Tiana's Life
I was born In 1999. I grew up in Palmerston North (Papaioea). I have always had an interest in art and drawing and was drawing since the age of 4. Teachers found it difficult for me to get away from the paints and crayons.
I attended Roslyn school and Freyberg highschool and achieved NCEA level 3 in with endeavors in painting and distinctions in design.
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Throughout my years of high school, I had a lot of challenges to overcome that affected my ability to attend school and acquire good grades. In 2014 I was diagnosed with depression and social anxiety that had come out of nowhere. Going from a social butterfly to a hermit. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that the underlying cause was due to severe anemia. and had to undergo iron transfusion and shots.
In my last year of high school, I met an amazing person that has changed my life dramatically. My friend, my partner, and now fiance helped me through my challenges of social anxiety and allowed me to take my time with little steps at a time to resocialize. We are now on our fourth year of being together and I guess we are now stuck together.
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After high school was finished, I moved to Brisbane to live with my father as I missed him so much and was wanting to start a new life and to be as independent as I can. However, trying to land a job was proving quite difficult as I had no work experience. So for a full 8 months of rejections from jobs and a long-distance relationship, took quite a toll on my mental health. I made the tough decision to move back to New Zealand.
Throughout my 2 years of working hard making a living, I decided to start focusing on my future and what I would like to get out of life,
I decided that I wanted to become an art teacher. I started researching what it takes to become a teacher. I took the necessary step to start studying and to acquire a bachelor's in art. I chose to study a Bachelor of Maori visual arts because I have been neglectful towards my culture and to take the opportunity to learn more about my heritage.
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The photo on the left is where my family is from. Wairoa is a town in the northernmost in the Hawke's Bay region and is located on the northern shore of Hawke Bay at the mouth of the Wairoa River and to the west of Mahia Peninsula.
In the photo above, is my marae 'Ruataniwha', on the left is my urupa and below is the whare karakia.
