The STORY of the south africa artist

1985-2003

Born in South Africa in 1985 I was one of the lucky ones that were born into a country with lots of scars and emotional baggage. An inheritance none of us asked for, but one that we all received. I had a sheltered, loving, safe, and conservative upbringing in the suburbs of Pretoria-North. Art was never positioned to me as anything other than a hobby. Like many early South African millennials, fortunate enough to get a public school education I was encouraged to take classes that would lead to me becoming a lawyer, accountant, engineer, or architect.

After matriculating in 2003 I left South Africa and moved to London, England.

2005-2021

I had a short stint at a design school in an attempt to get a degree in Visual Communication. After a lecturer told me that what I was making wasn’t “art” I promptly dropped out and started perusing a career in I.T. I started my own website in 2011, and shifted my career path again, becoming an extremely experienced digital marketer over my 11 year career.

In 2020, during the pandemic, I started drawing again after years of only doodling from time to time. I started drawing daily and my confidence kept building. Soon after I found myself, once again spending money on art supplies, and putting up wheat paste art in my neighbourhood. I felt like a kid again at the age of 36. I started posting my work on Instagram and soon after started doing commissions and selling paintings to a small group of collectors.

2

YEARS

16+

Paintings

312+

illustrations

1

artist

2022 – 20XX

I’m going to stick to doing what I want to do. Ultimately, I think if I don’t like what I create, then nobody else will like it either. I’m going to keep designing tattoos, creating illustrations, painting, creating wheat pastes, putting up stickers, and making zines.

Unfortunately, I can’t keep everything I create for myself. My home and studio are simply not big enough. But I love every piece enough to want to put them on display in my own home, and many of my works spend a lot of time on my own walls before being sold to a collector. In the coming months I aim to make it is as easy as possible for anyone to get a piece of my artwork. Be it original works, prints, stickers, zines, tattoo designs, or tattoo flash, I want to share it with a bigger audience, and in the process give everyone that my art resonates with the opportunity to own some of that art. No matter what shape that art takes, it will be part of my creative direction.