Ewan McDougall

In the studio with us today, well on the phone actually, we have Ewan McDougall. I first came across Ewan when I moved to Wellington for the first time and was talking to a gallery owner who had just about to put on one of his exhibitions or had just done so. He recommended I get in touch because we had a lot in common from the conversations we had. The only thing that lasted from those conversations was a Facebook connection with you, and unfortunately, nothing else came of the gallery, but such is life. For the listeners, would you mind just giving us an introduction as to who you are and what it is you do?

Oh, I'm Ewan McDougall. I live in Broad Bay and Ōtepoti, and I'm a painter, an oil painter. I'm married to Sarah, and we've been married for around 42 years now, very happy. She's a writer, so our house is a little creative buzz house.

It certainly looks it from the photos and stuff, and I see your work everywhere, especially up in Nelson. You've got work in The Suter and in a couple of the more private galleries as well. That's how I keep seeing your work around. It's very distinctive, which I love. I've heard whispers that you have quite an interesting past. Can you give us a glimpse into that journey and what ultimately made you become an artist?

Yeah, my path wasn't what I thought it might be when I was at school. I was in the top stream and sent to law school to be a lawyer, work in a big firm, do good work, make a lot of money, have the house and the kids, and do all of that. I'm afraid that didn't quite come to pass. It kind of wasn't me anyway. We were kids in Oamaru, we grew up on the south hill just up from Friendly Bay, and we were a little bit feral. I went to law school and hated it, quit after two months. I was lucky to do political studies when James Flynn, a left-wing American professor, turned up from America. He had been involved in getting blacks registered to vote in the deep south, and some of those guys were killed. It was very dangerous, the KKK were active, and they were killing people. He's a very brave man and put his principles first. He was a brilliant historian, famous for the Flynn effect on IQ. I enjoyed doing political studies; it was the time of Vietnam War protests and all that stuff, so it was exciting. As a kid, I always wanted to paint. When we couldn't go running wild in Oamaru, we'd all paint with those little tin paint boxes. I always wanted to do that, but it got pushed to the background. I was playing in rock and roll bands at university and got married. Unfortunately, the party life overtook me. We had a good rock and roll band with a lot of supporters, and there were lots of drugs and parties. That lifestyle became the thing I was completely immersed in. I got my degree, honors in political studies, and was supposed to do a PhD, but I also got honors in party animals, so it won out. I got a scholarship to go to Melbourne for a PhD, but didn't like it. The professor was a bit of a fascist. I walked into his office, and all along the hall were words like fascist get out and swastikas, so I should have realized we wouldn't see eye to eye. I came back home, traveled the world, and partied hard with whatever the local substance was. Through all the madness, I went to big galleries, saw art, Van Gogh, Rembrandt in the Rijksmuseum, and great painters. Even if I had a shocking hangover, I'd get on a tube or a bus and see a gallery. I always had a deep love of art, but couldn't do it myself. Am I boring you?

No, not at all. This is fantastic, I love it.

Well, it's not too long. I came back home via America during the cocaine avalanche in the 80s. The guy I lived with was a major cocaine dealer for a cartel, so I'm lucky to get out of there alive. I came back to Perth, met my darling Sarah, and partied in Perth. Our house was a house for any Kiwis that arrived, so Tuesday night could be party night till three in the morning. This continued until we ran out of money, and I was at the point of wanting to buy a gun to hold up a bank. I got offered a job on an oil rig in Taranaki, and because I had done it in the North Sea in Scotland, I took the job. Sarah followed me later, and we arrived back. I went out one night to the Magogs at the White Hart Hotel and, for some reason, thought I was Sugar Ray, an unbeatable fighter. I picked a fight with all these guys, got completely flattened, and cracked my neck at C6, which is very serious. I wound up in Taranaki Base Hospital. If I ever meet that motorcycle guy, I will thank him from the bottom of my heart because he hit me, knocked me over, and cracked my neck, getting me into the health system. In those days in New Zealand, it really worked for me. I got into therapy and then into rehab at Queen Mary Hospital in Hamner Springs. I don't know if it would happen quite so smoothly today, but I walked in there, and the psychiatrist said to me after hearing my life story, "You wanted to be a painter when you were a kid. I want you to go out there and paint a mural on this big wall in the welcome room for new patients." I painted that mural, and I swear I walked out of that room on two feet of air. I knew exactly what I was going to do from then on. That was 1989, and I've barely missed a day ever since. I'm very grateful, even though it was quite a dangerous lifestyle that could have ended at a number of points. It didn't, and it got me into a position where someone said, "Go paint," and it worked. I'm very grateful to be where I am today, Rich.

