Monkey man

HEAD ABOVE THE WATER: With a keen eye for the hypocritical, Brian Campbell is off to Hawke's Bay with his art for an exhibition. Pictures by Liam Clayton

Brian Campbell has been thinking about the ills of the world. Then he put them on to canvas, into the boot of his car and drove them to Hastings for his exhibition, Head Above the Water, opening this week.

He has an eye for humanity's hypocritical, absent-minded and harmful natures.

With a monkey never far from his paintings, they query whether humankind is devolving, or perhaps never really evolved that much in the first place — noting our addiction to planet-destroying fossil fuels and cancer-causing cigarettes.

Brian's art hangs on walls around Gisborne like a badge of awareness when you walk into a friend's house.

Although he is a long-time East Coast resident he was first a South Island import, having grown up in Invercargill.

“It wasn't the worst place in the world, not that I'd go back and live there,” says Brian.

“I was there all my school days. I thought at the time it wasn't a great place but when you look back you had a lot of freedom. It was a good place to be a kid.”

His mother was an early artistic influence and taught him how to draw as soon as he could hold a pencil.

But Brian was not made for Invercargill — he is, after all, a surfer.

His departure from the south of the south was the start of his decades hopping around rubbish jobs to pay his way painting.

“The worst job I ever had was just after I finished high school and with a couple of mates went to Tasmania and worked at a metal foundry.

“I did about an hour but it was so heinous I said to the supervisor, ‘What happens if I leave at the end of the day, do I still get paid?'

The supervisor said, ‘no, you have to work till the end of the week.'

Minutes later Brian and his friend were leaving the foundry.

Another job he had was on the Rangatira ship for the Union Steam Ship Company, ferrying passengers between Wellington and Christchurch.

The company was once the biggest shipping line in the Southern Hemisphere and New Zealand's largest private-sector employer before going under at the end of the 20th century.

He worked on the ship for the better part of a year and saved enough to galavant around Europe, visiting galleries and working a stint in the UK to get through the winter.

At 26 he enrolled at the Elam School of Fine Arts and, as many artists do — Ai Weiwei, Pablo Picasso, John Walsh to name a few — he dropped out.

“I got disillusioned and bailed,” says Brian.

Which was fine by him as many who finish a degree in fine art go on to become teachers, which was not his cup of tea.

Instead he barrelled into years of surfing and “tonnes of shit jobs”, to pay the mortgage and keep the bank off his back.

Although painting on canvas is his passion, he has painted plenty of houses and movie sets.

Lord of the Rings was one of the better painting jobs he has had, working around Hobbiton in Matamata and Minas Tirith in a quarry just out of Wellington.

“You made and painted a lot of stuff that didn't even get filmed, but that was just part of the job.

“I mainly did jobs so I had a bit of money, so I had time to spend painting.”

His latest exhibition, titled Head Above the Water, is named after the state many find themselves in today.

The climate crisis continues to threaten coastal areas, putting millions underwater, while Covid-19 challenges others financially.

“It seems like that is what a lot of people are doing these days,” says Brian about the title.

“Things are looking a bit shaky.”

The paintings going up on gallery walls this week represent decades of thought of a few ideas; little grains of sand slowly rolling around his head, turning into pearls on canvas.

A coastal soul and surfer, the beach is a key theme in Brian's work.

“If there's any sort of landscape it's usually got something to do with the coast. I don't like being inland much, a sort of agoraphobia.”

The water rising on the beaches is also a key theme. In one painting a group are walking away from a picturesque background with houses peeping out of the ocean.

“Because of global warming, people are gonna have to move or they're gonna get swamped.

“When I was young people didn't think too much about the fact that humans might actually f*** the entire planet up.

“But now, on so many fronts, it's becoming so obvious.

“Overpopulation is a huge issue. The natural world is getting overtaken by humans — something big has to happen quite soon.”

Another key motif are the biblical figures paired with fairytale characters.

“It's kind of a fake news thing. You get told stories, and you get told that they are true, and then later on when you grow up you think, ‘ah, that was bullshit'.

“You gotta sort out which is which, and a lot of people just decided to believe the stories for their entire lives.

“So the paintings are about putting fairytale characters in with biblical characters,” says Brian.

Behind him, a painting has a reference to the story of Jonah and the Whale, with a man crawling out of a whale's mouth while Pinocchio and Santa Claus watch.

In the background, Gisborne's bay is dotted with logging ships and Noah's Ark.

Asked if painting was a struggle, he said it was not.

“No, no, it's enjoyable. If you've got a fresh idea, you enjoy it.

“Of course, there is a certain amount of dog's work. You know, when you're just finishing something off and you have to put in the time. But when you've got a new idea you want to do it's not a chore.”

And was it difficult to stay disciplined? Nope, Brian said it was not, because he did not try to be.

“I'm not very disciplined, you know? If I wanna slack off I'll go surfing or go to town or something, I'm not glued to it. I just keep chipping away and things get finished.

“It's only when you've got an exhibition. I've been working pretty steadily recently because I know I have to.”

Being an artist in a small town is an artistic gift but a monetary curse.

“It's easier in a bigger town, but I think if you're in a smaller town you can do your own thing.”

Brian describes a sort of theory of natural selection, living in a small town as an artist. The DNA in small towns is genetically separate from their big city counterparts, so the art there evolves and develops differently.

“You're not so influenced by what other people are doing,” he said. “I think a lot of people do get influenced by whatever the fashionable thing is. You see a lot of people work on similar lines and you don't get that in smaller regions because you're working on your own.

“You hang out in Gisborne long enough you turn into some different sort of creature (than) if you lived in the middle of Auckland all your life.”

But being physically isolated does not mean a mental separation.

“The ideas come from listening to the news, reading the paper and thinking about stuff.”

Out in the garage where the work is done RNZ National hums in the background, providing fodder for the canvas.

Car packed with paintings, no doubt with RNZ playing through the speakers, Brian safely delivered his paintings to Hastings City Art Gallery. The exhibition runs from May 8 to August 8.