How Paddy McGurgan is using his art form to make a difference

He has worked with some of the most famous faces in fashion and show business — from Yasmin le Bon to Mischa Barton, Christine Bleakley to Girls Aloud. McGurgan has been named “European Creative Makeup Artist of the Year” and “Winner in the Professional Category of Illamasqua Distinction of Makeup Artistry” and has worked at global fashion weeks and at the MTV Awards.

Prior to launching his own successful company, he also worked for some of the most prestigious cosmetics brands globally — household names such as MAC, Nars and Laura Mercier. Yet despite all this glamour, in conversation, he is softly spoken, generous with his time and utterly lacking in pretension.

While he has trained over 650 makeup artists and employs some 30 more, McGurgan constantly continues to explore and express his creativity through his creative professional photoshoots. The looks seen here are sure to provide plenty of inspiration to his customers, and to readers, as Halloween approaches — with the ‘Devil’ look proving hugely popular so far to his fans.

However, while the makeup looks here are extraordinary in their creativity and their technical skill, there is also a deeper resonance behind these images. In the run-up to World Mental Health Day earlier this month, and using makeup as his medium, Paddy McGurgan created this ‘You are worth more than your Darkness’ photo campaign to highlight rising suicide rates across the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as to open up a conversation around mental health issues in general, partnering with mental health charity, Action Mental Health, in doing so.

“I think makeup can become almost addictive,” says McGurgan on the phone from his Belfast store.

It can be used as a way to hide away. I draw a comparison: We take medication when we are unwell and it makes us better, but then people can become addicted to it and it then has a negative effect. I feel sometimes makeup can follow that same journey and it then loses focus of what it’s there to do — which is to instil a person with confidence, instil a sense of creativity and a way of presenting yourself as an individual. But used wrongly makeup can also result in a sense that you are never happy with what you see in the mirror no matter how much makeup you have on.

McGurgan says that social media carries a burden of blame in terms of its affect on people’s self-esteem. “I recently had two experiences. One in which I dealt with a beautiful girl who has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. She could be a fashion model — she is truly beautiful. I did her makeup and the results were stunning. However she could not or would not post one of the photos we’d created up on social media because she was terrified of her followers seeing her without her fuller brows and heavier makeup. She was afraid of their rejection.

“The second situation was when I did makeup for a girl for her formal (debs). I could see her looking at herself in her phone — she didn’t like it. After some discussion I realised that she didn’t like how the makeup was photographing in Snapchat. My jaw hit the ground. It wasn’t about what she looked like ‘in real life’ — it was about how many likes she’d get on the photos she’d post at the event. This really is a perfect example of the stress and unnecessary pressure young women are putting themselves under when they should be dancing and enjoying themselves.”

McGurgan was also prompted to produce this photoshoot by the death by suicide of a young woman, a friend-of-a-friend, in the past few months.

“I was struck by how the darkness can creep up on you. By how the darkness can take such a stronghold. I knew I wanted to create something that reflected that other person inside of us — the dark side we have to sometimes wrestle with.”

The idea of a beautiful young woman struggling with the dark side inspired the central black and white image of a silhouetted face-within-a-face that you see here. “This young woman was a beautiful girl. She was super funky and trendy and into her makeup. So I wanted to do a beautiful face on one side — a typical look that you see on many young women. No matter how much beauty you see in someone, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they see the same beauty in themselves.”

“Our rates of suicide are climbing,” says McGurgan.

“Even my own staff have been affected. It’s an epidemic. I feel a responsibility to do anything I can by using my art to highlight the issue and to try to get the services in place for the people who need them.”

makeupprostore.co.uk; paddymcgurgan.com