Coming Back

My daughter is doing amazingly. She is the biggest delight. She owns the studio. She says, “Daddy, painting, painting, painting,” as if there’s no “a” in painting, and it’s gorgeous.

Put that sentence next to everything in Part Six. Hold them both at once. That’s the whole book.

If you’re setting goals now: I just want as much time with my daughter as possible. I want to keep growing as an artist. I want to meet new people. I want to connect with more people. I want to make sure Shelby is as happy as she can be. I want to make my dad proud. I want to make my mum proud. I want Cooper to be as happy as she can be. I want to see more of my brothers.

Now I’m just getting greedy, aren’t I?

My father was talking to me one morning and said, “I really like the way you do eyes, and I really think that’s a winner for you. That’s really something I love about your artwork.” All right, I thought. Today I was going to do another face. Let’s just zoom right in on the eyeball and see what happens.

Another time he was looking at Little Fisherman, at the lake in that picture, Silver Lake, and he said, “That right there, that’s what that clever guy did with his sunflowers. The way you’ve used those yellows, that’s the thing.”

I’m like: that guy’s Van Gogh, Dad.

One of my paintings started from a photo my father took in Antarctica about twenty years ago. It works on a couple of levels, but I like the story behind it. He took it when he visited a penguin colony. He was flying helicopters.

Painting by Seb Gower: a surfer carving a pale wave

The Gower family came to New Zealand from Cornwall with John Gower, written down as profession: agricultural. Six or seven generations of farmers after that. My father was a farmer too, but he pursued deer recovery, and doing deer recovery, he ended up flying helicopters. Once he was flying helicopters, we weren’t on the farm as often. That’s where I ended up becoming a bit more of an artist.

A tractor bloodline, a rotor-blade father, and a son with a brush. Same family. Same stubbornness. Different tools.

Life has settled down here in the Bay of Plenty. The studio is eighty per cent finished: a giant white room with a dark grey floor. Cooper is nearly two, and Shelby and I bought a piece of land that overlooks the New Zealand countryside.

I owe my collectors a personal thank you for that. Their collecting made part of this little dream possible.

Yes. Still here. Still painting. Still going live.

If you don’t have time to read this book, I’ll summarise.

Don’t let go.

Let go.

It’s complicated.

A human being is never finished, the same as a work of art. Not every painting needs the colour blue or a finished moment.

Answers are more like seeds. They don’t come and fix and remake the world you live in. The reality you’re in is now, and it’s unchangeable. An answer can be planted, to grow.

So here’s the seed. Somewhere there’s a brush you put down. A tube with its lid glued on. A sketchbook with three pages used. Go and find it. Lay layer one, and make it wild. Make it messy. Don’t judge it until layer seven.

Christmas is about giving presents. Matariki is about being present. When those stars come back over Aotearoa, it’s about our ancestors, the future, and most of all the simple word: present. Being here, now. A brush in your hand is the most present I know how to be.

Seb Gower in his studio beside a large blue and teal portrait

You're going to be great.

Your artist,

Seb