Kage Painting

Before the need to attend to exciting things like council tax and stubborn facial hair I was fascinated by street art and skateboarding. Brighton had a great scene for both, and I remember my youth spent here with a rose tinted glow of fun and freedom. I would explore derelict buildings and warehouses which were decorated with amazing designs by the likes of Req, Aroe, Giant, Nylon, Kid Acne, Petro and Jason Brashill.

I was entranced by all this visual activity as it felt like an evolution of my passion for comic books and so I decided to add my name to the walls of my local environment. My first break was thanks to a chance meeting with Req who was doing a youth project at my local park. He had a hundreds of cans of paint and we had a wall to paint in the park. He showed me fades and paint control and taught me to look at the work form a distance.

I spent the following three years drooling over walls and adding my mark where and when I could. I was rubbish at tagging so my preferred method was employing a big pot of emulsion paint, some pound shop black and a wallpaper painting brush to paint in quiet places where I would not be disturbed. I suppose this is where the seeds for my love of typography were planted.

By the time I went to university I had hung up my aerosol paint and focused my energy into learning product design at Ravensbourne and trying to get to grips with grown up things like technical drawing. Three years later as the curtains closed on my course the last thing I wanted to do was design any products. My brain was fried from too much thinking and so I picked up my paints again and worked from home for a while, this time on canvas and boards. Below are the results.