Darcy Nicholas is a leading Maori painter and sculptor. He has been a key member of the Contemporary Maori Art movement since the 1960s and has exhibited widely throughout the world.

"My art is about identity… the ancestral lines that connect me with the multiversal nature of our people. We have to survive both as a tribal and a global people in this new age of technology and rapid change."

Raised in Taranaki, New Zealand, Darcy is the eleventh child in a family of twelve siblings. Growing up on the site where the New Zealand Land Wars began in the mid 19th century, he learned his culture by living it, surrounded by his parents and elders, many of whom had been born in the 1800s.

Darcy has travelled widely and enjoys a close interaction with leading artists from many countries. He is currently Group Manager of Cultural Development in Porirua City, where he project directed and currently runs the Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures.