Street art is a really strange art practice in the sense that
people experience my work every day, they experience my art,
and yet they don't get to hear why I've done that.
I have to just totally let that go and let people have whatever response
that they feel and and value that.
How people perceive it is totally out of my control.
Are we recording?
This is important.
When people ask me what I do, my first response is, I'm an artist.
But the reality is so much more.
This is my full time job and I make art for a living.
So here in my studio, I make art for myself,
I make art for exhibition sale and print sales
and I paint large-scale murals and my own art as well.
Then I paint commercial commissions
and then on top of all of that,
I teach collaborative mural painting workshops where we, together,
create a piece that has just resulted in some of the most powerful
and rewarding projects of my career.
Yeah, it’s a strange concept, but expressing ourselves through art
can be a tool for healing or for storytelling or even just
for acknowledging a part of yourself that might not get much light of day.
For me, that's drawing people with animal companions that, like,
love them and go everywhere with them because that feels really good,
like, it's just such a simple thing.
I don't feel like pretending anymore, and I think we're at a time where there is
just like a real yearning for realness and a real yearning for authenticity
and it doesn't have to be okay, like,
you don't have to be okay, it’s okay.
I think there's a perception
that street art has to be antagonistic in some way.
I've always felt like I want my art to feel like
sitting in a circle around a campfire with strangers
because you know that feeling that within an hour, you’re sharing
all of your stories and you're singing together or you're bonding.
I think connection is paramount.
Like, it’s really hard not to feel isolated in our,
like, super hypermodern, intensely individualised world.
I don't want everyone to connect over anger,
but I think acknowledging these darker things that we're all experiencing,
and having those conversations is healing.
But then juxtapose that with, like,
beauty and hope and inclusion and trying to find a really beautiful
sweet balance between reality, which is raw and hard,
but then also reality, which is loving and gorgeous,
I don't want to be overly positive or overly negative,
that's really important to me,
but I do really want to hold space for the two to exist together.
My experiences with the ‘RIP Toxic Masculinity’ artwork was
a real comprehension,
like a dawning comprehension that the public really don't know what we do.
I don’t think people really understand, like, how interested I am in society
and in communities and in telling people's stories and hearing people's stories
and helping them feel heard and paint their portraits
and celebrate what they're celebrating.
And it’s really important that
I feel like everything that I put out has a sense of purpose
and is going to impact that space for my community
or for the broader community, in a positive way.
I’m finding so much more value and such a satisfied life
in talking to people who want to create change
in their communities and offering my skills as tools
to help them.
I'm really finding so much value in relationships and
I see these people as my allies,
like, we've all got different skills but we're working towards
a common goal and that is creating change for a better future.
And it's so simple.
There's nothing, like, nuanced about it.
We're working together to create change for a better future.
This is just what I have to create this change with,
this is the best thing that I have, right now.
I'm in a really beautiful time now
where my inside self and my outside self are together,
where I'm starting to see my style overflow
from my studio and my sketchbook onto
large-scale murals, citywide.
To come to a place within myself and in my career
where I'm drawing for me and I'm drawing from me,
to have hidden myself for so long
and now I'm at this place where I'm, yeah, I'm here,
and then that's being seen and that's
creating a sense of belonging in others through my art,
like, it's really beautiful.