Meet David Puck

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Puck.

Thanks for sharing your story with us David. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m a painter and muralist, focusing on queer culture and mental health awareness. I paint mostly queer portraits, such as of drag artists, and through their stories, explore universal principles of life and mental health. I see art and painting as a vehicle for communication and connection. I’ve always loved art and been fascinated/confused by humans, how differently we think and experience life, partly informed by my own mental health challenges. I studied [Queer] History at college, and spent a long time traveling and exploring different jobs, before coming back to painting a few years ago. Since I didn’t go to art school, I just followed what interested me and was important in my life – queer people/culture, drag, therapy and mental health, portraits, abstract-realism, fast mediums like spray paint, and murals and live painting (as a way to make the painter lifestyle more social and adventurous).

The three pillars of creativity, queerness and psychology are always present and finding new forms. Recently I’ve started a video series interviewing other queer artists whilst live painting their portraits. I volunteer as a suicide crisis counselor and am looking to further professional training in mental health services. And I’m always pushing my own aesthetics, mediums and creativity – through painting and through other practices like improv, textiles, dancing, music, makeup, digital. I see life holistically, in that all of our experiences and practices inform each other – and my job is to allow myself to live my own path most fully and authentically (whilst also having to ya know pay bills and whatnot).

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Personally, its been a difficult road because ever since I can remember, I’ve had mental health challenges (although I didn’t understand them in this way at first!) – like anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, intense negative self-criticism. This experience and how much it affected me and the outcomes of my life is partly what makes me so passionate about mental health services and psychology now, as a tool to help others. Because culturally, we focus so much on the practical external and I believe we should be paying as much attention to the internal perceptual. Much like other newer fields like Environmentalism, there is so much we have to learn and apply from Positive Psychology to make all of our lives healthier, its inspiring how much room there is for growth, but also sad to see how ignorantly unhealthy are so much of our current systems and cultural mindsets. (Much like how I imagine some environmentalists feel about our environmental practices…)

In terms of art, I work and self-support full-time as a painter now, and the financial struggles early on were real and still are in many ways. The stereotype of the starving artist exists for a reason… Its a very difficult job to make a living from, especially when you prioritize niche messages and your own creative fulfillment, rather than pandering to economic success/preferences. I honestly wouldn’t recommend trying to make money from art and instead find a job that supports you whilst not taking up all of your time/energy, so that you can do both and not have economic pressures/influences affect the artwork. I’m still looking to go that route myself, in spite of my art selling better than I imagined.

Generally, I think challenges can be a positive thing, with introspection, they can motivate learning and growth.

Please tell us more about your art.
I’m primarily a painter and muralist, focusing on queer culture and mental health. I exhibit in art galleries and sell/commission paintings, create large-scale public murals and street art, and make related online content. I incorporate other artforms like video-making, makeup, drag, digital art, memes, and writing. Everything is an evolving process and I always look to learn and explore new elements and paths.

I’m probably most known for my large drag queen murals, as I’ve worked with or been shared by some of the most well-known drag artists in the world – like Alaska, Willam, Bendelacreme, Jinkx, Peppermint, Valentina, Mayhem Miller, Delta Work, Meatball, Conchita Wurst, Hey Qween, Bambi Mercury, Gigi Goode, Tammie Brown, The Boulet Brothers, World of Wonder, Precinct. However, I’ve also had non-drag murals in leading Art magazines like Juxtapoz, Beautiful Bizarre and Hi-Fructose – and I will be exhibiting with the industry-leading Thinkspace_Art in December. So I’m happy with my wagon even when unhitched from the Drag Race stars 😛

I’m most proud of the queer murals – making large-scale public art is physically demanding, time-consuming, expensive and can involve a lot of bureaucracy and public scrutiny. Most of the work happens before paint is even put on the wall, and I don’t think people realize how hard it is to secure a non-commercial wall, nor that the vast majority I pay for myself out of pocket (Another reason why interesting art and economic demands aren’t necessarily correlated). Nearly all of the walls I secure, they only allow me to paint drag queens because they like the aesthetic of my painting style, so it’s in spite of it not because of it. And I can’t count the number of projects I’ve been rejected from because of my portfolio being queer. And all of this is partly why there aren’t a lot more queer murals out there already.

I set out to make public queer art because I believe in sharing the values of queer community – diversity, acceptance, compassion, empathy. And I know how hetero-masc dominated, and unwelcoming, the (street art) world can be. And through queer visibility and mental health, I seek to create a more welcoming and supportive world than the one I found myself in and struggled to exist harmoniously with. I’m proud that I set out to do and make what I believe in, to forge my own path and just hope that fingers crossed it will all turn out okay in the end. I’ve had to overcome countless fears in order to do what I’m doing, but I tell myself that confronting challenges creates growth, and each fear conquered emboldens me to take on the next with greater confidence and joy.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
My definition of success has changed a lot over time. I’ve always just wanted to be happy first and foremost. And I thought to be happy I needed to make art full time. So I wanted to be able to make $10,000 a year from painting (what I was living off at the time) so that I could live, afford paint, and not have to spend my time/energy working an debilitating job. And so relatedly I ‘needed’ like 15,000 or so Followers, to consistently be showing in reputable art galleries, working with well-known figures, and participating in the big international mural festivals.

But this last year since living in LA, I achieved all of these goals and more, and it was pleasing but also confusing. I felt like the Oscar winner who holds the statue in hand and after the initial rush of adrenaline fades, they wonder ‘Now what…? The next Oscar, I suppose’. And inevitably nothing is ever ‘enough’, but as the projects grow, expectations and requirements normalize and change. So like the rich businessman who always thinks their next million will be the one that’s enough to make them happy, I think general ideas of ‘success’ succumb to the same distortion. And this is all culturally a pretty common idea, and I knew it beforehand too, its part of what led me to pursue painting rather than other jobs because I loved the painting process as much as the outcome. And yet, I still found myself being led astray by this success illusion.

So now I’m taking the pressure off of ‘success’, my life circumstance and art itself. Art on its own won’t make me happy, no one thing will. Success to me is living – being sufficiently happy and healthy, a balancing act of different forces in life. To explore creatively, to be around people that I love, to help others, to be physically healthy, to learn, to rest, to breathe, to laugh.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.davidpuckartist.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidpuckartist/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidPuckArtist/
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/davidpuckartist

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