Discover unique art for your space
Welcome to Chris Wilkie NZ Artist, where you can explore original oil paintings and graphites. Each piece tells a story, inspired by journeys and reflections. Find art that speaks to you and brings inspiration into your home.
Featured art from 'HIKOI - WALK WITH ME'
Explore pieces from my latest exhibition, 'HIKOI - WALK WITH ME', first shown at the Hihiaua Cultural Centre, Whangarei, NZ, in 2026. These works are a journey through reflection and honour, a tribute to those who inspire.
* (with respect for Dame Whina Cooper, and Colin McCahon, in the artist’s titling of this Exhibition)
The first painting in the:
‘HIKOI-WALK WITH ME’ narrative series.
It was begun in 2019, but finished in 2026.
TITLE:
SIZE: 1150mm X 115Omm approx.
MEDIA: Oil paints on canvas.
FRAMED: in black-tinted NZ kauri and pine
in this artwork Chris Wilkie shows ghostly figures marching into the awatea, or dawning.
in the haze, the dim forms can be seen as British redcoat soldiers, marching to an unknown fate.
For some miles up that gravel track was RUAPEKAPEKA, a formidable redoubt built by Te Ruki Kawiti. A seminal battle followed in 1846.
Wilkie began this dreamed journey in Kawakawa, a small New Zealand town.
Imagining the twisting road was the tortured track where soldiers dragged cannonade, he shows these ‘kehua’ or shades, going solemnly to an unknown fate…
The second painting in the:
‘HIKOI-WALK WITH ME’ Series.
It was begun in 2019, but finished in 2026.
TITLE:
SIZE: 1150mm X 115Omm approx.
MEDIA: Oil paints on canvas.
FRAMED: in black-tinted NZ kauri and pine
In this early morning scene, Chris Wilkie shows a procession of ghost-like, redcoated soldiers disappearing into dark, somewhat frightening forest. They are literally marching into the unknown. Indeed the artist was tempted to subtitle this work, after Dante: “forsake all hope all thee who enter here…”
Strange spectral lights hover over the scene, as the fog lifts and a cold light enters the world, adding drama and consequence to this almost forgotten event. And the forest, menacing only for some, contrasts with the cleared land nearby, portending the changes new people would bring.
The third painting in the:
‘HIKOI-WALK WITH ME’ Series.
It was begun in 2019, but finished in 2026.
TITLE:
SIZE: 1150mm X 115Omm approx.
MEDIA: Oil paints on canvas.
FRAMED: in black-tinted NZ kauri and pine
In this glowing work, the artist (and the imagined soldier have emerged from the dark fear of the surrounding forest or ngahere, - in an explosion of Monet- like light.
Not all soldiers burned down the bush to create European-style farms. Instead, it glows with a preternatural light for the beholder, a glorification of resplendent, unsullied life.
In the lower right portion of the painting, a figure looks up and seems to exclaim: “would you just look at those trees!”
New Zealand, a place of beauty and the bestial, for great dramas happened here, in Eden- like surroundings. And just further up the gravel road, a deadly pakanga or war was about to happen in late 1846…
Inspiring art for every admirer
My goal is to create art that inspires and encourages. Whether you're an art collector or simply looking for a unique piece to enrich your home, everyone is welcome here. Art is amazing, and I am lucky to share these skills with you.
‘HIKOI-WALK WITH ME’ narrative series.
It was begun in 2019, but finished in 2026.
TITLE:
SIZE: 1150mm X 115Omm approx.
MEDIA: Oil paints on canvas.
FRAMED: in black-tinted NZ kauri and pine
The 5th painting in the:
‘HIKOI-WALK WITH ME’ Series.
It was begun in 2019, but finished in 2026.
TITLE: “another Torn Page of My Diary”
SOLD. T. STEED
SIZE: 1150mm X 115Omm approx.
MEDIA: Oil paints on canvas.
FRAMED: in black-tinted NZ kauri and pine
SOLD. T.STEED COLLECTION
This ironically -titled oil painting, reflecting on the artist’s own diary of outdoors sketches, as much as a lost soldier’s war diary, features poetic writing below a writhing, giant native tree. It is almost as if the centuries-old Puriri witnessed the harsh battles at it’s roots.
This uncanny quality is amplified not only in animated forms, and vivis, otherworldly greens, but in the writings scrawled below the tearing, which read”
HIKOI
WALK WITH ME
THROUGH MEMORY
WITH SHADES
BEFORE
THIS
NEW DAY
The 6TH painting in the:
‘HIKOI-WALK WITH ME’ Series.
It was begun in 2019, but finished in 2026.
TITLE: “The Widowmaker”
SIZE: 1150mm X 115Omm approx. MEDIA: Oil paints on canvas.
FRAMED: in black-tinted NZ kauri and pine
Just outside the palisades and gate of “Ruapekapeka” (The Bats’ Nest), are substantial Puriri trees (Vitex lucens - a type of ironwood). They are often adorned with rata vines, and a hanging epiphytic astelia. Colloquially that astelia is called a ‘widowmaker’ - because it has been known to fall on settlers’ heads! That was a great double- entendre for this painting, given that just nearby, many men, indigenous, and from the far-flung Empire, lost their lives there in 1846, and no doubt left many a wife grieving. It is a sublime painting, with a strange light from another time adding to the contemplative, quiet atmosphere. In the middle shadows, a barely- discerned figure is seen only as a vestige of light - he too gone into time and memory.
The 9th painting in the HIKOI- WALK WITH ME series. 2021-26.
Here a shadowed presence on the buttress roots of a Puriri tree waits before a Waharoa- a gate to an unknown future? The artist seems to ask:
is this now -or the tumultuous past around The Northern Wars? Is this me, or the shade of a long departed soldier?
The uncanny atmosphere is amplified by a purpled- white mist, in which is situated a carved gate, filled with guardian figures, around a carving representing the palisade’s builder Te Ruki Kawity, “The Duke”.
The eighth painting in the:
‘HIKOI-WALK WITH ME’ narrative series.
It was begun in 2019, but finished in 2026.
TITLE: “AWATEA”
SIZE: 1150mm X 115Omm approx.
MEDIA: Oil paints on canvas.
FRAMED: in black-tinted NZ kauri and pine
This painting is set at dawn, hence the title: Awatea. Two strange, erect forms greet the first twinkling light of the sun, coming through huge totara trees that frame the battleground. The artist has deliberately cast the forms into an otherworldly light, creating a disturbing landscape to meditate upon. The posts, are pouwhenua - posts to mark authority and presence in that place. The more-solid form was done by Te Warihi Hetaraka many years ago. New pou are now going up, to mark the other iwi and hapu (tribes and subtribes) who helped to defend that near-sacred place.Again, the almost transparent form of a figure forms the lower right corner: a memory? A quiet viewer of these events?
“The Shadow of the Land”
Oils on canvas. Approx 1750mm x 1250mm
This painting was done in 2004, for the exhibition “Ruapekapeka, After the Storm”, Marina Gallery, Whangarei.
lSOLD to Jim Peters representing the Northland regional Council.
This large work shows the broken cannon which then sat on the mountainside of Ruapekapeka, with a sweeping view over all of the land- and intentional statement about loss and authority by the artist.
A Far North rangatira chief) had exclaimed: “The pakeha will have the shadow of the land, but the Maori the substance”. Wilkie instead showed the opposite, for most was lost to colonisation after The Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. An ominous shadow glides across the panorama, adding a sense of foreboding to the art.
