Cover Artist… Patrick Hunter

Growing up heavily dyslexic, March cover artist Patrick Hunter developed a superpower, asking others for help, and this gift of approaching talented people and seeking to learn from them has played a priceless role in his life and his art. But a career as an artist wasn’t Patrick’s first choice.

“I wanted to be an actor,” Patrick recalls. “I got quite a lot of work, but my last job was as an extra on Wolverine, being cinematically obliterated by an American nuclear warhead. Filming was in Cronulla.” The script’s atomic energy couldn’t contain Patrick. “I just walked off set. I didn’t want to be an extra anymore, and because there were so many extras, they could never keep track of everyone. I started walking, becoming lost in the actors’ tents, before ending up in Hugh Jackman’s tent where he was literally pumping his muscles to get ready for the next scene. There were 3 chicken carcasses beside him. I guess he had to eat so much to stay massive.”

True to form, Patrick wasn’t going to let The Prestige encounter with The Boy from Oz pass without asking for some X-Men wisdom. “He made me stand on the elastic band he was using to pump his muscles up.” Hugh was seriously jacked. “I was in a place mentally where I felt like a prop, getting pushed around, which is what I should’ve felt, I was an extra! But I asked him if he had the ability to choose what he does or if he also felt like a prop. Hugh said even in his position he still mostly had to do what he was told, that he didn’t have much artistic freedom, and that if I truly felt like that was a deal breaker, acting probably wasn’t for me.”

This incredible encounter was short lived. Do-gooders aka security busted in with the usual, “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?! Get the hell out of here!!” So predictable. “I walked off set, properly this time, and into the icy Cronulla sea breeze. I spoke with Hugh for maybe one minute, but it had a huge impact on me, gave me the clarity to commit to the arts and especially to street art, where the creators I looked up to were leading lives with freedom and able to communicate in the way of their choosing.”

Jump ahead a decade, Patrick is a street art powerhouse, creating murals able to transform public places. You’ve likely encountered his work on the Northern Beaches, Sydney, all over New South Wales. “I always think, how do you connect with the people around you? People are sensory beings. Music fills time. Art fills space. Food fills bellies. People connect with anything that appeals to their senses, so if you can create a piece of art that hits the senses and creates feelings, you’ve really got something.”

As for the Tawny cover’s inspiration, “I love the natural environment, and I played with the elements of surfing and painting, things I see as integral to the Northern Beaches, then morphing it into a big hand, turning over into a tube spilling from a bucket. I feel like the Northern Beaches has an amazing amount of musicians and artists, but that hand in the tube is representing a hand holding them back, that there’s a lack of opportunity given to local artists by stagnant spaces.”

Hear! Hear! More murals, less stagnation.