Art matters: Huge works transform the intimate to the epic

Hine by Owen Dippie. Photo / Erin Dippie

Owen and Erin Dippie met at her mum's framing business in Tauranga. He would sometimes come to work in his pyjama bottoms where he would stain frames and mouldings for a few hours before sloping off to paint voraciously.

They have been married for two years now and are all wrapped up in a new gallery that opens at 545 Karangahape Rd this evening at 6pm.

Owen was born and raised in Kawerau, a beautiful town "plagued by negative situations", he says.

"Drawing wasn't a subject, it was something fun to do. All my books ended up being art books."

One day a local artist named Edward Hunia painted a mural at his primary school and the young Owen was transfixed. His folks organised art lessons with Hunia, which were arduous for a such a youngster. "We blended paints for hours," he recalls.

From an early age he was fascinated by portraiture and he is best known for his ambitiously large murals, often completed with spray-cans, his favourite form of painting. "Art at the push of a button," he grins.

Aucklanders see his portrait of a friend, Tania, covering a huge blank wall on the south side of an apartment building visible from the southern motorway between Symonds St and K Rd.

The work is called Hine for the three gods represented by her ta moko. "She's just a vessel for her moko's story. To me painting is all the same. It's not graffiti art or street art, it's just art."

In Christchurch, one gigantic wall of the restored Isaac Theatre Royal hosts an untitled work that has become a favourite with locals.

The ballerina mural took over a month to complete and the couple laboured endlessly, mixing colossal amounts of paint and primer in wheelie bins to get the correct hue. First the entire wall had to be filled and prepped before they painted it with a grey-green primer. "She's fallen in the pose, but she's rising into something more beautiful."

Erin carefully photographs all of Owen's work and she manages his career so he can concentrate on painting. She had to be patient to get her pictures of the completed ballerina mural, finished in March 2014.

Now she's noticing new construction that's beginning to block the view of the work from some angles.

"That's the beauty of street art," says Owen. " It's so temporary. It mimics life."

The Dippies have moved in upstairs above the small K Rd exhibition space, which will host the work of other artists from time to time. Owen will be showing a new acrylic on canvas painting at tonight's gallery opening and his murals are showcased with prints of Erin's intricate photographs that don't fully reveal the scale of his work.

If you look closely you'll see the ballerina has a faint seam of the Isaac Theatre running down her back, transforming the painting from the intimate to the epic.