We’re excited to be giving away two copies of How to Paint a Nude by Sam Mahon to our GrownUps members!
To be in the draw, simply make sure you’re a GrownUps member, signed up to our newsletter, and fill in your details at the bottom of the page.
About How to Paint a Nude
A thought-provoking literary novel that explores the topic of how to give Art its necessary free voice, written by the outspoken New Zealand artist and writer Sam Mahon
Sam Mahon is sure to cause controversy with this wonderfully written, yet dangerously close to reality fiction set within the real world of the Canterbury art scene in the year of the earthquake.
The story centres around a Belarus refugee who fled his country to find freedom. Sam and Gregor meet weekly to discuss art’s purpose, and critique Lukashenka from a distance, but the narrative’s pervading enemy – the corporate world – lurks beneath the surface, wickedly described in the words of Sam’s friend, architect Peter Beaven.
‘For every thesis there is an anti-thesis. So if Wakefield chooses Warren, which architect did she not choose. It turns out to be a man called Beaven. He is controversial, he is a champion of heritage and a thorn in the side of the progressives … he said, Gregor, there is something you have to realise if you wish to survive here as an artist. It does not pay to have opinions. This town is run by a self-appointed oligarchy who wish to reshape it in their image.’
Finally, disillusioned by the local polite tyranny, Gregor leaves. ‘At least in Belarus I know very clearly who the enemy is.’
Author Note
‘In 2011 I attended a performance of five poems set to music by five composers as part of the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival. One of the poems was mine, an environmental piece set to music by Mozart fellow Chris Adams. The poem described the continuing despoliation of our Canterbury rivers. During the interval, the elegant Sir James Wallace came striding down the aisle, hand reaching out to greet Adams, a former recipient of one of his Pah homestead residencies. ‘Chris,’ he said (paraphrased), ‘lovely music, shame about the poem. I see you have been captured by left-wing green ideologies. Rubbish. Nutrients, my boy, are great for rivers. You should see the size of the eels at the outlet of my rendering plant.’
I Googled James that night and discovered that he owned seven dairy farms and had seven times been the subject of environmental prosecution. Well, as Karl Popper said, all observation is selective, and therefore I quite understand Wallace’s view. But what alarms me here is that a good deal of arts funding and residencies come these days from tremendously wealthy people like Wallace, and it struck me that if a composer wished to write an environmental work and needed funding to do so, where would it come from, the government having largely abdicated its role as a neutral funder? If Art is to bite the hand that feeds it, as it should, it will starve. (Cyrano de Bergerac)
In 2010, I created a sculpture that criticised Art’s dependency on industrial sponsorship and submitted it to the largest sculpture show in the South Island. Curiously, as a postscript, the curators declared that they would accept any other work I cared to offer… just not that one. I decided this would be the main theme of my book: how to navigate special interest, how to give Art its necessary free voice. To do this, I’d need a companion with whom to debate Art’s essential purpose, and who better than a painter and anarchist from a totalitarian state (Gregor Kerensky from Belarus), one accustomed to using Art as a political tool.
Throughout the book, Gregor falls back on poet Robert Frost’s definition: What Art does for life is to clean it, to strip it down to form. The title of the book, How to Paint a Nude, is not simply referring to the painting of skin and its underlying architecture; it is referring to the stripping away of social veneers, political intent and ego in the pursuit of truth. Gregor is, in a way, an emperor’s tailor. By the end of the book all the characters who first appear as strangers have to some degree been unclothed, including me.’
About the Author
Sam Mahon lives near Christchurch, is an artist, activist, conservationist, writer, and contrarian who fomented outrage when he protested the pollution of Canterbury’s fresh water by creating a sculpture from cow dung of then Environment Minister Nick Smith squatting over a glass of water, defecating. Mahon’s work is held in private collections, public galleries, and public spaces. He has written four books, including My Father’s Shadow, about his father Peter Mahon, the late High Court judge who was surrounded in controversy over his report on the Erebus Air New Zealand crash inquiry.
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You must be a GrownUps member and subscribed to our newsletter to be eligible to enter.
The competition closes on 14th January 2026. Winners will be notified via email by 15th January 2026.
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