Biography of Jochen Schmidt - Mashada

Born in 1947 in Germany I grew up with an innate love of painting and drawing and decided to train as an architectural draughtsman, an occupation that would give me financial security and hone my drawing skills.

A decade later I retrained as a teacher before travelling, in the seventies, through the Sahara, West and Central Africa.

In Kenya I began to paint on silk, focusing on the tropical nature of brightly coloured flowers, that led to the name Mashada, which means a spray of flowers in Kiswahili.

Leaving Kenya to accommodate the needs of my family, I came to New Zealand eighteen years ago and travelled from Cape to Cape, finally deciding to settle in Hawkes Bay, where I now live and work as a full-time artist.