“Huia are difficult birds to paint. They are difficult because neither you nor I have seen these birds foraging about the forest floor with their beautiful ivory-coloured beaks and can’t just exactly know of their movements. Perhaps above all, they are made difficult to paint because huia are so very much more than just beautiful forest birds; we have all of us so much invested in these birds, pride that such birds be born to these islands of ours and guilt that we should have allowed them to be lost”
– Ray Ching 2024
Raymond Ching is a New Zealander whose paintings are widely celebrated for their life-like realism. Throughout his career he has researched New Zealand’s extinct bird, the huia. His first huia pair was obtained from the Wellington taxidermist Clarence Poynter in 1966 and huia have regularly featured in his paintings and writing since then. In 2023 Ching repatriated two huia skulls from his collection to the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa.
Books documenting his paintings include: The Readers Digest Book of British Birds, 1969, The Bird Paintings, 1978, Studies & sketches of a Bird Painter, 1981, The Art of Raymond Ching, 1981, Wild Portraits, 1988, Ray Harris Ching, Journey of an Artist, 1990, Voice from the Wilderness, 1994, Aesop`s Kiwi Fables, 2012, Dawn Chorus, 2014, Aesop’s Outback Fables, 2018 & the limited edition Fabled Lands 2021, and now in 2024, Ching’s sixteenth book illustrated with his own paintings, The Huia & our Tears, a 279 page hardcover to be launched at Artis Gallery in Parnell on October 22nd 2024.
