Michael Hawkins is an artist from New Zealand who has a history of
live action painting collaborations with musicians. Following our
unlikely meeting in the Douoro valley in Portugal we have begun to
work together, and will be staging a series of public performances
under the assumed stage names ‘The Kiwi and the Banana’. The first one
of this kind was a very private affair in a luscious garden hidden in
the artistic quarter of Porto, using only one speaker for sound and a
handful of trusted friends to hold the painting frame up! The paint
flew and an entirely improvised set with some guest musos from the
Ismae School of Music ensued…from snippets of James Brown to tribal
beats to bossa nova and blues, as we changed styles as the paint
changed colours. Afterwards we sat in the beautiful afternoon sun and
drank port wine and realised how good life can be in the Iberian
peninsula. Our first public show of the Kiwi and The banana will take
place on the 19th of July, address to be confirmed.
