Kiwi artist Paul Darragh lived in New York for 10 years, creating design visuals for the likes of Rihanna, Nike, Google and the New York Times; but overcoming alcoholism and feeling disillusioned under a Trump government brought him home again, and since then, he's reinvented himself.
Paul Darragh makes it clear - he's not a political artist, but 10 years living in New York did strengthen his social conscience.
Coming home to New Zealand in 2017, the former graphic artist turned Mount Maunganui painter creates abstract, geometric canvas paintings and murals, taking inspiration from 1960s pop art, Andy Warhol, and current events.
"I'm into the news," he says. "Technology, the rise of artificial intelligence, Covid, Mars exploration, popular culture, and politics, and I express myself through colour.
"Those things are absorbed through me and put through my lens, which is joyous. I want people to walk away from my artwork feeling uplifted."
He will admit, however, that he isn't a fan of the headliner and New Yorker Donald Trump, who Darragh worked with as co-founder of design company Manhattan Born, and gained the job of doing opening titles for Trump on the TV show Comedy Central Roasts.
For our interview, Darragh wears a black cap with the words "power, corruption and lies" embezzled across it.
Working in New York in the entertainment and TV sector, he also crossed paths with Chelsea Clinton at a fundraising party; Broadway star Bernadette Peters; and created exhibitions and experiences for Google, Nike, Viacom, the New York Times, and did the graphics for Rihanna's 2010 music video Rude Boy.
However, bringing his art to a New Zealand market after a decade of living in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, wasn't easy.
He hadn't done the groundwork on home turf like other Kiwi artists, he says, and his decision - helped by sobriety - to switch from a design career to fine arts was like becoming a plumber in the eyes of some industry critics.
"You still have to prove your work, and consistently create a body of work," he says with his hybrid Kiwi-American accent.
He's maintained an international outreach contracting to New York design studios on branding projects from his yellow-doored house in the Mount, surrounded by orange-and- blue postmodernism art, a tropical garden, and his chequered-coat-wearing dog Charlie.
This helps to fund his painting, and since returning home, he's been a finalist in multiple New Zealand art awards; completed public projects; commissioning; done 19 group or solo exhibitions; and sells his work via Artful, a new online platform that connects Kiwi artists and galleries with local and international buyers, challenging the traditional "white cube" gallery model.
His latest exhibition, Home & Garden, will be held at Supercut Projects' Sonya Korohina's house in Ōtūmoetai, from November 2-6, featuring himself, Lynette Fisher, John Roy, and Jacquelyn Greenbank.
Korohina is an art consultant who works with the creative and heritage sectors, and says Darragh, like many creatives, is "entrepreneurial" - practising fine art while maintaining a stable of New York commercial clients.
"He's very clever and his work is really accessible to a broad audience," she says.
As well as exhibiting new works at Home & Garden, he'll exhibit on Waiheke Island with Portrait of the Artist at Shepperson Education Centre from mid-October to January; and this month paint a 15m-by-5m mural at Te Papa o nga manu Porotakataka (the place of the circling birds), on Mount's Maunganui Rd.
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Coming full circle
His artistic journey has taken him full circle from the dairy farm in Matamata where he grew up.
As a child, he loved thumbing through American home annuals, and mum Sue's House & Garden magazines.
He went on to study graphic design at Wintec and Massey University, before going to Melbourne to work as an art director for fashion magazines, then headed to New York in 2007, aged 25, knowing only one person in the city - an Australian.
After gaining a temporary job at a PR company doing event invitations and marketing for big-name sponsors like socialite Paris Hilton, he gained work in the motion picture and graphics industry.
However, despite his success, he began to feel unfulfilled, and his return to Matamata in 2017 aligned with three big events - becoming sober in 2015, Donald Trump taking the US presidency in 2016, and his third O-1 visa nearing expiry.
"I knew that I wanted to be an [independent] artist and you can't get sponsored to be an artist, you have to be sponsored by a company.
Trump getting in also changed "the entire feeling in New York", he says.
"It got a lot more expensive and not as inspiring as it had been. It just felt like it was the right time [to leave]."
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The end of a dream and the start of another
The first time Darragh, who's almost 40, went to New York, was when he was 6.
"After that trip, I was like 'that's where I'm going to live'. Even when I was there [in my 20s and 30s], I thought 'I'm going to die here'.
"There really is a magic that comes from living there. It's something to do with that huge spectrum of people and cultures. New Yorkers are brash, out there, and self-promoting - the opposite of Tall Poppy Syndrome. It does feel like all your dreams can come true, but you have to make them."
He remembers feeling intimidated in his first job. Everyone was "loud, yelling across the office, and very aggressive. It was intense".
He returned to New York for a visit at the end of 2019, exhibiting both there and in Miami, and could have stayed, but a month earlier had met his now partner, Ali, who owns Mount Maunganui's Forty Thieves Barbershop.
Darragh came home to New Zealand again, shifting in with him at the start of lockdown 2020.
(subhead) Sober reinvention
Of his alcoholism, becoming sober a year and a half before leaving New York was his rebirth.
"New York is a party place. There's also the idea of a third space, where everyone is living in a small apartment, so you're always meeting up in bars - but there are never any excuses. Some people are just predisposed to it," he says.
"I woke up one morning after a bad series of incidents and I just knew that it would be death by some description [if I carried on]. Whether my liver gave out or I walked in front of a car.
"I had to be put in that extreme position ... It really felt like the first day of my life."
While he'd had huge career success, sobriety made him see that he wasn't living his own dream, but "a big corporation's dream".
"Everything I did was under somebody else's banner. It is such a journey when you come off the booze. It's like a veil has been lifted.
"I look back at myself as a 5 and 6-year-old and [ask] 'what was my pure creativity before I was indoctrinated with all the other things life gives you?' I'm always trying to get back to that. That purity of soul that you're born with.
"Every day I'm better than the previous day, and that's just through practice, and living."
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Paul's murals
• Vogue mural at Tauranga Art Gallery for the exhibition Defending Plurality.
• Cross Together street mural at The Incubator (Historic Village).
• Chorus cabinet at Blake Park with the theme Birds Of Aotearoa.
• Designed and painted a mural on half of Ward St in Hamilton for the innovating streets programme for Waka Kotahi-NZTA.
• Painted a mural at Mount's Forty Thieves Barbershop.
• Later this month he will paint a 15m-by-5m mural at Te Papa o nga manu Porotakataka (the place of the circling birds), in Maunganui Rd, combining the urban environment with the natural through shape and colour. He'll then paint a second mural in Hamilton in December. (Sept),
# To view more of Paul's work visit artfull.co.nz For information on Tauranga's Home & Garden exhibition, keep an eye on Paul's Instagram account @bemodern1
