David Puck
portraits at the Seaport Muralfest 24
Photo by Mike Szpot, Seaport Entertainment Group
Photos by Katie Godowski
David Puck, The Seaport, NYC 2024
Artist Bio: David Puck is a queer painter and performer. @DavidPuckArtist & @DavidPuckDrag . They've worked with orgs like HBO, The Eurovision Song Contest, Savage x Fenty, Ralph Lauren and LA/NYC Prides. They've been featured in leading art press like Beautiful Bizarre, Hi-Fructose, Them, Dazed Beauty and Juxtapoz. Their painting primarily explores queer experience and mental health through abstracted portraiture.
Photo by David Dini
Artist statement: My painting is inspired by the common feeling of being "wrong", "bad", "ruined" - conditioned into us by capitalism and our society's emotional norms. The portraits are painted in realistic detail over many hours. But the painting is not finished. They are then intentionally covered by a big yellow brush stroke. Has the painting been "ruined"? Is it now "bad"? Faces scribbled out, "beautiful" detail covered over. The moment this brush stroke happens, many onlookers are surprised and confused. On one level the finished image directly reflects this feeling of being "wrong" - scribbled out, unseen, distorted. On another level, it questions what it is to be "wrong". The brush stroke is intentional. The covered painting is not "wrong" at all, it is the way it was designed to be. It is just as beautiful and correct as the painting before the brush stroke. When we feel "wrong", we are not wrong at all, we are human, living in a challenging world that teaches us to feel wrong, we can accept ourselves as we are.
This project is incredibly meaningful to me as it centers mental health in public conversation. This is something that I have always done with my own mural and street art work. I have had life-changing experiences myself with mental health, particularly through IFS Internal Family Systems therapy. I have also worked and volunteered for many years in mental health services and trained as a therapist. Mental health awareness, particularly trauma-informed perspectives, underscores everything I do in my life and art. So it feels very special to paint for a project that shares these values.
It was a wonderful experience painting with You Are Not Alone Murals. The team and all the other artists are a delight. It's so interesting seeing everyone's different creative interpretations from the same starting point and colour palette. And the location at Seaport is so beautiful - with the stunning views of the bridges, ships and river. I hope the outcome of my mural at Seaport will be that people will be inspired to think and interpret the images in their own way, and ultimately that they feel supported and not alone.