Fresh Start with Painting

MURRURUNDI resident David Darcy only picked up a paint brush 12 months ago, but on Saturday he attended the opening of the Archibald’s Salon Des Refuses exhibition in Sydney as a portrait finalist.

David had forged a career as a photographer, specialising in capturing ‘mongrels’ of the four legged kind but had always wanted to try his hand with the brush.

“My mainstay has been dogs, which is why I’ve been involved with the red dog movie and shot both the movies, but dogs has been my big thing for the last 17 or 18 years, but when my last dog passed away last year I thought I need to look for something else and I wanted to paint and I wanted to have a go at portraiture,” said Mr Darcy.

“I picked up a paint brush 12 months ago, painted picture and thought I can do this and that’s why I brought this place in Murrurundi because I thought I need a studio,” he said.

David Darcy with his painting of Nelson Ross and Red Dog.

“I’ve worked with Nelson for some years on both (Red Dog) movies and I decided to paint a portrait and decided to put it in the Archibald and I’ve only just started painting here in Murrurundi and opened the gallery about three months ago, painting seriously for the last four months and to get in is quite an honour because there are only two people who haven’t been in the Archibald there’s four winners from the Archibald that are in the exhibition so it’s quite prestigious.

“I needed a fresh start and I thought I need somewhere where I can have a studio and paint, I fixed up this fish and chip shop in Murrurundi and about four months ago I finally got to sit down and start painting and that’s like the third painting I’ve ever done, so I’m really chuffed,” he said.

“I really wanted to give painting a go and now that I’ve got recognition on this level I know that it’s the right choice to make, it’s always been there burning away at me but I’d just never had the time and space to do it,” David Darcy said.

David said the recent move to Murrurundi from the Blue Mountains was a fresh start and he hasn’t looked back.

“Something drew me here and it’s been a godsend,” David said.

“We’d had a really bad sleep in Tamworth one night in a campervan and we were just heading back to Newcastle and we were so tired and we pulled up here and I said, ‘my God this is a pretty little town’ and I drove around the block and I needed to have a look around, when I got back to Newcastle and realised this place was for sale and it was cheap so I made an offer and I haven’t looked back,” he said.

“Since opening three months ago it has been incredible, I’ve had such support, I feel really embraced here,” David Darcy said.

It has been an eventful month for David, with his photo of Brian Brown being accepted into the International Biennially of Photography in Victoria, which will open next month.

David’s photo of Bryan Brown, a finalist in the International Photo Biennially in Ballarat next month.

David specialised in photographing dogs, something he stumbled upon when his dogs kept interrupting his scenic shots.

“There was a defining moment many years ago when I went to photograph some landscapes and I took my two dogs with me and they kept running in the picture and I thought I should just photograph dogs being themselves in an Australian setting and this was at a time when no one else was doing it and I was shooting on film,” he said.

“I did a market in Canberra and I sold all of my pictures and I thought this could actually work, then I opened a little gallery and two days after I opened the gallery an agent walked in and said they wanted to do a book and for me it was a passion.

“I loved travel and I absolutely adored my dogs and photography that I’d learnt from a young age, my father was a photographer and I’d learnt photography as a kid splashing around in a darkroom,” David Darcy said.

David has also published eight best-selling pictorial books on dogs, which are for sale at his new studio in Murrurundi, Darcy and the Fox.