A LIFE ON CANVASS
THIS AUCKLAND ARTIST’S JOYOUS ART IS AN ANTIDOTE TO MELANCHOLY. IT’S A PRESCRIPTION HE’S TAKING TO THE WORLD
EVAN WOODRUFFE SAYS he has an existential compulsion to create art. The Auckland painter’s giant works are an extension of himself. He uses colour, lines, form and even the shirt off his back to inspire joy and a sense of childlike wonderment.
“In dark times, we need artists to shine a light and remind us of the good qualities of humanity. They lighten our spirit so we can cope with the crises of the world,” he says.
It was that joyous quality that last year caught the eye of Joshua Zong. The director of Auckland’s Ai Gallery asked Evan to travel to Beijing in August to lead a special exhibition called A Colourful World and a Shared Future. The show, at the 8th Beijing International Art Biennale, featured 21 New Zealand artists. Aotearoa was among 100 countries represented but was just one of six awarded a special exhibition.
The accolade wasn’t a bad result, says Evan, an understated comment from someone whose work is so bold. Evan, one of six siblings, was born in 1965 in Auckland’s then-bohemian East Coast Bays. His mother Vivienne and father John, both artists, had escaped the “British class system” a year earlier. “It was the 60s, the time of the six o’clock swill and bans on shopping at the weekends. I think they’d wondered where they had landed.”
All of Evan’s siblings have pursued artistic careers of different sorts. Evan’s first art was indie dance music. He sang and played guitar in a band called Melon Twister alongside three of his brothers, Lars, Emil, Garnham and drummer Gary Covich. At 18, he enrolled in a bachelor of arts at Auckland University of Technology and soon dropped out — he was having too much fun living and making music. But by the time he was 30, he realized he probably wasn’t going to be a rock star. “I had exhausted the potential of trying an unstructured approach to learning life’s lessons. So I started painting furiously.”
He spent the next 13 years teaching himself to be an artist, first from a studio on Great North Road in Grey Lynn and today from one he shares with 12 others in Kingsland. To support himself, he worked as a demonstrator for art supplier Gordon Harris. When people understand the hours and cost (financially and emotionally) that go into making art, not many choose it as a career, he says. “Who the hell would want to do it? It’s seven days a week, and it often costs at least as much — if not more — in the making.”
But it’s how he feels authentic. “It’s an existential compulsion. We want to make marks on time. But it’s not about grandstanding or saying ‘look at me’. It’s something I can validly give to the world.”