Artist in Residence: David Puck
The Progress Pride Flag serves as the inspiration for artist David Puck’s captivating 360-degree murals for Ralph Lauren at Brooklyn’s Domino ParkDavid Puck grew up in the small town of Hereford on the English side of the border with Wales. Back then, there were zero spaces that Puck says they could feel comfortable in as a young Queer person. “We didn’t have a Pride [parade] or anything like that,” Puck says over a Zoom call from Los Angeles on a May afternoon. “Recently, my mom sent me this newspaper clipping about the Hereford drag queens at Pride. It’s just incredible to see that happen in less than 10 years. If I had had that when I was a teenager growing up in this very rural conservative place, it would have been a game changer.”
For that reason, Puck sees Pride as an important expression of Queer culture and history—one they often find themselves creating murals and art pieces for. Case in point: This year’s 360-degree murals for Ralph Lauren that wrap the four silos at Brooklyn’s Domino Park. Inspired by the new Progress Pride flag, the works incorporate colors to represent marginalized people of color, trans individuals, those living with HIV/AIDS, and those who have been lost to the illness. It’s a more intersectional future, says Puck, about their inspiration.
“A big conversation about Pride at the moment is how much it represents everyone within the Queer community because there is often a lot of criticism of mainstream Pride events for not doing that,” Puck says. “Hopefully, I think we’re seeing an improvement, in that those criticisms are being listened to.”
Puck, who expresses themself through drag, has been creating murals, makeup, and digital paintings (they host Painterview, a visual podcast in which they make digital portraits while interviewing friends and people whom they admire) that show a cross-section of Queer life since they picked painting back up after a long hiatus during their early 20s. Having earned a degree in Queer history from the University of Oxford, before traveling the world and trying out a variety of jobs, Puck picked up the paintbrush again four years ago.
Puck describes the return to painting, while living in Berlin, as an “intense, almost spiritual, experience” that sent them down the path of becoming an artist. They started posting their paintings on Instagram—mostly colorful portraits of friends and acquaintances. Quickly, their work developed a signature of splashy backgrounds behind colorfully impressionistic faces. It was only natural that they started to incorporate drag into their work.
“It was a long journey for me to feel good about myself,” says Puck, whose drag project, David Puck Makeup, features the artist painting their own face in a variety of ways (like as a Dr. Pepper can, an eggplant emoji, and paintings by Renoir and Monet) as a way to explore ideas of mental health and play. “I was into drag before watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, but definitely Drag Race accelerated it massively and gave so many more access points to be able to appreciate this culture and this art form. When I started murals, it was a separate thing. And then I just combined the two.”
Puck, who is currently studying to be a psychologist, has now done dozens of murals, focusing on drag queens like RuPaul, Alaska, and Peppermint, as well as other Queer luminaries. But in those early days a few years ago, they found themself in an apprehensive place. They had painted two murals, which they then used to apply to a graffiti festival. “I was so nervous because I was thinking everyone’s going to be straight because it’s graffiti,” Puck says with a laugh.
But it turned out that Puck still has friends from that festival. And they’ve noticed an uptick in Queer street art culture. “I’m meeting more and more Queer muralists now, especially because I put myself out there so much, they kind of gravitate toward me,” they say. “There’s really not that much, but I do think it’s something that’s growing.”
With their stock rising—they have worked with HBO and Amazon Prime—Puck is a big part of that movement.
- Images courtesy of George Ivanoff
