In Conversation With: Craig McClure

How would you describe what you do to someone who hasn’t seen your art?

As an amalgamation of painting and illustration, with a strong influence from my compulsive doodling habit. What I love about doodling is its lack of pressure and expectation, allowing for spontaneous ideas and compositions to emerge.

When and how did you first fall in love with art?

I’m not sure if I knew it was art at the time, but cartoons, animation, comic books, and collector cards were the absolute coolest things to me as a child. I was drawn to the illustration style and print aesthetic, and that attraction still holds true to this day. When I was around 10, I had the incredible opportunity to see an animator at work at Disney Studios, and that experience fully solidified in my mind that this was something I really wanted to spend my life doing.

What makes where you work special?

I am currently based in Hamilton, New Zealand, also known as Kirikiriroa, Aotearoa. My studio is located in a unique second-floor industrial space in the inner city, which I have named The Lighthouse. It is a shared studio space that provides open work spaces and a workshop for a community of independent artists. It’s a wonderfully supportive environment. 

What does a typical day in the studio involve?

It all starts with some reading or gestural ink works on paper. It’s important for me to warm up my creative muscles without any pressure or expectations. I usually have between 10 and 30 paintings and drawings in progress at the same time, and I tend to work on several of them simultaneously in a state of organised chaos. This means I often have a lot of unfinished work lying around sometimes for months or years, but eventually, many of them come together and are finished all at once — signalling it’s time for an exhibition. A friend once likened me to a cat with its own laser pointer, and I think that’s a pretty accurate description of my creative process.

Where do you find inspiration?

Of course, inspiration can come from anywhere, and I try to stay open to all sources. I’m a voracious consumer of news, social media, film and television, literature, and whatever else catches my attention. It all goes into a mental blender, and eventually, something unique and exciting emerges. Stylistically, I’ve always been drawn to sci-fi and comic-books, with each piece building on the last, creating a continuous narrative that is uniquely mine. Art is a mysterious and often chaotic process, and I’m just along for the ride.

What have you been working on recently?

I’ve had the recent opportunity to paint some murals in Auckland and Hamilton, including one for the University of Waikato’s Psychology and Social Sciences department. This mural was inspired by Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and features a surreal landscape with a wandering character trying to make sense of things.