Pauly Jay
Please join us in welcoming Pauly Jay as our Artist In Residence for 2024. Pauly will be painting daily in the marquee and visitors can watch a new work unfold throughout the week.
Spending his formative years in the turbulent town of Rotorua, New Zealand, Pauly Jay is quick to admit life could have turned out very differently for him.
“For locals, Rotorua has its dark side for sure. There’s a lot of violence, gangs and street kids; there’d be fights at the bus stops and even on the buses going to school each day. As a teenager and in my early 20s, I was partying a lot and heading down a problematic path in hindsight.”
When another group of mates invited Pauly to join them for a Muay Thai Boxing session, the wheels were set in motion for an alternative future.
“I always wanted to do boxing or something, I probably had some built-up rage. It took me a while to go down to the gym with them, but when I did, I got right into it. We started running, working on our fitness and entering competitions. I started looking at partying as sort of interfering with my boxing.”
Pauly’s friendly nature and creative curiosity also kept him on the straight and narrow when others fell victim to drugs, crime and gang life around him.
“Despite the hardships, one of the great things about growing up in Rotorua was the major presence of street art in the community. I’ll always remember sitting next to this guy on the bus, a real hard street gangster sort of bloke, who was doing some tagging in his book. I told him it looked so good and asked him how he did it. He was a bit hesitant to begin with, but he ended up showing me.”
“Most other people wouldn’t have even locked eyes with him, let alone initiated a conversation. But he was an alright guy, he just had that persona where he’d grown up with the gangs; you didn’t laugh, you didn’t smile, showing any scrap of vulnerability was seen as weakness.”
At 26, armed with a barber qualification and a can-do attitude, Pauly moved across the ditch and settled in the Sunshine state. Seeking greater opportunities and financial freedom, Pauly honed his craft for seven years, but never lost sight of his creative and business goal – to open his own shop.
Pauly Jay Dudfield
Fast-forward 15 years and Pauly’s carved out his own slice of paradise in Ashgrove; a rustic, stripped-back barber shop where people can not only get a top-notch cut, but also enjoy old-school music, street-inspired art and real chats in a laid-back environment.
“I joke about barbers being unofficial psychologists; people often open up when they’re sitting in the chair. But it makes me happy when they do, because I’ve intentionally cultivated an environment where I share my own vulnerabilities so that others might feel comfortable to do the same. Not everyone’s going to want to, but it’s so important for men to have space where they can talk about real stuff.”
This open, honest approach to managing mental health is a world away from Pauly’s experience in his younger years, where boys and men were encouraged to bottle up their emotions and wear a mask of toughness – often to the detriment of themselves and those around them.
“When men can’t be vulnerable, feelings tend to manifest in all sorts of damaging ways – crime, family violence, self-medicating with alcohol and drugs, suicide. It’s a terrible shame and it doesn’t need to be that way.”
“I’m glad I’ve been able to speak openly about my experiences of depression and anxiety, particularly relating to the stress of opening a business. It was a fellow business owner that told me about the ‘one year dog’ that tends to strike new business owners. He made me feel much less alone in what I was going through, and I’ve told other men who in turn feel less alone. You don’t need to put up a façade that you can handle everything; that won’t get you anywhere. It takes guts to be vulnerable and put yourself out there.”
These days, with his business ticking along well, Pauly is able to dedicate more time to his ever-growing passion for art. With his style still rooted firmly in street art, Pauly is enjoying the opportunity to explore different directions in terms of colour palettes and stylistic choices.
Pauly Jay, Zara, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
Pauly will join the 2024 Recovered Futures Art Exhibition as this year’s Artist in Residence, wowing thousands of visitors with his live painting every day in the Grand Marquee.
Pop by to visit Pauly:
Friday 4 Oct 11:00am to 3:00pm
Saturday 5 & Sunday 6 Oct 12:30pm to 3:00pm
Monday 7 to Thursday 10 Oct 11:00am to 3:00pm