Maughan to be wild

Here's what you think when you first meet Karl Maughan: how friendly, funny and down-to-earth he is. Dressed in his usual combo of black shorts and shirt with the paint-speckled sleeves rolled up, Karl looks more like a suburban dad than someone who has revolutionised the New Zealand art scene.

He laughs when I tell him that. But one of Aotearoa’s leading artists is, in fact, a dad – to two daughters and a son, aged between 16 and 21 – and he lives in Kelburn, a suburb high on Wellington’s hills, with his author/university lecturer wife Emily Perkins.

You might not know his face but, even if you’ve been calling the underside of a rock home for the past few years, you’ll know Karl’s work: bright bursts of flowers, dark green