Miriama Grace-Smith is affiliated with Ngāti Hau, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Toa and Ngāti Porou. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Massey University, Wellington. With her partner Jack Cromie, she owns and designs for Foresight Clothing, a boutique clothing store which can be found both online and on Cuba Street in Wellington. For more of her work see her Facebook page here.
She says: ‘This painting is from a series of work I did when I was doing my BA. The series was about the natural disasters that were happening at the time during 2011. This image is of the aftermath of an earthquake in China. I was looking at different ways I could get the viewer to really engage with the effects of natural disasters: would people view these horrific images differently if I was to paint them in a beautiful way, changing the mood and colour to those usually used in images that advertise a paradise setting? How would it make people feel and think when they are drawn in by the paintings’ beauty, then realise when they look closer what the image really is?’