What and who inspires your own work?
Initially, music was my biggest inspiration - trying to translate the visceral thrill of rock and roll in to images.
The Beatles have been a huge influence, I discovered them aged 10 and they opened the gateway to all kinds of cultural learning. I found Peter Blake through them and fell in love with Pop Art. I love designers/illustrators who were/are at the nexus of art and music, like Barney Bubbles, and the poster artists of San Francisco (Victor Moscoso and Rick Griffin particularly). After a while, one becomes attuned to inspiration everywhere and it becomes less easy to pin down. Inspiration is really like a radio playing in your head, it's always on but is sometimes swamped by ones internal dialogues, so it's really important to learn how to tune those voices out. That is something I'm very much still figuring out. I work whether I'm inspired or not, sometimes you have to keep showing up regardless, like an athlete training on sand.
What are your favoured techniques/media to work with and why?
What are your favoured techniques/media to work with and why?
Techniques and media can be a trap, so I try and keep moving and trying different things. Out of college I worked almost solely in acrylics, but it was so time consuming that I had an hourly rate on par with a Nike shoe stitcher. I basically had to give it up, painting long hours against the clock stifled experiment. I then started making images digitally, late 90's. It was a godsend because I could do many different things, and it was really fresh, exciting and experimental. I was lucky to catch the first wave of digital work, after a while it became a very commonplace way of making art and less interesting to me. Then I started painting in watercolour. I chose to paint in watercolour because it's so tactile and I'd missed painting, it's also much quicker than acrylic. I've been on jags of just pure drawing, I guess I fall in and out of love with techniques, I burn out on them, a groove can become a rut. Recently I've been using a Wacom tablet, something a couple of years ago I'd vowed not to touch, but those kind of rules are foolish, it's good to experiment. I'd love to do some etching and I'd also ultimately like to try oil paints, but I'm not in a space where I can use those media.
Who are your favourite illustrators/artists who you feel influence you in your work?
Illustration has mostly been a secondary influence, it's primarily been painters and designers. I love the golden age of Victorian illustrators though, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielson in particular, and 60's & 70's illustrators like Bob Peake and Richard Amsel, Milton Glaser and the Pushpin folk. The last contemporary illustrator who I sat up and noticed was James Jean, he draws so beautifully. My favourite artists are David Hockney, Peter Blake, William Waterhouse, John Singer Sargant, R.B Kitaj and Ingres.
What has been your most enjoyable brief to work on, or which piece of work have you most enjoyed creating?
I think the most enjoyable work is where I have had a breakthrough or managed to voice something that has so far been elusive,
Last summer I did a poster for MGMT and I loved doing it because it was different to anything I'd done before, and recently I did a painting for a show of movie posters in London of the film THX1138 and that was technically interesting to do.
Do you think your surroundings and where you live has an effect on the way you work? If so, how have the different places you have lived had an impact on your work?
I think that ones attitude is foremost in importance, but I guess this can be influenced by your surroundings. I spent my teenage years in the countryside in Somerset and I used art as an escape, a way to imagine who, what, and where I was going to be after I had the freedom to move. I then spent about 12 years in London and that was a very fertile time. Big cities attract interesting people. Then I moved to San Francisco, I wanted a different way of life, I guess I wanted to settle down. I don't know what impact San Francisco has had, I love the look of it and I take lots of photographs. There is an openness here both physically and mentally which I love and that's really important to me as a person, and hopefully my art reflects some facets of that person. I have no doubt that the more present and attentive to wherever you are, the more inspired your work is going to be.
As every artist is always evolving, are there any particular projects or areas of design/illustration that you think you would like to be involved in in the furture that you haven't had the opportunity to do yet?
Here are some thoughts on the perennial question of Digital/ handrawn.
Before digital work came to the fore, illustration was in a very quaint marginal place. Artwork had to be delivered to the designers and then sent to a scanning house and put on a drum scanner. It was inflexible, often laborious, involved couriers, phone calls, faxes and was pretty uncool on the whole.
With the advent of digital work, designers and illustrators were on the same page, something that had been a long time coming. The flexibility and general convenience of a digitally supplied image was a real boon to the industry. Initially, pre late 90's, computer generated images were, more often than not, a triumph of computer savvy over aesthetics. As the technology became more affordable & reliable(ish) more skillful artists started to use it as a tool and the work produced was fresh and new (and advertising etc. loves fresh and new because it allows their product to stand out). So, there was something of a rebirth.
Now we are at a point whereby that fresh digital art has a overly familiar look.
I think that pretty much everyone has to deliver their work in a digital form nowadays no matter how handcrafted it is. So the hand crafted/ digital is a debate is kinda irrelevant.
I produce work ranging from completely hand crafted to entirely computer generated and all mixes in between, it's allowed me to create work that is more experimental and varied. It also allowed me to move to America and continue working seamlessly. It's life changing.
I think that drawing is a primal instinct, the act of doing it fires all kinds of sensors in your brain, releases seratonin, can almost be meditative in the concentration required to produce it. For these reasons drawing will never go away. Also in this ever more frenetic, media soaked world, the brain still responds very strongly to the still image, maybe we're hard wired that way.
I have a different mindset when I am creating err.. acoustically to electrically. I am more at peace, at once I am back to being a 12 year old, whilst tackling an eternal craft that if I lived to 200 I'd still be learning to do. Surely some of this feel must be passed on to the viewer?
When I create digitally, I'm watching you tube, answering e-mail, listening to i tunes, etc., etc. I'm like a kid with A.D.D. In short I need the composure of just sitting down and facing a piece of paper. I'm happier that way, but still need the computer to fully realize my vision, or experiment and take that vision new places.
Creating solely digitally is a pseudo experience,
but without the computer I'd be much less broadly creative.
Here is an Interview with the ever lovely It's Nice That. çlick to read.
And here are some core thoughts, NO FEAR, NO HATE, NO ENVY.
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