I explore my identity as a bi-cultural mother through a visual language whose main characters are light and figures. I anchor context and narrative with representational figures and settings while inviting viewers to wander within loose rendering, blurred edges, and powerful color. My flat and stark patterns are drawn from the visuals of my childhood. My work often depicts everyday domestic scenes, and the added Māori patterns take the viewer into a liminal space that is neither reality nor nonsense, colonial nor indigenous, traditional nor contemporary; always something in between. My work is at the intersection of identities unfamiliar to most viewers but originates from an experience most mixed-race Americans understand.

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Before moving to New York City, Terina, a Māori-American artist from Lā’ie, HI, studied portraiture and figurative art at Brigham Young University- Hawai’i. She took color and drawing courses in San Francisco, CA. Terina has exhibited work in group and solo settings online and in Brooklyn, NY with organizations like the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist’s Coalition and St.HROUDA Gallery. Publications include art magazine, ALL She Makes, 2022, and Awa Wahine, Issue Rima, 2024.