Art has been a lifelong passion. I had my first paid commission at the age of 11. The need to make a living meant that I started my adult career as a creative, leaving my degree course unfinished to become Creative Director of a retail design agency. I progressed the ranks quickly and in my second role at 17yrs, I won a major – and award winning – account for BT, and also a nationwide interior design mandate for Ford Motor Company. Later, I formed a niche agency working for some leading brands including Ford, BT, NBA, T-Mobile, Bang & Olufsen, Dell, Tottenham Hotspur FC, Arsenal FC, Puffa, Gola, The Prodigy, Greene King, Sainsbury’s and others, covering advertising, internet, TV & environments.
I have been focussed on my art full time since about 2006, having started that transition in around 2001, when I collaborated with Liam from the Prodigy on some personal projects. I have created commission-based works for families or individuals of high wealth globally, experimenting with materials and processes. Many incorporated certain items of that person’s personal possessions or mementos in the piece. For some works I resurrected long-forgotten processes for working with certain materials which I believe secured many commissions.
My commission pricing has varied, but has reached up to $150k to date.
My family situation (I married a well-known Polish singer) led me to move to Warsaw in Poland. Since arriving I have been dedicated to my passion for art. I recently closed my first solo exhibition at the ‘Rabbithole Artrooms Gallery’ right in the heart of Warsaw which received much coverage in the Polish press and TV.
In short, I’m an experienced & driven creative, strategist, conceptual thinker, people motivator & artist. My career path has been diverse, spanning many disciplines, clients & markets.
I have strong strategic & creative ability. I love to surprise even the most demanding of client. Whilst I enjoy creative freedom, I have great respect for the power of brands & their influence when managed & developed effectively.
As an artist I don’t like to be confined to a single medium. I constantly seek a new challenge for myself or to push the realms of my capabilities. I love to experiment. Whilst I am happy to wield a brush and paint with oils to canvas I don’t see this as my niche. In the past, I recall wishing to hone my skills and mimic or be as good or as accurate in my work as the ‘old masters’. Nowadays, I rarely commit to these types of works and if I do its purely for my own pleasure and they rarely see the light of day.
My grandfather was a massive inspiration to me. He had been an aircraft engineer in WW2, repairing war planes. He used to tell me of the artwork he painted on the noses of the planes. That generated for me a fascination with applying imagery to non-traditional substrates From a young age I would experiment with drawing and painting directly to materials that I could find or scavenge such as wood and metals and ceramics etc, even old clothes, torn or refashioned to a makeshift canvas. At the age of 9 I created my first mural on the school assembly hall wall, depicting Santa Claus – I recall everyone loved it until of course school resumed in January and the problem arose of how to remove it!
Moving forward to current day, my passion for creating something different and exciting remains. I love fusing the simplicity of a message conveyed within an image with the complexity of the chosen medium. Social, political or just plain humour, my aim is to connect and excite those who interact with my works. Whilst to date I have not had many of my works exhibited this is purely because I have not had the time to dedicate to generating a collection. Most of my pieces have been created to commission and commercially I have been employed by well-known brands for individual projects generating art on a project basis. So, my name may not be as well known in the art world as many others, but my foundations are solid. I have individuals and collectors worldwide who hold my works both individual pieces and commissions, indeed I noted recently that Forbes No.1 most influential and wealthy businessman in Europe is in fact in possession of two of my most recent works from my last exhibition for which I was invited to his office to personally select the ideal location for them…given the nature of the pieces in question there was only one place, the boardroom!
I have also in the past unwittingly assisted with a concept for a fellow street artist (now very well known) work which like my own was very political and its timing and placement was perfect. I am unable to name the artist, but our style and execution in this medium is often commented as being similar.
I am currently preparing works for my next collection which will again utilise some new materials and a development of age-old techniques which I have sought to resurrect and modernise. I am also working with bones, something I recently market tested at a celebrity dinner I hosted with my partner where I created a sculpture depicting a junk yard of expensive throw away trash typical of the society we live in today. This was being climbed by a series of three rat skeletons I reconstructed all wearing Olympic medals, gold, silver and bronze with the gold medallist at the summit of this pile of trash which included ipads, champagne and contraceptives. This was all encased in a large Perspex box with graffiti text upon it stating, ‘You may have won the rat race…but you’re still just a fukin rat!’ This was intended as a little fun directed at those attending the dinner, it was interesting to witness who got the joke!