Q: You asked the prominent self-taught Kiwi artist Dean Buchanan to paint the canvases that comprise the Beneath Caaqi’s Wings Gallery. How did this collaboration come to be? 

RS: I came across Dean’s paintings at a handful of galleries and auction houses in Auckland. I was excited by them, bought three and lived with them during the time the ideas for Beneath Caaqi’s Wings were evolving. Once I’d reached out to him and made his acquaintance, we talked about the idea of doing a series of paintings to support the project. He was game, so we tried our luck with a first. It went well. The collaboration continued over the course of a year. I greatly enjoyed our interactions. Dean is a wonderful character—madcap, brilliant, with a brutal sense of humor.

Well into our collaboration, we made an unexpected discovery. Dean has a friendship with Tchad Blake, who did a lot of the mixing for Wild Animus. Working with Tchad in his studio in Wales, many years before, I’d remembered being impressed by the paintings hanging in Tchad’s dining room, where we ate between sessions. Dean painted those. So my first exposure to Dean’s work went back many years.

Q: Buchanan’s paintings feature intense, colorful landscapes that burst with energy and passion—much like your writing.

RS: We have similar temperaments. He likes to challenge himself to distort reality—to capture truth through unlikely means. His experiments aren’t always successful. But when an oblique strategy works, the results are often arresting and powerful. Dean’s a creator, an original. One of a kind.