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Dave Gunson
For nearly the last thirty years I have worked as a freelance illustrator and designer. Most of my work in the latter years has been for publishing companies of one kind or another. I have worked as an art director for several magazines in New Zealand and the USA; produced many postage stamp issues for New Zealand and other countries; illustrated- in part or in whole- something in the region of 80-100 books for adults and children; as well as many posters and wallcharts for the New Zealand Geographic magazine and other publishers.
Much of my commercial illustration work has been in the area that might loosely be described as ‘the natural world’, and while I enjoy recording aspects of wildlife in paintings and drawings I work in several other areas…
My realist/figurative works are nearly always rather whimsical in nature- I have always liked to have a touch of the surreal creeping in somewhere to make things other than they might first appear. I suppose it’s the juxtaposition of the commonplace with the unexpected that I enjoy about these paintings.
Juxtaposition is almost the whole point of my abstract geometric work. I am intrigued by the happy accidents that continue to arise in these paintings, as the colours and shapes come together in ways that I hadn’t quite expected, despite arbitrary parameters that I might lay down for each work. These works are known in the family as ‘squaresies’. If they were to be given a formal name, I guess it would have to be the broad label of ‘juxtapositionalism’.
I have had individual works or small exhibitions in many galleries over the years (Flagstaff, New Vision, Portfolio etc) but I have always been something or a reluctant exhibitor, so there is little history in this regard. My wife Barbara and I were both working members of the Auckland Society of Arts, and regularly exhibited in members’ exhibitions until the ASA changed into a wholly teaching enterprise.
