WHERE YOUNG SURFER-ARTISTS COLOR THEIR WORLD ECSTATIC

New Zealander Stuart Shepherd is an artist based in Raglan, a small town on the west coast of his homeland’s northern island, to the south of Auckland. In the recent past, he taught art at Massey University’s College of Design, Fine Art and Music in Wellington, and for many years he has led the charge in New Zealand researching and promoting the work of local outsider and self-taught artists.

Recently, near his home, the activity of a group of surfer-artists caught his attention. He met with members of the youthful, aquatic gang, and sent us this report.

by Stuart Shepherd

I confess that I’m getting older; I’m now in my sixties, and perhaps my age colors my appreciation of art and even suppresses any inclination I might have to stay up until dawn, watching a sunrise with friends through eyes pinging from the effects of some chemical.

Still, the work of a group of enthusiastic, twenty-something artists, which I recently discovered in Raglan, my small coastal town, did catch my jaded eye. It was made by a collective whose members — Korrin Bevan, Seb Hart, Ziggy Kaviman, Annika Puriri, and Ciaron lannon — call themselves “Acid Mince.” At once exuberant, trippy, grotesque, and baroque, the images these young, self-taught painters create seem to riff off a soup of assorted influences, from graffiti and tattoo art to stoner doodles, Asian folk art, and all sorts of material from Instagram.