Ray Ching

I never did see huia foraging about on the trunk of a tall tree fern, but I knew a man who had.

Ray Ching, 2024

The beautiful forest-dwelling huia, presumed extinct these hundred or more years, hold a special place in the affections of New Zealanders. 

The old forests are silent now to the call of these beautiful birds, the male with its strong sharp beak, she with her beak so gracefully curved. Left with us now are just the study-skins collected in museums, some radio-recorded whistles remembered and the diaries and letters kept from those who left just before us who had seen for themselves this prince of the forest. 

The Huia & our Tears is Ray Ching’s memoir of these birds held in his studio in the 1960’s, their specimen skins and feathers, and his meeting and conversations with the man who had trapped and taken them from their secret valley some fifty years earlier, the last of their kind. 

Author’s biography

From studios in both New Zealand and the west country of England, Ray Ching has painted the people and the birds around him and with his engaging magic realism, for more  than six decades. He is represented in New Zealand with work in The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatu, The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Dunedin Public Art Gallery.  

Books include: The Bird Paintings, Collins, 1978; The Art Of Raymond Ching, Collins, 1981; New Zealand Birds, Reed/Methuen, 1986; Wild Portraits, SeTo Publishing, 1988; Studies & Sketches Of A  Bird Painter,Lansdowne Editions, 1981; Voice From The Wilderness, Swan Hill Press, 1994; Ray Harris Ching/ Journey Of An Artist, Briar Patch Press, 1990. Most recently, Ray Ching has engaged the exploration of Aesopian fables where he has relocated the tales to New Zealand Aotearoa with Aesop`s Kiwi Fables, 2012  and Dawn Chorus, 2014, both published by David Bateman Ltd.   

His long-awaited illustrated memoir, The Huia & our Tears is his fifteenth book.