Do you agree with the popular adage that “anyone can be an artist?”ĭepends how you define the word 'artist'.
I find myself constantly lighting the fire.Ĩ. No TV, no iPhone, just human connection… something that I feel is slipping away. I built a fire pit last year so friends could come over and sit out late into the night with whisky, cigars… and just talk. Kids, adventure, writing… lighting fires. Aside from being an artist, what keeps you busy?
#BRAVE WRITER SLINGSOT SERIES#
My Death of The Dollar series is about our modern culture of greed, power and excess.ħ. After 7 years of pioneering and perfecting my craft I decided to start to make work about the human condition. The early years were all about portraiture and technical skill. The work is still evolving, I'm still growing and learning. As an artist, how would you say your style has evolved through the years? It's not like painting where the artist can just paint over any mistakes. So I was born with a love of knives, and my work is risky from the first incision to the last cut. I've always loved wildness, I'm most alive when something's at risk. While my mates were all playing Atari, I was rock climbing, carving my signature in the bark of pine trees, jumping from cliffs into icy waters. I have a knife collection that would make Jack The Ripper envious. My earliest gift from my granddad was a pocket knife. I was born on a farmstead in the Welsh mountains, with a knife in one hand and a slingshot in the other. John Muir said “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. How did your growing up in a farm in Wales contribute to your style or personality in your art? I’m inspired by Caravaggio, Peter Howsen, Damien Hirst, Bart Gavigan, Mel Gibson, Chris Nolan, Paul Haggis, Bear Grylls, Shabazz Graham, Van Gogh, Bono, John Eldredge, Andrew Shearman, Francis Bacon.ĥ. More and more I have been reading the epic tales in literature.
#BRAVE WRITER SLINGSOT MOVIE#
I listen to a lot of old Rock n Roll and find my iPod is full of movie scores and soundtracks. They are untainted, so I learn from them.
I have 3 kids, their passion, wonder and appreciation for beauty is contagious. I try and remain open to inspiration, as I'm in my forties too many of my friends & contemporaries’ are becoming jaded and turning to cynicism and irony as a worldview. What music, or which people or what events inspire you to work? To the uninitiated, how would you describe your work? If you had to call it something, what would the term be?Ĥ. The more fearless I am, the better the work comes out.įear always makes us hold back and nothing can progress when we are afraid.ģ. The times I've been afraid to mark the leather, scared to make that first incision - have always been at low points in my life. I definitely learn from my many, many mistakes, and I'm learning to be afraid of nothing. I've sliced into my fingers and hit bone more times than I care to remember. With regard to your method of creating art, would it be accurate to say that you learned from your mistakes, or on the other hand, aren’t afraid of making mistakes along the way? The new art form I discovered was so fresh, so challenging, so difficult to master that I had to stick with it just to prove to myself something new could be born.Ĭutting, scratching, scraping, slicing, to reveal a powerful image… It became an addiction.Ģ. It was my Archimedes moment, God's thunderbolt. That was it… EUREKA ! I carved through the leather surface into the suede (nap) beneath. The blood was stubborn and it didn't come off easily, so I got out my penknife and tried to scrape the blood off. I was cleaning blood off a leather jacket one Christmas, around the year 2000. To be honest the discovery of what I do was an accident, one of those serendipitous moments that changed the trajectory of my life. Yeah I'm the first ever artist to pioneer working in this way. Can you briefly share how you discovered this process of making art, and why you stuck with it despite its challenging nature? Without a doubt, your technique in art is very, very unique.
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