Interview with Johnny Romeo

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Interview with Johnny Romeo

Johnny Romeo is an Australian artist acclaimed for his ability to mix text, explosive colour, and Pop savvy imagery into a style called “Neo Expressionist Pop.” Considered Australia’s leading Pop painter, Romeo fuses Neo-Expressionism and street art with a Pop edge to address issues of pop culture, celebrity fetish and consumerism. Romeo is represented by many of Australia’s top galleries, and has had a number of consecutive sell-out exhibitions across Australia, New Zealand and the US. His work has been covered in publications such as the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Art Collector and the Australian Art Review. Romeo has completed a collaborative work with world-renowned punk band Blink-182, and was featured in the URBAN POP II survey in Los Angeles. 

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Interview with Charlie Anderson

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Interview with Charlie Anderson

Charlie Anderson is a painter. He celebrates the throwaway nature of contemporary culture by painting images from sources such as magazines, flyers, advertising and political campaigns. By painting image on top of image and fragmenting the discernible text and forms, Anderson draws parallels to the fleeting nature of life. The process of manually reproducing images from mass media echoes the history of painting as a form of documentation, and his use of the female form recalls the tradition of figurative painting in art. Anderson has been awarded the British Airways degree show (2009), shortlisted for the Jerwood Contemporary Painters (2010), and been awarded the Meyer Oppenheim Prize by the Royal Scottish Academy (2010). Notable collaborations include Ringo Starr, Ricky Hatton, Amir Khan, Speedy Graphito and The Dirty Tees.

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Interview with Andre Woolery

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Interview with Andre Woolery

Andre's style is a deconstruction of light that allows him to breathe structured color into every form. Combining this with graphical elements that express something beyond their physical shapes. He wants his work to visually appear close to a digital production while still remaining hand crafted. Society is sitting in the middle of digital and traditional worlds and that's where he wants his artwork to be positioned. His paintings are "simple seduction". Using simple elements that can convey an immediate message while still offering more if you fully engage. Upon engagement, viewers will be seduced through the use of striking colors, subject matter, and composition. This approach will hopefully bring Andre's art to a broader, unsuspecting audience.

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Interview with Mike Maka

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Interview with Mike Maka

Mike Maka is a painter who works in a variety of media mainly on walls, canvas and illustration on paper. He has travelled and created work around the world, painting the Berlin Wall to the River Ganges. At 20, he received a scholarship to study art in New York, which lead to working as a bike messenger for 10 years in 10 cities, and leaving his mark on many walls.  An active member of Everfresh Studio since 2006, Mike has exhibited extensively through Australia as well as group shows in Brazil, Japan, Miami and New York,  and has works in private and public collections locally and abroad, including aquisitions by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. His work is preoccupied with the interface between man, beast and machine. Presenting a visual riot that stimulates the mind, Mike’s art conveys an imperative message to those confined in the concrete jungle to stay connected to the animal within them that lives in the natural world. He is based in Melbourne Australia, but has been known to wander in other dimensions.

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Interview with Ben Brown

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Interview with Ben Brown

The work of illustrator and artist Ben Brown is loaded with pop culture iconography that has been given a trademark BB makeover. Be it Jack White with a flesh-eating disease, a zombified Elvis or Kelly Slater as Beelzebub complete with horns and tail, it is obvious Ben is having fun with what he does. This light-hearted humour that Ben applies to his work has not only been commissioned by every cool rock band to come to town in the last 20 years but it has also been a big part of the visual history of the surf and skate industry.

As Ben claims, “My work never has any underlying message.” So no matter how hard you study his deft pen and ink illustrations, they claim no deep hidden meanings, no references to secret texts, underground religions or satanic cults. You’ll have to look to Disney for that.

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Interview with Kelly Sullivan

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Interview with Kelly Sullivan

Kelly was born in Melbourne and studied Graphic Arts in the 80s, when light boxes and squeaker textas ruled! She moved to Sydney in the 90s whilst attaining an Arts Degree at the National Art School in Darlinghurst. Her work is largely based on circumstances that surrounded her when she was young, as she was born to a family of great iconic imagery and pop culture of the 20th Century. Hence, Kelly's work is fundamentally grounded in graphic pop culture, that she was, and still is encircled by. She now resides in Byron Bay and when she isn't crafting and painting, she works seasonally on the 'Splendour In The Grass' music and arts festival.

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Interview with Jason Bryant

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Interview with Jason Bryant

Born in 1976 in Wilson, NC, Jason Bryant now lives and works in New York, City. Bryant graduated from East Carolina University with a BFA and went on to the Maryland Institute College of Art for his MFA in painting.  Bryant moved to New York City soon after and began work with such notable artists as Kehinde Wiley and Bjarne Melgaard. Heavily influenced by classic film, Bryant begins each painting by researching images from cinematic moments or magazine images of interest to fit various themes exploring loneliness, vulnerability and frailty. Bryant renders each image, at first as a pencil sketch on canvas without the use of projection and then by transforming the image through oil paint into a photo-realistically and beautifully rendered film still. Bryant then incorporates his signature skateboard graphics, a skateboarder himself, or paints in pixilated areas often cropping the eyes or other notable features of each character.

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Interview with André Monet

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Interview with André Monet

Inspired by cinema, photography, music and literature, Monet has a natural connection and sense for the current society and his contemporaries. His signature conceptual assemblage of text texture and color exudes eccentricity and empowerment of its time, exemplifying the characters and personalities of its icons. Monet explored various mediums such as mosaic, collage and acrylics. More recently, he turned to the portrait. But not just any kind of portrait: blending collage of old newspapers and books, painting and varnishing, the traits of his characters are recreated with such precision that one might see a realistic photography arising from a distance. This new production reveals the strengths and weaknesses of individuals appearing on the canvases. With much success in recent years, Monet’s work has been exhibited in Paris, London, New York, Seoul, Singapore, Miami, Toronto, Montreal, Dubai and Hong Kong.

