My inspiration and passion is rooted in grindhouse posters, pulp magazines, comics, TV and film. I was raised watching my mother work as an artist, I learned early that art doesn't need a gallery to matter, it can live on a paperback spine, a cereal box, or a crushed ticket stub... Even a cigarette pack!
That attitude drives everything I make, from pulp-inspired art and comics to museum commissions like tea towels and tablecloths for the Horniman Museum and Gardens...
Bold, graphic work that riffs on B-movies coupled with the throwaway ephemera of pop culture.
It's also what's driven me to Ephemera Gold: years of quietly scribbling and planning to finally give the humble, worn, overlooked items we bin every day and the unsung artists behind them the spotlight they've always deserved.
Thinking about all the packets I've thrown away over the years, the humble cigarette pack felt like the perfect place to start. How could I filter something so disposable through my own artwork and aesthetic? I traced it back — past modern packaging, past simple graphic design — to an age before anyone worried about tobacco's health risks, and into a genuine revolution in printing... chromolithography.
I'll have to see what's on the 'menu' for my next collection!