Isn't that phenomenal how that one sort of challenge just changed the course of your life?

Yeah, just go out and do that mural. I needed something that I really respected to do it, and I needed an authority figure. For far too long, I've been an anarchist, which is fine, but at some stage, you need somebody who knows better to tell you to do something. This guy was the right man at the right time. His name was Robert Crawford. I did that painting, came home, threw the lawnmower out, and converted the gardening shed into my own little studio and got stuck into it.

From listening to a previous interview, you said you were quite figurative at that time. You wanted to work in quite a realistic sense, but your style now is very distinctive. How did you evolve that style that you have now?

I started that because I was taught by Colin Wheeler in Oamaru, who was a realist painter and sort of a soft realist. By soft, I mean he wasn't a hard-edge photographic realist. He was a bit more like Edward Hopper, that sort of style. I tried to do that, but I'd seen Salvador Dali in one of those trips I told you about, and so I tried to be a surrealist as well. I was just trying to find my way. It was always with figures. I didn't like abstract art. I've only seen one great piece of abstract art, and that was in New York, a painting by Cy Twombly, which really blew my socks off. But I am really... I want to do figures. I'm a figurative painter. I started doing that, and then after a couple of years, it worked pretty well. I was getting exhibitions and selling work, but I noticed a painting that one of my boys had done, which had a little man with a great big head and a great big silly loopy grin on his face, with the sun in the sky and a bird floating around, and it was such a happy little unrestrained, untrained painting. So I thought, man, I'm going to have a go at that. I'm going to develop that. I'm going to take that child's art and make it into my art form. We'll see how it goes, and it just sort of morphed from there.

So with your style, other than your son's painting and seeing the works of Dali, are there any other people you'd say had influenced you?

Always in New Zealand, Tony Fomerson, for sure. Loved him. Philip Claremont, absolutely loved the use of colour and that mayhem, that wild stuff. And, you know, I told you I was an Omeru in the South. I went to school every day, and I walked over the hall to school every day and noticed this huge blackboard that some religious guy had painted in white on it, stuff like, "I am the light, come unto me," and all of these Christian terms, which I don't fully understand. I'm not a Christian. But I saw that and thought, well, that's pretty weird, what's wrong with this guy? Then years later, I saw him on a card, exactly the same as on the wall, and I thought, holy shit, this guy didn't invent this. What he did was he took it from the world and put it in a gallery on a canvas. The word paintings, you know. So I like that, and I loved his figure in a book like "The Promised Land," that moved me a lot. So New Zealand painters, well, I've seen a lot of European painters. Right. I've seen... Yeah, I've seen Picasso, and the art book painters. Jean Dubuffet, that great French painter, and also the Cobra painters, Karel Appel and those guys. So all big in the colour and impasto and quite wild figuration. It's certainly not any sort of realism, knowing you. So that stuff put me on the way as well.

And with regards to how you madke Is there a lot of stuff that happens prior to you standing in front of the canvas or you just stand in front of the canvas and make it happen? What is your process?

I'd say nine times out of ten I get the canvas, put a wash of acrylic colour on it, come back to where it's right and just start using a knife and a tin of oil paint and start making figures. And just the painting makes itself. I make the painting, but it tells me what it is.

Wonderful.

So there's a lot of removing stuff, scraping off paint, and there's a lot of adding paint where I need to add something. So it's not really... I don't draw a painting out anymore like I did when I was young.

And is that how you keep that sense of freedom and movement and playfulness in the paintings?

Thank you. I think so. By not having anything to follow, not having a plan to follow, not being too much in my head about what art should be, or great things I've seen, just doing it. Simply just do it, you know.

Nice.

That's the way I love to work. There are some differences. I mean, there have been times when I've sat bolt upright in bed and thought, man, I've got to do that. I have a plan in my head then. But it's very rare for me to draw it. I did that with a show called Stripeyism in Dunedin, where years ago I'd done a painting which had a stripy background, multiple colours, horizontal stripes, and a deep purple, and a purple figure in the middle, one of these loopy-faced, grinning, leaping guys. And it just hit me that, what if I swatched that around and put the stripes inside the figure and make the background flat? Just a simple thing like that. And that led to about 20 paintings in a show that was very successful called Stripeyism. So sometimes that sort of thing happens, you know, the road to domestic stuff.

