Ootu Lagoon View

Ootu Lagoon View is an original acrylic painting of sacred waters — the lagoon of Aitutaki, Cook Islands, where the great navigator Ru first brought his people to shore many centuries ago.

Ru is the legendary founding ancestor of Aitutaki — a master navigator who led a great voyage from Avaiki, sailing a large double-hulled canoe guided by stars, wind, and the deep knowledge of his ancestors. He did not travel alone. With him came his four wives, his four brothers, and twenty women of noble rank — a people ready to build a new world on the shores of a new island.

The waters of Ootu and the motu of Akitua nearby are part of that sacred landscape — the same lagoon that greeted Ru’s canoe, that has held his descendants for generations, and that Sheree Wills knows intimately as the motherland of her own forefathers.

Today, Ootu Beach is where cruise visitors wade into the lagoon for the first time, where athletes compete in water sports and ironman events, and where the community gathers. But beneath all of that, the water remembers.

Painted from personal memory, Ootu Lagoon View is an invitation to stop, gaze, and feel the depth of a place that has been home for centuries.

Original acrylic on canvas — 50 x 50 x 2 cm. One of a kind.