Globetrotting artist

first day and thinking, man, I’m home and this is my family,’’ she says. ‘‘Finally, here’s a bunch of people I can relate to.’’

Swept up in the intoxicating mood, she branched out, personally and artistically. At a poetry reading she met Sam Hunt, the two becoming firm friends. It was Hunt who persuaded her to head down to the thriving artist colony nicknamed Bottle Creek, in Paremata, at the end of 1968.

At Bottle Creek were future giants of the country’s cultural landscape. Michael King, Jack Lasenby, Fleur Adcock and Alistair Te Ariki Campbell were all residents.

‘‘It was fantastic,’’ she says. ‘‘We were all very engaged one way or the other in the arts, but in different aspects, so I guess we were able to fuel our interests without being competitive.

‘‘I worked hard, I really did. I was really serious about getting established somehow and being able to be independent of any other form of money earning.’’

In the heady atmosphere of Bottle Creek her distinctive style crystallised, and after three years she’d outgrown the colony. In 1972 she crushed herself and Hunt in her VW Beetle and headed south to Dunedin. Though the trip was sparked by Hunt’s fascination with the Mackenzie Country, when she hit the city she was hooked.

‘‘When I arrived I went for a drive out on the peninsula and thought, wow, this is a place I could live,’’ she says. She pauses. ’’I think it was a very nice day, mind you.’’

She settled into a life of domesticity, buying a house, getting married and having her first child while also pursuing her art. It was hard work, but rewarding: since moving to Dunedin she’s never been anything other than a full-time artist.

White spent nearly 10 years in Dunedin before her life took yet another turn. After a chance meeting with a man from Kiribati, a remote island republic in the central Pacific, an offer to move there eventuated. Despite having little idea what she was in for, in 1981 she went for it.

‘‘It totally rejigged the the way I went about making art,’’ she says. ‘‘I didn’t think, ‘how am I going to paint an oil on canvas here?’ I knew it wasn’t going to happen, so I did something completely different.’’

On Kiribati she began exploring woodcuts and Pacific motifs, ideas and styles she still works with.

The Whites were on the island for 18 years, only moving back in 1999 – by then with three children. They settled in Masterton, where they’ve been based ever since.

White’s globetrotting, however, has never stopped; she spends much of her time in the Pacific working on art projects. ‘‘I’m interested in working collaboratively ... it’s a kind of cultural crossover.

‘‘I think of it as working in the space between, between cultures.I see it also as a way of demonstrating something that communities everywhere in the world are having to learn how to do, because the makeup of society is changing so rapidly through the movement of people because of war and political disruptions and so on.’’

It’s a challenge, she says, that the world is facing. But instead of seeing it as a problem, White says it’s an opportunity to learn.

‘‘We’re living in the age of disruption,’’ she says. ‘‘But these sorts of things can be stimulating.

‘‘Take on a challenge, it’s the best way to keep moving forward. Do something different. Complacency is a killer.’’

She laughs. ‘‘Beware of comfort.’’