And I've seen a couple of you, well, you've uploaded a couple of your pre-show ceremonies, which always make me smile. How much of a thing is that? Do you do that with every show you put on? And can you explain to the listeners what that is?

It's funny you should ask that one because I've done it routinely just about every time. It's because when I was young I was also an athlete, you know, a runner. And I was a target champion. I loved doing that. I trained very hard. So now I do a little bit of a run around the show and always enjoy it. And people usually laugh and get out of the way when I come charging around the room. It's also, you know, just a sort of a celebratory, I've done this work and it's up in it and it feels like, you know, a victory to me to have done it up in the gallery. But on my last show in Dunedin I forgot to do it. I was being interviewed by Liz who's one of the gallery owners at Gallery De Novo. She was doing short reels for Instagram on about five or six different paintings which I talk about and put them up on Instagram. And I completely forgot to do the run. But never mind. You can't do everything perfectly.

And does ritual appear anywhere else in your creative practice or is it that that's the thing?

Sorry, what was that?

Does ritual appear anywhere else in your creative practice?

Not really. I hate paintings being put down on the floor upside down. I always make sure they're upside up. I'm not really a spiritual person, so I don't have any prayers or incantations. Although I must say when I had a show up in Manoa, an elder from the local iwi blessed my paintings and put a little bit of water on them, and that was so moving. I really appreciated that and I told him so. That had never happened before. But no, I don't have any particular ritual. The ritual is just getting the knife into the paint and putting it on. Beautiful.

And you discussed briefly your political stance with things, and I've always really appreciated your very strong left-leaning political voice, certainly on the posts you make on social media. I get the impression that there's a lot of that that goes into the paintings. There's certainly a politics in your work.

Well, it's not generally much. Generally, as I say, it's just up there and I do it, and it's coming from the human thing inside me. It's not got any particular religious, political, or anything force in it as far as I know in general. I am political. I was in a union at 14 years of age in a freezing works. And I heard those communists ruck up the men to go on a strike because something unfair had happened. And then I had Jim Flynn as a lecturer. I am political. I am left-wing, and I'm proud of that. But I've only deliberately done a few political paintings, and they were for a show in Wellington at Ron's Gallery, and it was called Out of Left Field. I had a picture of Donald Trump on a pig's body and a number of other derogatory paintings of Trump and various things. I had a picture of the U.S. National Party people and one of an evangelical Christ on the cross with a swastika at the top of the cross. So, now and again, I will get overtly political, but I don't do it very much. It's probably less than 10% of the time. Right.

I think that's probably just stuck with me because I really relate to it. How powerful of a weapon do you... weapon, that's probably not the right word... A tool, do you think art has in real life?

Raising political voice and discourse, the tools I use to paint with?

Just generally as a thing to promote political dialogue, what part do you think art can play with that?

Art can play a huge part, you know. You only have to look at Picasso's painting Guernica, which condemns the bombing of Guernica by Franco using German bombers that were being tested for World War II. There are great political paintings, and they're often very striking and strong. Ralph Hotere, for example, with his black Union Jack, made powerful statements against apartheid and oppression of Māori here. I think Ralph was an excellent exponent of using politics in his art in a very strong and beautiful way. I love Ralph's work. I don't do it as often, I guess. One of the things about art for me is that I'm not part of the hierarchical structure of capitalism. I don't have a boss, I'm not in an office, and I can't be told what to do by anybody. I read somewhere that some people hate artists because they mix with all classes of society and come and go as they please. There is a freedom in working for yourself as an artist. An example of that is when I had a show in New York over a decade ago. We were in a Chelsea gallery, and a billionaire came in and offered half price for my painting. The painting was 20k, and he offered the dealer 10k. She got in touch with me, and I said no, I'm not doing that. This guy has enough money to buy your gallery and about 20 others. I'm not doing that. He's trying to cheat me. I thought, you know, fuck him, I'm not doing that, and I didn't. So occasionally I have made a political point with my art, but I don't go out hunting these things. If they come to me, I'll stand up for them.

That's really interesting. So you've obviously managed to make a name for yourself so that you don't have to do other jobs. I think that's quite hard these days for creative people to sustain themselves.

