The mural maker who’s made his mark across the city and the globe

 Words Jill Nicholas

Pictures/video Stephen Parker

To Marc Spijkerbosh’s artistic eye the Tarawera Road reservoir desperately needed a paint job so he gave it one.

That was thirty-plus years ago.  He recently touched it up because, as those art-focused eyes of his saw it, the original had lost its lustre.

As the Rotorua Lakes Council’s community arts advisor it’s his job to spot such imperfections.

It’s a bit of a laugh that Marc’s now advising the council on all matters creative and has a budget to fund artistic activities.

When he first approached the then Rotorua District Council about the need to bring a splash of colour to the reservoir, he was given the cold shoulder. 

Once he did convince the decision makers to let him have his way no money changed hands.

Art in public places or on utilities wasn’t ‘a thing’ back then. But Marc persisted.

In the years since those bland days art and sculpture installations have mushroomed in this city, its suburbs and environs.

For the past decade it’s Marc who’s overseen much of its creation and placement. The Government Gardens sculpture trail’s a case in point.

It was on his recommendation the council adopted a policy, common in the USA, that sees one per cent of a project’s total cost levied, and earmarked to enhance infrastructure. 

As he quantifies it, that equates to $100,000 from a $10 million project going towards beautifying the city.

“It means we can pay muralists, artists, musicians. Other councils are jealous.”

Screaming out for love

It’s a concept that didn’t exist in the 1980s when he told the council the Tarawara Road reservoir was “screaming out for some love.”  

It’s unsurprising the scene Marc painted with what he calls “missionary spirit”, is the wide angle view of 13 lakes from Tarawera’s summit.

 “I took pictures from the top of the maunga [mountain] with my old Pentax and painted from them.”

He’s loved that maunga for most of his life.

“My parents were keen fishers, we often camped around the lake. I remember falling asleep to the sound of the lake lapping. For me, it’s one of life’s precious memories.”   

By 15, Marc and his mate, Jeff Thomas, were regularly hunting and fishing in the area.

“While the rest of our mates were chasing girls in town we were up in the hills chasing deer.  

“I knew every inch of that land. We’d shoot a deer and roll it down the hill to the lake, it was very special.”

“Some of the strangest things have happened to me kayaking and boating across that lake.”

Lake Tarawera came close to claiming Marc’s life.

“We were in the middle of the bush in the depths of winter and got bluffed.”  For those of us uninitiated in the ways of the great outdoors Marc defines ‘bluffed’ as ‘being unable to scale down a steep cliff’.

“Suddenly it got too dark to move and rain set in. We sat huddled and shivering through the night above a waterfall on a small rocky platform, inches from tumbling below.”

Come daylight the teenage adventurers escaped, relatively unscathed.

Fish and chip paper first canvas

Marc’s first artistic attempts were some years earlier. He estimates he was five or six when he and his sister sat at a table in his grandmother’s Opotiki fish and chip shop   drawing on the white newsprint she wrapped the takeaways in.

He remained keen on art and went to Canterbury University to study fine art.

“But it didn’t work out for me. I pulled the pin and played my guitar and harmonica on the street; Neil Young, Bob Dylan, that type of music. 

“It was surprising what ended up in my guitar case: coffee vouchers, bananas, even love-you notes! 

“I made enough busking to be able to pay my way through a BA in philosophy and education.”

His long-term plan had been to teach but that Tarawera Road reservoir scotched such a notion.

Marc was back from varsity when he made his first approach to the council to let him paint it.     

 By the time they said yes he’d been a bank teller, but like art school it wasn’t for him.

“I was shut up in this little box watching the sunlight beckon across the carpet each day, I just couldn’t do it, so I shot up north and worked on an oyster farm.”

Time as an environmental research technician at the then Forestry Research Institute followed.

He was there until the water tower mural kick-started his career as a public spaces artist.

Power boxes beckoned

“There was a half-page article in the Herald about it. Len Brookes from Keep Rotorua Beautiful read it and invited me to paint the power boxes around town.

“I ended up painting full time and even being paid a bit for it. I painted 27 boxes with the district’s 27 lakes on them. It was totally appropriate.”

Surely not 27? 

Marc assures us there are a heap of hidden gems most of us have never heard of or know little about. He cites Lake Rotohokahoka at Mamaku, the Makatiti Dome’s summit lake, Te Rotoroniu, and Waikite Valley’s Lake Ngapouri.

Marc painted them all while doing a lot of gutter squatting.

That was the position he was in when someone he’d never met tapped him on the shoulder. It was a gesture that was to be a turning point in his philosophical views on life. 

“This man said he was Eru Potaka-Dewes and he had an interesting proposition for me. I could sense straight away he was a man of immense mana.

Aotearoa themed ashram mural

“He invited me to paint a mural at the Puttaparthi Ashram in India because he liked the spiritual qualities of my work.”

