Samoan art made by mum and daughter

From her village in Samoa to her home in Lyall Bay and later in Auckland, Pusi Urale has lived art.

Her six children have picked up that love and both Urale and her daughter have art exhibitions running in Wellington at the same time.

Nine pieces of Urale’s artwork were selected for the Solo 44 exhibition at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts: several showing her childhood memories of Samoa using pointillism and two of blonde nude women, dressed like Samoan women.

She wanted to play around with the paintings of French artist Paul Gauguin, who often painted images of Pacific women – so painted blonde women with tattoos and flowers behind their ears.

‘‘It’s my answer to the nude ladies that the white men used to paint in the Islands,’’ she said. At 79 years old, Urale is blind in one eye but says art has always been in her life. As a child in Samoa, she would help make tapa cloth and the colours to paint it.

It wasn’t until later in life she started painting on canvases.

‘‘I couldn’t sleep. I would come home and paint at three, four in the morning. You get this inspiration and you just go beserk.’’

After her husband died in 2014, art became a way of dealing with her grief. Urale and her family looked after him full time until he died. ‘‘As soon as he passed away, I think it gave me the time to paint.’’

While art was always present in her life, Urale said Pacific Islanders didn’t encourage art as a career when she was younger since it wasn’t very ‘‘bread and butter’’.

But her daughter, Vaimaila Urale said that’s been changing.

Vaimaila is a digital artist and has been working on the latest iteration of her project,

Typeface, a contemporary take on tattooing. Over the past five years, she’s worked with about 50 volunteers, creating tattoo designs out of four basic symbols on a keyboard; less than, (), forward slash (/) and backslash (\).

‘‘They’re based on traditional Samoan symbols,’’ she said.

The ‘v’ symbol is known as fa’avae tuli and is based on the tracks of a bird while the forward slash symbol is tusi lili’i, similar to the lines on a coconut leaf.

On May 9, her work is opening at Enjoy Public Art Gallery on Cuba St.

ROSA WOODS/STUFF Seventy-nine year-old Pusi Urale is losing her eyesight but still paints and is part of the new Solo 44, running at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. Her daughter Vaimaila Urale is also launching a solo show of her own Samoan tattoo designs.