Paul has been tutoring part-time at the Whitecliff College of Art in Auckland for the last eighteen years while working on portraiture, commercial and personal work.
He has had an extensive career in illustration working in several of the top Auckland advertising agencies in the seventies and early eighties. He has completed a variety of significant private commissions including all of the America's Cup Skippers. His portraits have been regularly featured in the New Zealand Portrait Awards (recently renamed the Adam Portaiture Awards) and in 2004 he was commissioned to design and illustrate six stamps and two first day cover motifs for the Christmas Stamps for NZ Post.
Paul is a passionate about painting the portrait incorporating a loose and free style as he attempts to capture the essence of a particularly striking pose. He teaches
life drawing and figure studies and this allows him the ability to constantly perfect his own technique. Paul likes to discover the inherent strength that can be found in individual portrait studies by quietly observing interesting face studies. He paints intuitively with a degree of perception and only uses photographs as a reference tool.
He is particularly adept at portraying urban Maori. The work evolves on the canvas as he applys the paint allowing him to discover more about his perception of the subject. Character imperfections appeal to him and a general feeling is evident in his work that the subject has experienced life in a particular way.
Paul's works are collected both nationally and internationally and he has been influenced by the American artist Alex Kanevsky (scroll down for latest work)
See other works by Paul Hooker here