008.