Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Rei Hamon through Suffering to New Life

Rei Hamon is a New Zealander who had a job with the Ministry of Works. He suffered a back injury in a farming accident that left him almost paralyzed.

In 1965 as he sank hopelessly in debt, he and his wife prayed and they asked the questions: “Why the pain? Why the suffering?”

He said: “Why were we having the hardships piled on us when we as a family were trying to live and uphold our Christian ideals?

Looking back on that testing time Rei said that he was really going through a sort of probationary period.

“Unbeknown to me,” he said, “Because I was blinded by the lesser things we call worry and pain we had in fact climbed to that high pedestal of humility through overcoming temptations the suffering and hardships placed directly in our paths.”

One day, he and his wife Maia were praying together in their bedroom. They were telling God about Rei’s suffering and their financial hardships. Rei’s thoughts and vision slowly roamed around the room until they were arrested by a drawing book and a ballpoint pen belonging to his six year old daughter.

He crossed the room and grabbed them as if they were precious things he had lost for years. He began to sketch the first of his many pictures. Feeling a little embarrassed with his first works Rei cautiously hid them from his wife but Maia found them and showed them to a local photographer who took them to the director of a leading Art Gallery in Auckland.

The rest is history. Rei has developed the control and discipline to capture in superb detail the New Zealand bush in this unique Pointillism style or dot art.

Now in his eighties Rei Hamon has established himself as one of the foremost artists of the New Zealand bush and he receives the utmost joy in sharing this blessing with others.

Rei Hamon did not want the suffering, the unemployment and the debt yet he was given the insight and the grace to make something good out of his limitations.

Rei Hamon Gallery

Image: Picture by Rei Hamon of albino opossum.