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Interview with Seize Happywallmaker

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Interview with Seize Happywallmaker

Seize Happywallmaker is self-taught painter living in a geometric and colorful world. His experience and inspiration come from urban arts, where he began. he developed a very personal graphic code and uses the energy from the colors as a therapy. He has been working for many years on reflections based on networks and connections. His symbolic language speaks of nature and the universe. He believes that geometric forms associated with the simplicity and the strictness of structures and composition can lead to a great purity...

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Interview with Nina Mae Fowler

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Interview with Nina Mae Fowler

Nina Fowler was born in London in 1981. She graduated with a first in sculpture from Brighton University in 2003. In 2008, she was nominated for the BP Portrait Prize with her painting of the Royal Ballet dancer, Carlos Acosta, and in 2010 her work was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize. More recently she was shortlisted for The Young Masters Prize 2012 as well as being commissioned by Oxford University to depict Professor Richard Dawkins and Hermione Lee. She has worked as archivist and assistant to John Dunbar (founder of Indica Gallery) alongside being part-time Art teacher at South Hampstead High School. Her work is admired and collected by British film, music and fashion luminaries such as John Maybury, Jude Law, Sharleen Spiteri and Caroline Issa. She is included in private and public collections in Europe and the USA and is represented in France by Galerie Dukan. This year saw see her first public exhibition as part of the group show “Starke Frauen” (Strong Women) at Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg.

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Interview with Ian Johnson

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Interview with Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson was born in Syracuse, New York and lives and works in San Francisco. He is the Creative Director of Western Edition Skateboarding…

Ian Johnson’s style and visual language has an instantly recognizable character and unique voice.
His work draws its structures and graphic impact from his scope of influences that includes Jazz music, literature, and film.
Johnson adds elements of abstraction giving his compositions the expressive immediacy and elevated moods that are rooted in the culture and histories he references.
His paintings and drawings incorporate elegantly drafted elements of figurative line work and abstract patterns that combine with color building on his established and ongoing visual narrative.

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Interview with Dale Grimshaw

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Interview with Dale Grimshaw

Dale was born in Lancashire. He studied at Blackburn College of Art and then went on to achieve his Bachelor of Fine Art degree at Middlesex University. As a student Dale won the Apthorp Fund for young artists and then went on to win the Liquitex Student Award in the USA. As a result, he was able to exhibit at the Academy of Arts in New York and in the Cable and Wireless exhibition in London. After a break from his artwork, when he pursued a career in the music industry, Dale returned to painting and was quickly featured in the TV show ‘A Brush With Fame’. In 2006 Dale was a finalist in the both Pride in the House and Liberte D’expression competitions. More recently, he has contributed to the Street Art scene with a series of striking and dramatic woodcuts prints that he has pasted up in London and Europe. Dale has established himself over a period of six years as being one of the most respected and individual artists on the London art scene. Dale’s work has been seen in a number of group shows internationally in Paris, Berlin and in the USA.

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Interview with Carl SCREWTAPE Paoli

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Interview with Carl SCREWTAPE Paoli

Veteran Hollywood stuntman Carl Paoli, known for stunt doubling Patrick Dempsey, Patrick Swazey and Jimmy Fallon, to name a few, has translated his fearlessness into art.  His intrepid lifestyle is expressed on canvas as raw, intimate, figurative portraits delivered in an urban, contemporary style, while drawing influence from the masters. His art has been seen in the streets, galleries and museums of New York, Los Angeles, Florida and Chicago and sold world wide. 

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Interview with DAN23

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Interview with DAN23

After spending several years painting musical artists with watercolors, Dan23 opened in 2006 his own gallery in Strasbourg. His first steps as a solo performer making live-paintings then appeared to be more on concerts and music festival stages throughout the world than in his own gallery. In 2013, he decides to quit the stages in order to get more involved into the streets and the urban environment, painting bright portraits, each of them dedicated to a particular song and representing all the significant encounters he made in his life. The « Tour Paris 13 » project in which he got involved, eventually gave him the recognition. Finally, the street-art gallery Mathgoth in Paris offers him the opportunity to make a solo-performance in 2014.

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Interview with David Rusbatch

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Interview with David Rusbatch

Born in Leeds in 1979, David Rusbatch's work is drawn from popular culture, focusing on themes of celebrity and genius. In 2008 Rusbatch became one of the youngest ever exhibitors at the National Design Museum. The nature of creation and the act of destruction is a constant theme in the artist's work. Rusbatch has been known to abandon or completely destroy paintings in the pursuit of artistic enlightenment and 'perfection'.

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Interview with RedApe

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Interview with RedApe

Red Ape is a painter, graphic designer and sculptor. His work essentially revolves around portraits of people and society. His approach is simple; the words and the actions leave permanent traces which we then carry with us for life, like tattoos. He likes to toy with graphic conventions, with the visual universe to make it serve his own creations. For this reason, he creates series of portraits as nude fragments of tattooed bodies which tell a story of the traces left by the society, the world. 

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Interview with SHAZ Art

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Interview with SHAZ Art

Shaz is a young artist from Bordeaux, a pure product from the urban culture. Specialized in portraits, he captures faces and transcribed their emotion with the tip of his black pen. He reveals to the public a unique style with eclectic influences. Basically, he did not intend to pencils but football. Over time, his passion for drawing took over football. His drawing are inspired by various arts such as painting, drawing pen, sculpture or street art. Shaz already mastered a number of techniques like drawing pen art, stencils or games mosaic. He does not hesitate to take risks in order to innovate and enrich his art, always in search of the perfect balance.

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