This painting was part of a small body of work for the show Tāne Motumotu 'Tāne cut-off' sponsored by the Albert Eden Neighbourhood Arts. The materials for the show were gathered locally. I began to explore eco-printing leaves from my personal garden (and in the case of the whau leaf work purposefully from the local Mt Albert Library garden). All native trees were important to our ancestors and it's my belief that ngā rau 'the leaves' carry an imprint of the personality of the tree. I worked with water based printing inks, leaf impressions, and the brayer as the carrier of the image and the creator of the trunk and stem or tinana 'body' and peka 'branch' that creates the link between the leaves. Building up the composition this way allows one to create the impression of ngahere 'bush'. That's the vision and this particular work represents my own personal collection of New Zealand natives and sub-tropicals that I grow.

The incident depicted in the painting is one I actually witnessed in the backyard where I have planted a number of different banana. Annoyed the flowers in my banana grove were not setting and instead were continually being scattered across the lawn I accidentally discovered the culprits were native tui. They were feeding on the nectar of the banana flowers and were destroying the unformed fruit through the summer!