Southland Artist Fixes Big Fruit Sculpture

Southland’s famous graffiti street artist Deow has just finished repainting the massive Cromwell Big Fruit sculpture, and also has a new daughter.

It has been a busy few weeks for Danny Owen who had to work sleep-deprived over some of the past seven days, up to 17m high in places, to reach the top leaves of the fruit.

The Central Otago District Council has been looking for a specialised painter for the past two years to clean up its massive sculpture, as it was dusty and looked faded.

Naylor Love Central Otago eventually took on the tender and contracted Deow to carry out the painting work – supplying all of the access gear.

Deow said he had worked on other projects for Naylor Love before, and they were looking for someone to be able to do it quickly, within a specific timeframe.

The last time it was painted by a signwriter in the middle of winter, back in 2016, and it took a whole month to finish.

Deow said the fruit had faded so much because it had no UV clear coat on it, and so after a massive waterblast and wash down followed by primer, he applied a water-based acrylic, “to give it more life than it had.”

The pear no longer looks brown and rotten and Deow said he has painted it in more of a ‘juvenile’ state – like a bosc pear should look.

“It was the most challenging surface I have ever painted on… it was definitely very hairy up there at times,” he said.

Overall, he used 100 litres of primer, 100 litres of paint and 72 litres of clear coat.

Deow and his wife are heading back to Los Angeles in a few weeks to introduce their new daughter to the rest of the family, after spending lockdowns building his own home at Otatara.

Working with some of the world’s best street artists, he completed murals in Riversdale, Lumsden and Bluff in recent times, and plans to bring some of his new tribe back to Southland later this year – for another big new project