The child is alive in Ewan McDougall. The self-confessed former "ratbag and drug fiend" has evolved into an important New Zealand artist. Nigel Benson looks back on 20 years of the Broad Bay painter's art.
With his disobedient grey hair flecked with paint, Ewan McDougall looks every inch the artist.
But he could have been many other things - a rock 'n' roll drummer, a freezing worker or dead.
McDougall will share 20 years as an artist and 60 years as a human being in a special retrospective exhibition which opens at the Temple Gallery this weekend.
"Hard Out: Twenty Years of Painting 1989-2008" is a colourful journey through McDougall's volatile life and artistic career.
McDougall's ascent from hell began when he married London writer Sarah Martin in 1983.
The couple came to New Zealand to live the following year, where McDougall confronted his demons and admitted himself to Queen Mary Hospital at Hanmer Springs.
As part of his recovery, he was encouraged to paint a mural on a wall at the sanitorium.
"That was the moment my life changed, really.
"I left the hospital after eight weeks and knew what I was meant to do. I wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't.
"Painting saved my life, really."
McDougall's first serious painting was a tribute to his wife, Sarah.
"I'd only been painting for a few months," he recalls.
"I'd done no painting since leaving school.
"Painting was something I loved doing, but I didn't have the confidence to show my art."
McDougall was coerced into his first exhibition by the late John McDougall [no relation] at the Aero Club Gallery in Port Chalmers in 1992.
"I sold seven paintings and I thought 'This is fantastic. Not only is painting great, but people want to pay you money for it'."
McDougall is often referred to as painting in the "naive style", but it is a label the painter bristles at.
"The Yugoslav farmers and their sons were the original naive painters. They had no training at all.
"That's true naive painting," he says.
McDougall is proud to have studied under 89-year-old Oamaru artist Colin Wheeler at Waitaki Boys High School, who, coincidentally, is opening a solo exhibition at The Artist's Room this week.
"Colin taught me drawing and tonal drawing and all that sort of thing.
"Although, now, I just get up to the blank canvas and slap it on," he smiles self-deprecatingly.
McDougall considers himself a neo-expressionist.
"You paint what's inside. I really wanted to be a surrealist, originally, but I got tired of using two hairs on a paint brush to get an eyeball right."
Serendipity and benevolent spirits have been strong influences on McDougall's career.
"[Late Brighton painter] Lindsay Crooks suggested that I loosen up a bit and experiment with colour a bit more. To not be so careful.
"That really suited me. I don't want to do great versions of boats on harbours," he says.
"It all makes perfect sense now, really.
"It's been a process of loosening up and being more spontaneous and freer and a bit more direct.
"If it works, it works. And if it doesn't, I'll keep at it till it does.
"I need to keep going till it's right," he says.
"I have a mad exuberance, but I don't think I'll ever become abstract. I'll always be figurative, but give it a tweak.
"I love figures and colours and I'm loving what I'm doing at the moment, so I'll keep doing it."
The eight-time Wallace Art Awards finalist has works dotted around the globe.
He has held almost 50 solo exhibitions in New Zealand and international galleries and exhibited in England, Spain, Italy, Sydney and Dunedin over the past decade.
The Centre of Contemporary Art in Christchurch will host a solo exhibition next month, and another McDougall solo exhibition opens in Wellington later this year.
The Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London is also hosting an exhibition of five paintings this year.
Dunedin art historian and curator Peter Entwisle had the task of selecting 20 works from more than 120 for the Dunedin retrospective.
"I gave them all to Peter and let him make the choices.
"He's tried to include one painting from each year and he's done a great job, I reckon.
"I think it [the exhibition] really shows the transition and the stylistic changes," he says.
"I've always loved that Picasso quote 'It took two years to paint like Raphael and a lifetime to paint like a child'," he says smiling.
"I really love that idea."
See it
"Hard Out: Twenty Years of Painting 1989-2008" opens at the Temple Gallery on Saturday and runs till July 30.
An opening preview (and 60th birthday celebration) will be held at 5.30pm tomorrow for family, friends and collectors of the artist.
