World Inspired Landscapes: Tonga

Although Tonga was influenced by the various colonial empires and was affected by World War II, it maintained its full sovereignty throughout recent history. Going back far enough, there was an ancient civilization called the Lapita who spread throughout many of the south Pacific islands, until Polynesian settlers merged into the culture. We think about displacements of people in terms of colonialism, but history is filled with examples of one group of people trying to move in on another group of peoples territory. One thing the people of Tonga have kept sacred are the bats, in particular, the flying fox. If you google it, you will see one of the creepiest (scariest) looking animals, kind of like a cross between a dog, cat and bear, with bat wings. Its actually a fruit bat, so not really that scary. Some of the paintings in the series contain very little landscape, maybe I am running out of ideas for tropical island nations, and here I just show the tops of a mangrove tree with a bunch of bats waking up for the night. To make the effect more dramatic I enlarged the moon, and created a pink under-glow like its twilight. Composing the bats over top of the moon was a little cheesy, batman-esque perhaps. Interestingly, the indigenous people have a story about a flying man-bat (sound familiar?). Another neat thing about Tonga is that volcanic activity has recently resulted in two small islands being joined into one medium-sized island. Geology in action.

World Inspired Landscapes: Tonga, watercolour 7 x 10" hot press, April 2025