As the son of two of our most lauded writers, the late JC Sturm and James K Baxter, John Baxter (Taranaki, Te Whakatōhea) has long had hats to wear in being part of literary legacies. 

It’s being both Māori and Pakeha though, that has led to the naming of a rare exhibition of Baxter’s distinctive paintings at Toi Mahara gallery in Waikanae as Rua Pōtae.  

Baxter says Rua Pōtae was a term used in the 1940s and 50s for ‘he who wears two hats’.