Doug Ford’s eye-catching Raglan Club mural was recently awarded Resene Best Professional Mural 2024.
Using the club’s existing windows, Doug’s 3-D mural gives the viewer a peek through a series of windows at various people in different social situations.
There’s a lot to see in each of the scenes and if you look close enough you might even recognise some of the characters.
Although Doug likes to paint from his mind’s eye, he is influenced by what he sees around him, and some of the mural’s characters will have hints of the people he meets.
“There are a few sneaky portraits in there,” he laughs. “Rob who used to be at Matapihi Gallery is in there playing darts.”
The scenarios might not be a true representation of the club, but it does capture the role it plays in the community of bringing people together.
“The different things the club does come through, with the billiards, the darts, the music, dancing, and the food,” he says.
This is the third time Doug has entered the Resene Mural Masterpieces competition and it’s his second win in the professional category. He’s a big fan of Resene paints so it made sense to enter and the 50 percent off the paint helps with the costs of producing large-scale artworks.
“Once upon a time, Resene were the ones who brought colour into the house paint and they could make every colour and it is always a decent quality,” he says.
Doug has close to 200 murals of all shapes and sizes under his paint brush. He painted his first mural in the 1989 – ‘Cafe de Circus’ in Wellington – not long after finishing a visual communication design degree at Wellington Polytech.
From café walls and churches to traffic signal boxes and school buildings, Doug has left his mark on al fresco canvases around the world.
It was how he stayed in New York rent-free. “Every time I was back in New York, I stayed in a hotel where you paint for accommodation. One time I was there for about seven months and I was just painting at the hotel, street hustling, and selling artwork in the market.”
Doug reckons there’s about three month’s work in the club mural and he’s grateful he was able to spread the work out over a year.
“Some days I would just go out and paint cheekbones, noses and eyeballs, just for an hour or two, because the club have always let me get on with it in my time.”
When he’s not painting murals, you can find Doug at Made Gallery, which is conveniently next door to the club. And if you’re a fan of the mural, Made is the place to find Doug’s paintings, and other quirky artworks for sale.
As we sit on the club’s deck looking at the mural, Doug’s keen eye catches things in the mural he reckons need a bit of work.
“See the lady with the cup of tea and the empty vase on the table; she definitely needs a rose in that vase,” he laughs.
He’s also eyeing up the wall space above the mural where he envisions expanding the artwork into the sky.
“What could make it look right is to extend the sky up to a dark royal blue and have the top of the buildings peeking through some balustrades.”
by Janine Jackson
