Allen Maddox (front) with his father Harry Maddox during a fishing trip on Lake Waikareiti, 1996. Photo / Supplied
Allen Maddox (front) with his father Harry Maddox during a fishing trip on Lake Waikareiti, 1996. Photo / Supplied
What's the best show in town?
That's easy - it's an exhibit of paintings by abstract expressionism's top dog, Allen Maddox.
Most of his works on display at Napier's Boyd-Dunlop Gallery have never been seen publicly, so we're witnessing an unmitigated treat.
Maddox left Liverpool in 1963 and lived dangerously in Napier until his death, aged 52.
A signature X motif and grid structure lent a familiar note to his oeuvre. But despite the colour he left on and off the canvas, (and the fact his works at this exhibit are asking between $4000 and $40,000) his isn't a household name, even now, in his home city of Napier.
"We were often called to pay his mortgage. One day I had to fly down and meet him in the Provincial Hotel with cash when he hadn't paid his dope dealers."
In 2000, with a distressed liver, he died an excess-related death.
A huge man at more than six foot and 16 stone, "he was really hard to shift when he was drunk", another of his contemporaries told me.
The road-side view of Allen Maddox's former cottage on Burlington Rd, Napier. Photo / File
Local art commentator Roy Dunningham said Maddox and his ideologically-aligned artists at the time, Tony Fomison and Philip Clairmont, formed part of a group of visionaries from the 60s who "dragged New Zealand art kicking and screaming into the 20th century".
"You can sense his lifestyle in his work, that's what makes it so thrilling. He was the last of the heroic individualists."
As an unashamed romantic, it's something I lament; the artists who gave everything, where are they now?
I know of none, except this proud son of Napier, posthumously firing up on the white walls of 4 Hastings St.
Don't miss your chance. The best show in town runs until June 7.
