Good art takes you out of the mundane of the here and now so you can go back to the everyday uplifted — that is what artist Evan Woodruffe hopes his work does.
His colourful, large-scale abstracts, including one 11m long by 3m high, have recently graced the walls of the Hastings City Art Gallery and it was important for him that his work, coming after Cyclone Gabrielle wreaked havoc on the region, could uplift the spirits of its people, even for a short time.
"I wanted to give them a new landscape they could go into and it would uplift their spirits so they could go back into the everyday a bit stronger and bit lighter."
Woodruffe, who says if he wanted to make serious commentary about world issues he would be a politician or an investigative journalist rather than an artist, admits not every artist sees their work this way.
"It’s not that we don’t think there are serious issues in the world but we delight in making work that is more uplifting."
Uplifting is how he also sees his latest works created for his first Dunedin exhibition, "On a purple thought-base". The only time he has had work shown in Dunedin prior was in the rear window of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2015.
While no stranger to Dunedin, visiting regularly over the years to give workshops at the Dunedin School of Art (DSA), deciding on the city as the site for his first South Island exhibition came about by chance. A contact at the Hastings gallery who studied at DSA suggested she introduce him to friends of hers, the owners of St Clair’s Fe29 Gallery.
Woodruffe has always been excited by innovative and inventive galleries and dealers so hearing that Fe29 Gallery was a gallery in a home — or as he put it after seeing it "that’s not a home it is a gallery you live in" — intrigued him.
"The unique way they do things that was not the normal gallery model really appealed to me. So it kind of chose me."
However, taking on a four-week deadline for works for the exhibition did prove a bit of a challenge. He decided to make new work for the show to mark the occasion thinking he had already had enough time to digest the Hastings exhibition and develop new ideas.
The gallery also requested he include some of his larger works from the Hastings exhibition to go on display as well, such as a 2m by 2m piece made up of four paintings, which he is mixing with some of his older works from his studio collection.
"It is built around a core of these domestic-scale works with some larger works to act as anchors for the show."
Woodruffe finds the smaller works more difficult to paint.
"On a small painting one centimetre’s difference makes a big difference but on a big painting — some of my paintings are gargantuan — one centimetre makes no difference at all so I can be a lot freer and a lot more bodily."
Yet on a small painting everything has to be distilled into a little "amuse-bouche".
"You get served up something in a restaurant and you go ‘that’s tiny’ and then you put it in your mouth and go ‘oh my god’, three or four mouthfuls is perfect — that is kind of the way I think of the small paintings. They have to be exact, they can’t just wow you with size."
While his small paintings could be seen as windows looking into an environment, his large works are an environment themselves with the viewer becoming part of that environment.
"For a small painting to work they have be compelling. We are seeing these endless scrolls on our Instagram feeds so to arrest this it has to be something that is fresh, lovely or gorgeous enough to arrest our attention."
These days Woodruffe’s work is a palette of bright hues — blues, yellows, deep greens and purples — but that is not how he started out.
Coming from a family of artists Woodruffe started painting in the late 1990s and began exhibiting professionally in 2003. He completed a master’s degree in fine art at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 2014, followed by a postgraduate degree in art and design from AUT.
Wanting to try to push past his comfort zone into new territory, he went and did his master’s, fully embracing the more colourful, abstract, joyous method of making paintings.
"There’s a lot more scope I think. Painting something we can see, we’re copying a lot of that trying to imbue it with narrative. For me the joy of abstract painting is trying to create an image that hasn’t existed previously, it’s not a reproduction of what people see.
"When you think about it most of our lives are invisible, our thoughts, our dreams, our emotions through life our relationships, all are invisible yet inform the core parts of our being."
Abstract painting tries to work directly on people’s "interior selves" rather than remind people of the exterior world and it does that with colour and shape.
"It’s like music, had a [bad] day put on music and all of a sudden you are feeling happy inside. For me there is a lot more potential in that, I can explore more because the limitations are not there. To experience something different I have to make that."
He sees his colour as being like a musical note having a tonality. By combining certain colours, he can compose in a particular way, just as a collection of notes creates a certain piece of music.
"The colour combinations I use feel right to me, they make the painting feel right for this world. I’m trying to create a sensation."
While painting is the base of his practice, Woodruffe likes to experiment with other ways of his art being seen.
"First and foremost I really enjoy painting, everything is gorgeous, you are spreading around this colourful substance but having it photographed and turned into a digital file, it can then be taken off the wall, it can start moving around our social space."
So in collaborations Woodruffe has had his works turned into suits — he was wearing one of his silk-hemp waistcoats when we spoke — and scarves.
Turning his work into something he can wear creates a conversation between the work and the artist and also makes him feel "obvious" as he stands out in a crowd. It also means his art is always with him when he is wearing it.
"It can also be wrapped on a car, projected on a building, the digital format means it can be turned into anything. It stops being anchored to a wall in one place and starts becoming a part of the social space ..."
Instead of doing prints of his works which would create a "poor imitation", he does digital prints on to silk georgette scarves.
"They’re these 1.8m-long billowing silk prints. It’s still a print of my work but now you can wear it, drape it, pin it, it becomes something in and of itself rather than just an imitation of what I’ve already created.
"That’s what I love about the fabrics. They become something else again."
His fabric prints have also been made into costumes for performers, such as Elibra Fleur and musician Estere.
Woodruffe occasionally hand paints objects as well — like tiny painted pill capsules — but often finds it is quicker to wrap them in a piece of fabric.
His work has been shown at art fairs including Sydney Contemporary (2017) and Melbourne’s Spring 1883 (2016), and projects in Auckland, Wellington and Singapore as well as a contribution to the NZ Special Exhibition at the 8th Beijing Biennale (2019).
"Being an artist is a seven-day, 70-hour-a-week job so obviously you have to bring the money in as I have a mortgage so you have to have a lot of strings to your bow."
So as well as painting, he does workshops and editorial work for art material retailer Gordon Harris and is a brand ambassador for a couple of art companies.
Woodruffe manages a studio space for 12 other artists — mainly painters and small sculptors — to enjoy the collaborative nature of the space.
"Every time you go in there people are doing things. It’s great to have the support."
He also does private teaching, enjoying the aspect of passing on knowledge.
"We think we live in a world where you can get everything from YouTube or Google but ... everyone is building up their own specific sets of knowledge and it’s important we continue to pass those on.
"It can be such a blast seeing young people enjoying stuff and also seeing how positive and intelligent and caring that generation is."
Being asked to judge different art shows is also a joy as he uses his "quirky eye" to seek out what others might not appreciate.
"It’s about giving people confidence and making them enjoy what they are doing. Making them happy."
When not working, Woodruffe loves to cook and since moving to an apartment with a big deck and courtyard he has discovered the joy of gardening, growing herbs, fruit tress and flowers.
"I used to kill everything but over the past few years I’ve got great pleasure seeing things thrive."
TO SEE:
"On a purple thought-base" Evan Woodruffe, Fe29 Gallery, September 30-October 23.
