Meet the Artist

Kia ora, I'm ROKA.

I am a Maori Artist born and raised in Aotearoa (New Zealand).  I eventually made the move across the ditch to Australia, chasing something many of us do -  stability, security and different opportunities for my wife and our two young daughters.

I've worked since the age of 14 as a carpenter.  I've always been someone who needed to keep my hands busy.  In whatever spare time I could find, I'd carve, tattoo pigskin or doodle little drawings for my girls.  Art was always there but it was never something I thought would become more than a hobby, just something I did for fun because I enjoyed the peace it brought me when I could get lost in a picture.  A way to switch off from the everyday race and hopefully put a smile on someone's face.

Life had other plans.

After an accident back in 2019, followed by several major back and spinal surgeries, my career in the building industry was brought to an abrupt end.  Just like that, the career I had spent years working hard for was taken away from me.  The work that gave me a sense of purpose, kept my hands busy, my mind occupied, and my family safe, was suddenly gone.

The physical recovery was brutal but the mental battle was something else.

Rehabilitation, adjusting to a new reality and learning to live with major life changes took a massive toll on our whanau.  It was overwhelming.  I needed an outlet.  Something that gave me a another reason to get up on the many bad days, something I could focus on when so much of life felt out of my control.  I was lucky enough to have a friend, Dave Bishop, who encouraged me and guided me to follow my creative path.

So I started drawing again.

Small drawings at first.  Nothing too serious.  Just putting pen to paper, taking my mind somewhere else for a while to forget the pain.  Little by little, I found myself looking forward to those moments.  It gave me something to work towards, something that was within my control.

Around three years after my injury, I started painting with an airbrush and it felt like finding a light at the end of a very long tunnel.

I'd put on Uncle Bob, pick up the airbrush and drift off.  I could lose myself in the process, take things one step at a time and get back to keeping my hands and my mind occupied.

I have always been truly drawn to the works of Charles Fredrick Goldie and grew up with a print of his in my Mum's house as a boy and it's engraved in my memory.  I really enjoy painting in homage of Goldie.  Reading and learning about my Ngati Whauroa heritage and my wife's Ngapuhi heritage instilled that connection to land and people that has always been there in his images.  I think his work is truly remarkable.

Art became my escape.  Then, slowly, it became my therapy.

For a long time, I measured success by financial stability.  By how hard I could work, what I could provide and how well I could keep things moving for the people I love and while those things still matter deeply to me, my understanding of success has changed.

These days, success looks different.

It's finishing a piece I'm proud of.  It's expressing something I can't always put into words.  It's sharing my work with someone who connects with it, who sees something in it that means something to them as well.  It's finding a new purpose in a life that looks very different from the one I had planned.

This journey has never been about replacing the life I lost.  It's about discovering what else is possible.

ROKA is a part of that journey.  Every piece carries a little of my story — the good days, the hard days, the frustration, the healing and the freedom that comes from creating something  from within.  

I'm still learning, still experimenting and still figuring it all out, one piece at a time.  I'm not here to pretend I've got anything worked out.  I'm simply here to create, to share and to see where this path takes me.

If something I've created speaks to you, makes you feel something or finds a place in your home, then that already means more to me than you probably realise.  

Thank you for supporting my journey, I appreciate you being here.

— ROKA