John Baxter: Rua Pōtae - he who wears two hats 

As the son of two of our most lauded writers, the late JC Sturm and James K Baxter, John Baxter (Taranaki, Te Whakatōhea) has long had two hats to wear in being part of literary legacies. 

It's being both Māori and pākeha though, that has led to the naming of a rare exhibition of Baxter's distinctive paintings at Toi Mahara gallery in Waikanae as Rua Pōtae.  

Baxter says Rua Pōtae was a term used in the 1940s and 50s for 'he who wears two hats'. 

"If you were in the Māori world, you wore your Māori hat, if you were in your pākehā world you wore your pākehā hat. The two didn't mix." 

John Baxter was born in Wellington in 1952 and went on to produce work and commissions that adorn the covers of collections by both his parents. A number of these are in the exhibition.

"Both my parents were poets, but I am a painter. Their words were magical, but they produced images in my mind which sometimes became pictures on a page or canvas."

Whilst James K Baxter, who passed away in 1972 has long been one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most well-known writers, it is John Baxter's mother Jacquie Baxter, writing under her adopted childhood name, who in more recent years has become increasingly recognised as a pioneering writer of poetry and short stories. Passing away in 2009, she has become an important inspiration for the work of young Māori artists of all kinds. 

The two writers, says Baxter, are in style very different but were supportive of each other whilst doing things on their own terms.

Jacquie ensured her two children were immersed in Māori cultural activity growing up, active as she was in cultural club Ngāti Pōneke and the Māori Women's Welfare League from the early 1950s. 

JC Sturm's was a life of firsts. Her writing was first published in the 1940s and was the first Māori writer to have her work published in an English anthology. She was one of the first Māori women to complete an undergraduate university degree, followed by a Masters of Arts in philosophy.

Yet the stories JC Sturm wrote in the 1960s weren't to be published together as her first book until 1983, as The House of the Talking Cat with the Spiral Collective. John Baxter provided the distinctive cover. A JC Sturm biography and collected works produced by literary executor Paul Millar are both to be published. 

While in the 1990s JC Sturm built an impressive reputation for her poetry, her son John's painting blossomed. They were to both appear in the landmark Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance exhibition at City Gallery Wellington and Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2000.

Rua Pōtae features paintings from 1996 to 2004. John Baxter's first solo exhibition was at One Eye Gallery in 1997. It featured manaia creatures who - Toi Mahara wrItes - "serve as a messenger and spiritual kaitiaki, guardians of the environment". 

Symbols and landscapes recall both sides of Baxter's heritage and speak of the loss of important people in his life - and the loss, he tells Culture 101, of Māoritanga with them.  

John Baxter carries forward a rich history on both sides of the family. Jacquie Baxter's ancestors include prominent chiefs and an English literary dynasty, and connections through to Te Whiti and Tohu of Parihaka, which are reflected in these paintings.

On John's father's side meanwhile there are grandparents Archibald Baxter, the famous conscientious objector, and Millicent Macmillan Brown, daughter of Helen Connon, an early woman graduate of Canterbury College, and John Macmillan Brown, one of its founding professors.

In an interview with RNZ's Mark Amery at home in Paekākāriki, John Baxter reflects on his work and upbringing, and remembers some of these ancestors.

Rua Pōtae is at Toi Mahara Waikanae until 11 August.