Yellow Pages Mural

This mural had to be painted in one weekend while the staff at Yellow were away. A nice surprise for them on Monday morning. The purpose of the mural was to help staff morale to stay tippety top while they work hard at taking the Yellow Pages from print to digital.
I was supplied with the design and my son Eli helped me on Saturday to draw it up and paint most of the first coats of the colours. Above is how it looked at knock off time on Saturday.

Below the mural almost finished late on Sunday night with one tired mural artist having a wee sit down, nine o'clock at night, working alone since nine in the morning and two hours touching up and finessing to go.
Eli came in at nine to take some photos and help out on the home stretch and packing up the gear.
Got home at one in the morning, another job done and dusted.

Dog Mural; Commercial Art

 This mural had to be painted exactly from supplied artwork and then distressed and coated with a scumbled white to give the illusion of aging. It is branding of the Hush Puppy shoe line and was painted in a tight time frame. Commercial Art. I traveled to Wellington to do it and it was an opportunity to catch up with old friends and my brother who live there.

1925 Grocery Mural, Waihi, New Zealand

This mural I have been working on sporadically for a year. It is almost finished and is the most ambitious painting I have yet done. Old people love it as all the products in the store are from 1925 or earlier although I used a little artistic licence in that some products are from a little later. It contains references to World  War One, the British Empire, the 1919 flu epidemic, the great age of Radio and products readily available over the counter include gelignite, ammunition, strychnine and whale oil. Politically Correct? No. God save the King....

Whirinaki Forest Mural, Omaha Beach

Billboard Sculpture Installation

This was carved from one big block of polystyrene and was fixed to a billboard in central Auckland for a year. It was an advertisement for a new middle of the road radio station- more excitement in the middle of the road was the wording...
I was back at Hungry Creek Art school for a short time of study and Andrew Ventor, the Director of the school, had a son who owned some billboards in the city and had a client who wanted this on a billboard. Andrew and I went 50 50 on the job, he had the contract and setup money and the business acumen and I had the talent.
We figured out how to do it, how to frame and fix it and where to get the materials we needed and posed  Andrew's son and girlfriend in a photographer's studio that had a chaise longue and I took a ladder and a camera along and the couple embraced while I took a dozen or so photos of them from every possible angle.
Then began a frantic week of sculpting to a deadline while the Andrew made the mounting and fixing bits and pieces. It was a lot of fun and good money for an art student as I then was..

1925 Grocery Mural

Waihi Junction Stores opened in 1909 and went through many changes over the years. Of the original building only the verandah remains; a classic piece of Edwardian Antipodean Architecture.

The present store was bought and walled over, converted into a lab for Newmont Waihi Gold, our local mining company.

I was commissioned to bring it back to life and I have created a version of a Grocery/General store as existing in the year 1925

Here is the store as I found it before work began

Karen of  Karens Signs helped out. I love that old word 'Fruiterer' not seen much these days...

The Mural Artist Mural

At last, a new mural. Been ages since I painted a mural. A self portrait?
Could be, Would be, Should be like that -
'Cause Horton was faithful, he sat and he sat -
I love kid's art and kid's literature...

Horse Mural begins

I have been commissioned to paint a mural for an animal farm, what one might call a petting zoo.
This is being done in between work on building Art School Waihi and is an opportunity for Girl Friday, my invaluable art school manager, to get first hand experience in mural painting.

Moth Sculpture

I made this sign at Art School and donated it to the school and no-one seemed to care or take interest so I took it down, took it home and put it on my new house.
It's there still, on the Moth house in Sandspit and the upstairs where my studio was is now a Yoga studio run by the new owners of the house who made it a condition of sale of the house that the Moth remain there.
Nice to have ones work appreciated...

Music Shop Mural