Steev Peyroux is much more than a constructed name. Nigel Benson meets an artist who makes the ordinary extraordinary.
The artist formerly known as Steve Wilson leans back in the café. He orders a chai tea. With soy milk, of course.
His latest solo show at The Artist's Room this week, "The Deep", is almost a metaphor for the artist and professional dancer's hidden depths.
"I suppose I was just being a bit pretentious when I changed my name, really," he says, grinning disarmingly.
"[My wife] Simone wasn't keen to change her name from Peyroux to Wilson and I was quite sympathetic to that. So I changed my name.
"A lot of people in the performing arts were changing their names back then. It was really fun, actually, although the bank didn't handle it very well."
Peyroux moves to a different beat in the world of art. His latest exhibition explores an unseen and underground view of life.
"I stumbled on to the idea, really. I was looking to extend the abstract side of my work, which is a mix of realistic images and quite abstract, random marks," he says.
"I liked the idea of doing gnarled trees on the land. I like the way they look like figures and what that conjures up.
"I wanted to do something that was one-third above ground and two-thirds below ground," he says.
"There's something visceral and body-like about the roots underground. They're like blood vessels and veins.
"Underground is a place we can't see, so your imagination has so much free rein. It can be a lot of things.
"These questions made me look at cliff faces, which are places where erosion has created a dissection of the underground. Exposed tree roots cling to great boulders. Giant cliffs take on their own prehistoric life.
"They become monumental and the faces of pre-human ancestors loom out of the earth," he says.
"There's so much more than we can see. It's another reality. It's really the whole truth, but we only usually see part of it.
"It raises the question of how real our perception of life is when so much of our world is invisible to us.
"I also like the duality of the conscious and the subconscious. The real world and the dream world. It could be anything or anywhere.
"It imbues it with another layer and takes it to other places . . . magical places."
Peyroux (42) explored some of the most beautifully windswept places in Otago in search of his tortured trees, such as Cape Saunders, Aramoana, Purakaunui, Tunnel Beach and the Catlins.
"I'm known as a printmaker, but I really consider myself a drawer who also uses the one-off printmaking techniques of collagraphy and monoprint.
"I often collage or paint a variety of marks and textures on to a board that I ink and then print over my drawn representational imagery," he says.
"When one thing works, it sets up all these other possibilities and I want to try them all out. You know when it's working. I've been doing this so long now that I just know.
"But I often find things emerge subconsciously in my work that I only see on reflection, such as the influence my dancing past has had on the movement and energy present in my work and on the gestural muscularity in my trees.
"The movement, energy and gestural quality of it relates to dance.
"I like movement and there's something about both art and dance that's really layered. They're both visual languages which allow you to connect with people.
"But whereas you have instant interaction on stage, with art you're more removed from the audience. You don't get that instant feedback."
Peyroux was drawn into art at an early age through his mother, Christchurch artist Ann Wilson.
He completed a diploma of fine arts at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in 1987 before abandoning art to move to Melbourne, where he qualified from the Victorian College of Arts with a bachelor of arts degree in dance in 1991.
For the next eight years, he danced professionally, touring Europe and the United States with the Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre.
"It was really exciting stuff, but once you get into your 30s, the body starts to fade."
Peyroux returned to Dunedin in 1999, joining the Otago Polytechnic School of Art as the printmaking technician.
"I couldn't have fallen on my feet better. I'm suddenly in this artistic community of students and staff and it's just such a melting pot," he says.
"There's an emphasis at school on the conceptual and you get a great exchange of ideas there. I get quite influenced by certain students."
Peyroux features in the recently-published second edition of New Zealand's Favourite Artists by Denis Robinson.
See it
"The Deep" by Steev Peyroux opens at the Artist's Room on Saturday and runs until May 31.