What made it easier for me at the start was that I was working on an oil rig off Taranaki. I injured my back really badly, so thanks to New Zealand being an enlightened place as it was then, I received excellent compensation. While my back was recovering, I could paint. At the same time, I was covered by ACC, so I was able to keep going for quite a few weeks, which helped me. Once that stopped, it was just painting to survive really at the start. Every now and again I'd have a really good show, and we'd be in a land of milk and honey. Then things would get tight, and I wouldn't sell. Sarah would go to university, write plays, and get some support for that. Her plays sold well too, so we just found our way through by doing whatever we could.

I find your work has a real authenticity in how you promote yourself, and your personality aligns well with your work. Do you have any thoughts regarding artists who feel they need to push themselves outside their authentic self to make a name or a living?

I can't speak for other people, but there was a guy in Sydney called Ken Done. He went from quite good paintings to selling his art on t-shirts, and they called him Ken Overdone. I thought, I'm not going to do that. You can go too far into commercialization. You can try to be something else, try to wheel and deal, but I'm not going to do that. I just have to keep doing the mahi and know that the rewards will come. It wasn't easy. There were times I was panicky about keeping our house, getting kicked out. My parents were brought up in the depression, so they knew what it was to not be able to pay the rent. Sarah was way more confident, saying it would be alright, and she was right. I couldn't have done much without her. We're a two-person team.

That's quite evident. You can see the love between you, certainly online anyway.

It's beautiful. I really love her work too. She's done great plays. She had a play called "Up the Duff" taken to Edinburgh, and it got Best New Work in the Edinburgh. We respect each other's work. That's the other thing.

Maybe I should talk to her at some point.

You'd be welcome, I'm sure.

So what's next for you, Ewan? What are you working on now?

I've got an exhibition in Timaru at the York Street Gallery in November. I love Debbie; she's a good person and a good sculptor. She wants to show my work. Then I go to the Railway Street Gallery in Auckland in March. The woman on that stand, Denise, uses me because she wanted me to do it. She was very good. I had one show up there last year, and it was successful. Nice opening. I like friendly openings. So we'll do that again in March, all going well. Apart from that, it's just one foot after the other, Rich, you know, just keep going.

Do you have anything planned for the top of the South?

I haven't at the moment. The truth is I need to find a gallery in Nelson. They've been a real joy and pretty good. I'd love to do it again. People come out of Nelson. I was impressed with that. It's a good town, a real good town.

But yeah, if you could go back to your younger self and offer any advice, what would you say?

Man, that's difficult, isn't it? I've often thought, what if I hadn't gone to law school, if I'd gone to art school? The conclusion I come to is I'd be a different sort of painter, and I might be a painter like a lot of other painters. I don't know if I'd have the distinct voice I found myself, just by having to muck in, really, just by having to find my way through the jungle, as it were. So I counted that thought quite quickly in my own head. It does crop up from time to time because the fact is, if you've got that art school degree, it often opens some doors to certain sorts of galleries.

It didn't do me any favors. What words of wisdom would you offer to aspiring artists who are just starting or wanting to return to their career?

What I used to do when I was running in a particularly long and hard cross-country race or something, just keep going. If you love doing it, you've got no choice. You'll be miserable doing something else. Don't put it on the back burner and say, "Oh, well, I'll go and work in this office or go and work laboring or something." You'll be miserable. Try to do what you love doing if you can possibly do it.

Wonderful. Just finally, where can people find your work?

I've got a website, so if you Google Ewan McDougall, I come up in a number of different places and gallery websites. I've got my own website. I also do art on Instagram. Facebook is politics; it's the wrong one of the two for me, so it's different, but Instagram. My name generally comes up with quite a few good ones. I have a lot of work at home too, so people can always contact me directly and have a look. My galleries are Gallery De Novo in Dunedin, and they're really good, and they've got a lot of good work. The show I just finished is still held by that gallery, and they'll probably keep it for as long as they want. It was called Fire and Water, and I liked it a lot. In Christchurch, Le Strange Gallery, that's a big new space now. Google it; you'll find it and see a lot of my work. Railway street Gallery in Auckland and York Street Gallery< in Timaru. I'll be doing some public galleries as well, but that's not set in stone yet.

Thank you. You're an absolute inspiration to hear. It's great to finally get to talk to you through this messaging and following you on Facebook and stuff. It's been wonderful. Be well and good luck. Thank you so much for your time, mate.

It's great to talk to you, and I'll look forward to seeing how it comes out.

I'll let you know. Be well, brother.

Okay, mate. Bye.

Cheers, mate. Bye.