Kia ora, I'm the Mav

Whitinga Whakaha Harris. I paint out of a studio in Pōneke.

Born in Auckland. Raised in South Auckland until I was ten, then we moved to Wimbledon South, northeast of Dannevirke. Te Aute College. Then Elam, at Auckland University, to chase art properly.

Ngāti Kahungunu on my mother's side. My father's from up north — Hokianga, Omanaia and Otaua. I'm named after him and I got a lot of him in me.

I ended up in Wellington because of a job — senior digital comms advisor. That's how a lot of us get where we are. Not a plan. A job.

Why I paint

Honestly? I'm still working it out.

The first time I ever painted was at Te Aute. And it was the one thing where I didn't have to sit there and learn. I was allowed to go. Allowed to create. Allowed to do whatever I wanted inside the four walls of a classroom.

I was finally allowed to be individual.

I'm the youngest. That's always played a role — you get looked after, and you never quite get to step up and be you. I played a lot of sport too, so I was always part of a team. Painting was the one time I got to let go.

So it carried on. I got better at it. I liked my teachers, they taught me a lot, and I just wanted to keep going.

I stopped for four years

I need to be straight about that, because it's the hinge everything turns on.

I trained as a designer. I made things for other people, for money, on a screen. And somewhere in there the painting stopped. Not a decision — it just stopped, the way things do when you're busy being useful.

Four years.

Then November 2024, the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti. I painted our sign for it. First time I'd had a brush in my hand in four years, and I was doing it because it needed doing — not because I'd decided to be an artist again.

That was the switch. I haven't stopped since.

TINO and WHAKAPUTANGA both came off that day. They're in the shop. They're the reason there's a shop.

Before that: the iPad

Somewhere in the quiet years I got an iPad and went hard at it. Tried to draw everything. Tried to learn all of it — moving what I could do on paper onto a screen, finding out what survived the trip.

What came out was a taiaha, a patu, a pouwhenua.

Tools. Not weapons — that distinction matters to me. Those are what let me keep going. I lost hold of that for a while, and now I'm back in it I want them back too. People still have those prints up in their houses and their studios. First things I ever put out that anyone actually wanted.

You've got everything you need in your hands. Go and do what you want to do.

What I want the work to do

I'm Māori. We grew up Māori, but we never spoke Māori. We were in street culture — skating, surfing — so there was always this buzzy funk running through everything I liked. I got into graffiti just to get back into painting, and that turned into the whole street style.

What I wanted was to put a perspective on toi Māori. Make it buzzy. Not keep it traditional.

Because we can look at the same thing and see completely different outcomes. What could be. What should be. What is and what isn't.

I want you to look at my work and think things can be different.

We struggle with that, as Māori. Everything's so hard. Everything's against us. Everything's against me. I want to embrace that — because it should be different. It is hard. But we can look at it another way, and the outcome can actually be positive.

Every piece starts as a painting

This is the rule. Not a slogan — a rule I hold myself to.

Everything that carries this name begins on canvas. The painting is the source; everything else is a translation of it. Never the other way round. You don't design the thing and then paint to match. You paint. Then the thing comes from the paint.

Before anything goes out I ask one question: which painting did this come from? If the answer's none, it's not ready.

Which is why the prints are honest

If a painting exists, the print is limited. One canvas, one only — so the edition stops at 25, signed and numbered by hand, and I don't reprint. Some of those paintings have already sold and left the country. The prints are the only way in now.

If it was born on the iPad, it's a studio print and it stays. No original behind it, so there's no edition to run out. I could cap them at 25 and call them rare. That'd be a lie, and you'd smell it.

Where the work comes from

Mum handed me a manila folder one day. Our whakapapa. She said, "yeah, you look after this."

I went through it and I buzzed out. From her koro and kuia, the lines run straight back to Kahungunu.

Damn. I'm a direct descendant.

You come from a long line of people who navigated — who worked out what was happening in this world, in this place, and how to be here. Every one of them was trying to make uri who'd keep going.

Do you reckon they thought the line would last this long? I don't know. But I'm here.

Know your place. You're here for something bigger than you — to keep the lines going.

The Mav

Maverick came out of Surf's Up. It looks like a kid's film. It isn't — underneath it's about existentialism, finding your way, finding your purpose.

Then me and a mate were playing 2K and I put my name in as the Maverick. Wrote it down. Thought: yeah, I'm sticking with this.

The penguin is how I am. Pretty black and white. Not very colourful. And that's how I see the world too — it's right or it's wrong — but I understand the blend in between.

Penguins have always been my favourite animal. I remember going to Kelly Tarlton's as a kid and just buzzing out at them.

They're still there in the cold. They weather the storm.

That's a lot of my whole life. I'm in the storm now. I'll keep standing here until it gets brighter.