Local Folk – Stu Duval

Stu Duval travels Aotearoa and Australia every year talking to thousands of people, from children to corporates, telling stories animated with live cartooning to empower imagination and the ‘theatre of the mind’. Although he can often be found dreaming up new story worlds in his Army Bay studio, he tells Cathy Aronson how in reality a creative career is hard work and you can’t go from ‘zero to hero’ overnight.

I was born in Christchurch. My dad was in the Air Force at Wigram. I didn’t enjoy being an Air Force kid, I like to keep my feet on the ground.  We moved to different bases travelling up the country until we finally settled in West Auckland. My first landscape paintings were inspired by Waitakere and Piha. I’m a Westie living in Whangaparaoa. I miss the Waitakere bush and wild seas, but the beaches are safer here for children.

I loved drawing as a kid. I was always doodling, on paper, on my arm, the neighbour’s arm. When I was five-years-old I won a local newspaper art competition in Blenheim. I was given a gold pen with my name on it and was chuffed, whimsically thinking ‘this is the life for me – you draw stuff and they give you stuff’, so I decided ‘I’ll be an artist’.

Dad painted in his spare time. He would have been a great painter, he’s passed away now. He never got the opportunity at school. At the schools I went to art wasn’t encouraged, it was a rainy day activity. It was prescriptive, there was no scope in my father’s era, or my era, to really be creative and follow it as a passion or career. So I left school in sixth form, they didn’t offer art as a subject and I didn’t want to be an engineer or carpenter. Fortunately in those days you could leave school and jobs were plentiful. I worked as an art junior in an art department. I sharpened pencils, watched what they did, and taught myself.

In New Zealand to make a living off fine art is very difficult but also selfish; you have to forgo a lot of things, but I wanted a family. So I fitted it in around other jobs that allowed me to paint. People call it a career path, mine was more of a careening path. I had all kinds of jobs. I was a factory worker, a ranger in the bush, a mural painter, cartoonist, children’s minister, broadcaster on radio, motivational speaker. I had a parallel career as a graphic artist, commercial artist, children’s book illustrator and advertising, marketing and creative director. Art has always been what I fall back on: until recent years when I combined storytelling with writing books, but art was still at the core.

I’ve always loved stories, hearing them, telling them. My mother read to me a lot, the great classics, and I created pictures in my head. I was intrigued with creating imaginary worlds in my mind, with maps and characters. I’ve always been involved in kids and youth work. I was a Scout leader and commissioner. I formed the Dynamite Bay Charitable Trust. We had 70 outdoor clubs nationwide. We trained leaders and got kids from behind computer to enjoy the outdoors. I had lots of practice telling stories around the campfire.

I wrote my first book, Achtung Pavlova, when I was creative director of an advertising agency in Hawkes Bay. It was a war parody for kids. A U-Boat of Germany’s elite has come to kidnap the creator of the world famous pavlova and take her back to Germany to bake one for Adolph Hitler’s birthday. I decided if it was published I would quit the corporate world and pursue full time storytelling. It was published straight away. So I left my job and moved to Auckland and started writing and illustrating stories. It coincided with the birth of my first son, Pierre. That was 15 years ago.

I thought it was normal to get published that easily, but realised it’s not. You can’t just go from zero to hero. I had a mortgage and a young family and needed an income stream to keep writing. By serendipity a friend who was a principal at primary school invited me to share my stories and pay me. I thought I would do it for week or two, then the requests kept coming in. Being an advertising and marketing man I made brochures and a website and was booked solid for five years, so it became a full time profession.

Every year I go to hundreds of schools and talk to thousands of kids, I call myself a travelling talesman. Last month I was in Matakana, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Napier, Taupo, Wellington and Brisbane. It was serendipitous because it enabled me to write and meet my audience for the books.

I’ve written 11 novels now, primarily for 8-16 year olds, two were written for adults. My latest book The Golden Spark Plug of Awesomeness for 8-12 year olds was inspired by my 10-year-old son Louis. He said ‘why don’t you tell the kind of story that you tell me at night?’

I get a lot of ideas for my stories from my adventure loving sons, and a lot of feedback. But I get inspiration from other places too. Ideas are everywhere, the trick is to capture them. I always say ideas are like sparrows – there are millions of them flying overhead but you don’t want a million, you only want one. You’ve just got to look up.

I’m tired of hearing that boys don’t read. They love to read they just haven’t been able to read books they want in a way they want to, instead of sitting at a desk. Seeing me with no props or movie set, creating a story with words and pictures and musical sound effects, enables and empowers them – so I’ve been told by teachers and so I believe. It’s the same for the corporate training I do.

Writing and art are similar to me. You start with a blank page, both create a picture and a story. I have a hundred story performances about everything from pirates, quests, dragons and history. I enjoy telling Gallipoli and Anzac stories. They’re very powerful and resonate with Kiwis. That sacrifice, it doesn’t happen these days.

There are different stories for different ages. I often go to a school and I have sessions for junior, middle and senior students. I do storytelling first, which starts with a drawing in front of them on a big easel for three minutes and then tell a one hour story around it. I also do workshops to teach them how to cartoon and write.

The world of imagination is the same as the caveman days, that primeval urge will never change. Boys and girls crave adventure and mystery. Yes kids today are digital natives and their world is presented to them digitally but they are passively watching it. Stories create a picture and world in their mind. It’s important for self-expression.

Digital works for the mind, but it doesn’t captivate the heart. When you’ve got both working and they’ve created a story and images in their mind – that’s powerful. That releases their creativity.

In this video Stu Duval explains his historical fantasy The Last Kiwi, a long-term project he has been working on for three years with limited edition prints of characters and hand-crafted journals.
Video by journalism student Chantel Strydom.