The ashram, near Bangalore, was the birthplace of guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba of whom the late Anglican minister, historian and poet from Okere Falls was a devotee.*

“I had never thought of going to an ashram. It turns out this would be an unpaid trip that came back to me in spades.

“Eru and I travelled there together. The ashram is a spiritual university with thousands of devotees from around the world attending it. We were fasting, joining the mantra in the temple every morning and reading gems of wisdom.

“We shared a cell and had long philosophical discussions throughout the night. This experience had a profound effect on me. I am not a practitioner of Hinduism but became totally absorbed in a very special environment.”

At Potaka-Dewes’ request Papatuanuku (earth mother) and Tangaroa (sea god) were the ashram mural’s core theme.

“I built a fibreglass waterfall at home then painted a bush scene over there in 3D.

“It was hard work, the temperatures were insane.”

Marc installed a pump that sent water cascading out of the mural.

“A lot of Indians sat in reverence in front of it because water was so special to their culture.” 

A quarter century creating murals

 On the subject of culture, Marc admits his out-of-the-blue trip was one of huge personal culture shock.

 “For the little boy from Rotorua-Tarawera then in his late 20s, the ashram had a  profound spiritual impact me. There was a really indescribable connection; an overwhelming sense of hope. I always thank him [Potaka- Dewes] for that.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the effect it had on me. My grandmother was a well-respected Theosophist.”

Once home, he was back confronting life’s sharp realities. By then he had a young family to support.

“The power boxes launched my career. For the next 25 years I was painting murals full time around this country and overseas. 

“There were tough times in the beginning, a lot of travel and a lot of solitude.”

 Marc’s mural work took him to California.

“I was there three or four times for three to five weeks at a time.”

 “I met my American colleague, John Pugh, via email. We worked in half a dozen collaborations here and there.”

Together they specialised in the artistic style, trompe l’oeil. To quote Wikipaedia that’s defined as “highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface.”

Or as Marc puts it, the viewing public love to be tricked into believing they can step as far as possible into a work executed in the trompe l’oeil style. 

There’ll be those who remember the Rotorua library’s giant mural in which a disk seemingly pivoted out of the wall. That was the work of Marc Spijkerbosh. He   describes the disk as ‘appearing as if someone had taken to it with a concrete saw’.

International commissions, competition wins 

“I learnt a lot from that. From my experience we Kiwis are so much more self-reliant and inventive with our number eight wire technology. It’s certainly pulled me out of some tough spots in the States.”

The first mural he painted there featured California’s famous landmark, the Tehachapi railroad spiral. An engineering masterpiece, it takes trains to and from the high Mojave Desert. As they navigate the helix they pass over themselves. It operates on the same principle as this country’s Raurimu spiral.

In California the climate’s a lot hotter then the central plateau.     

“As soon as the sun hit the walls in the early afternoon it became too hot to paint.

“I’d drive off to overlook the famous loop and capture the sweet evening light.” 

Numerous commissions in a range of Australian states have come his way. He painted New South Wales’ Albury Airport mural commemorating the 1934 forced landing there of a KLM DC2 in a raging storm.

“My work pretty much comes to me from word of mouth “

In Tasmania “our Marc’s” name has become a fixture on the local arts scene.

He’s participated in, and won, Cradle Mountain’s The Wilderness Gallery’s International Mural Fest three times.

After cracking that trifecta he became a regular judge.

Daughter spots Dad’s ideal job 

This obviously begs an explanation of how come he transferred from carving out a name for himself on the global art scene to knuckling down to a council job in his provincial birth place. 

He blames his daughter, Larissa. She’s a graphic designer now based in Melbourne.

“I was not actively looking for a job but after 25 years at the coal face I’d almost had enough of my own company. I needed other people in my world. 

“Larissa was just out of university and looking for a job when she rang and said she’d found one. I was pretty thrilled for her then she said ‘Not for me, Dad, for you.’

“I checked the job description. The council was looking for someone who had experience in public art, a tertiary qualification and was community minded. I thought  

‘Crikey, this is tailor-made for me’.

“I’d just come from a project in Kawerau with the Ministry of Justice connecting with seven to nine-year-olds. I knew we were making a difference and here was the opportunity to do it for my home town and stay home more.”

Switching lifestyles to support fellow creatives  

Initially being a council employee wasn’t easy to adapt to.

“ I couldn’t eat or sleep for the first three months because it was such a lifestyle change. I’d been a free man for so long and here I was running up and down flights of stairs clutching A4 paper in my hand. My friends gave me three weeks. 

“But I’m just so glad I stuck it out. I wanted to make a meaningful contribution to my home town. 

“I’m looking after our artists, our sculptors, our writers, our creatives and have managed to create a budget for them.

“Initially in the role I was rattling around in the landfill to find second-hand paint so I could at least get some colour around the place.”

“I know how it is for artists, my job is a privilege.”

* The late Eru Potaka-Dews was the koro of Atutahi Potaka-Dewes, In Profile’s first subject and Miss Rotorua 2020.