This is Disruption
This is Disruption podcast explores the pursuit of creativity and shares the stories of the fearless creators in street art, graffiti, music, photography and beyond, who boldly challenge the status quo, break barriers for others and share their work unapologetically. Each episode is a deep dive interview exploring the lives of artistic risk takers, exploring their motivations, their inspirations, and their take on the power of art, in whatever form they make it in.
The podcast is hosted by Irish street artist and DJ, Did by Rua, based in London.
This is Disruption
My Dog Sighs: Paint, Pigeons and Passion. Inside: We Shelter Here Sometimes.
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I was so delighted to speak with an artist I greatly respect and admire in this episode. Street art legend My Dog Sighs kindly joined me to share the story of his creative evolution, from primary school teacher to internationally celebrated artist.
We chat about the birth of Free Art Friday, which evolved into it's own cultural movement with artists leaving free pieces for passersby to discover. This emerged from My Dog Sigh's desire to participate in street art without risking his teaching career. What began as canvases left on streets evolved into painted found objects, such as his iconic painted tin cans that have now traveled across continents with their new owners and inspired other artists to do the same.
At the heart of this episode is a discussion exploring My Dog Sigh's recently released documentary "Inside: We Shelter Here Sometimes," chronicling a two-year project that saw him transforming an abandoned 1920s ballroom into an immersive installation during the pandemic. The vulnerability he displays in sharing the creative process is super refreshing. All too often we see the highlights and successes but in this raw and vulnerable film we see the struggles, doubts, and moments of pure inspiration and flow. This is a rare insight into the emotional journey of artistic creation and it is so beautifully shot with a gorgeous soundscape. From developing a unique language for his creatures little voices, to navigating health and safety concerns in a decaying building, the documentary captures a once-in-a-lifetime creative endeavour that nearly broke him.
I loved this film, it's truly a story of creative persistence and determination. As My Dog Sighs says, "If you've got this idea, just invest in it. Just invest in yourself and your time and your skill base, and get out there and get it done, because it's worth it. In the end it really is, and you're all the better person for doing it."
You MUST watch this documentary, it is truly it's own work of art. Find it at:
My Dog Sighs website: https://mydogsighs.co.uk/
Link to the documentary: https://vimeo.com/1058981776
My Dog Sighs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mydogsighs/
My Dog Sighs TED Talk (Lost and Found): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaTNwJL0BiA
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Hello there. You are very welcome to. This is Disruption podcast with me, your host Rua.
Speaker 2:This podcast brings you in-depth interviews with the fearless creatives in street art, graffiti, music, photography and beyond who boldly challenge the status quo, break barriers for others and share their work unapologetically. Each episode is a deep dive into the lives of artistic risk takers, exploring their motivations, their inspirations and their reasons for their willingness to disrupt societal norms. Some of these stories involve revolutionising their industries, while others are pushing the boundaries of legality with their art Coming up on today's episode.
Speaker 3:It's producing the work. Getting it up there, that is the fun bit, that's the buzz, and then when you walk away, it's not yours anymore, you have no control over it, and that's quite freeing. It's such a weird thing, isn't it? You know it's just a medium on a surface, it's just paint on a wall, and yet it can have such a powerful effect With the world changing. His popping in once a week for a couple of months turned into following me for two years, so I actually spent two years inside this abandoned building. If you've got this idea, just invest in it. Just invest in yourself and your time and your skill base, and you know, get out there and get it done, because it's worth it. In the end it really is, and you're all the better person for doing it.
Speaker 1:I had the pleasure of recording an episode with my dog Size. He is a street art legend and this was such a fun chat. We talk about his background, how he got into street art, but also about his new documentary that has recently been released. We Shelter here Sometimes. It is, in one word, beautiful, and I can't wait to share this conversation with you. As always, these episodes are best enjoyed if you listen while you create something. This is Disruption.
Speaker 2:I am very, very lucky this morning, on this fine St Patrick's Day, to be speaking to the artist, my Dog Size. My Dog Size is a legend. He is an artist a world-renowned artist actually who has started a cultural movement called Free Art Fridays. He is an artist a world-renowned artist actually who has started a cultural movement called Free Art Fridays. This is something that you've probably heard of or even experienced if you're also one of the lucky ones. He has a huge body of work and has done many, many things, and today we're going to be focusing on his new documentary that has just been released, and I'm so excited to speak about that. Welcome, my Dog Dog Size, and thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. It's nice on a Monday morning to see a smiley face and to have a little chinwag. So yeah, I'm all good.
Speaker 2:Well, first question do you have any plans for St Patrick's Day?
Speaker 3:I don't. I'm actually packing up ready for a big trip to Manchester, so I'm off the booze at the moment. I'm trying to be good, so I will wave at all those people in the big green hats as they're wondering around town today. But no plans for me.
Speaker 2:Put on something green. That's all you got to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good job, I've got some green paint, probably on my clothes, so that might count.
Speaker 2:That counts. Yeah, st Patrick would be totally happy with that. Okay, so I have so many questions for you, because you have a fantastic career. You've done so many different things and you have also done a lot of other interviews. What I don't want to do is repeat questions. We'll talk a lot about your recent documentary, but it is good to give the listener, if they don't already know you, a little bit of an idea of who you are and what you do. So can you please tell me in your own words what is it you do?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. So I kind of think like I wear a number of different hats as an artist. So in my heart of hearts, the thing that I am most of all is a street artist. I've been in the game for a really long time 20 odd years and I can remember when all street artists were ghosts. You never met them, they never did interviews, that was for sure, and you never saw their face, and I know that's shame. So I'm a street artist but to help run alongside that, I've moved into the mural game. So I'm a muralist and also, like many street artists, have moved into gallery spaces. So I'm a gallery artist selling my work, and that kind of gives me the opportunity to one paint all day, but to kind of follow my passion of making art on the streets.
Speaker 2:I have heard in other interviews that you did that when you first started out and decided you were going to be an artist. You did a huge body of work and took it to the galleries and it was what you thought they wanted to see. But it was not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, absolutely. I was always that kid that drew and painted and you know, 80s it was leather jackets. 90s it was part of first sort of rave party scene and doing all the backdrops. But uh, my dad was, uh, one of those people that was like, well, it's all very, very sensible, but you're never going to earn a living from this, so you better get a trade.
Speaker 3:So I became a primary school teacher and then gave that up for a little while, thought I would see if I could try and make it work as an artist, prove my dad wrong. And I absolutely didn't. He was completely right. It was never going to work. The galleries all completely said, no, I had. No, I had no journey, had no narrative.
Speaker 3:As an artist I was. I was painting pieces of work as opposed to painting what was inside me. I think that was the the thing that didn't work. And the galleries picked up on that straight away and realized that I wasn't at the stage where I should be showing in galleries. And so I yeah, I packed it all in and got a mortgage and a pension plan and a family-sized car and eventually, a family. And it wasn't until a little bit later when I saw this kind of exploding scene, which was the kind of birth of early street art, that I realised that actually they didn't worry about whether a curator in a gallery was going to accept their work, and they were just getting it out there. That's. That's when I jumped, you know, with both feet into the scene you've totally just nailed.
Speaker 2:My favorite thing about street art is that you don't need permission. Maybe you'll have a legal wall or you've been invited to paint, but at the very beginning of it it's about saying whatever it is. You have to say whatever that is, it's yours to say and you're expressing it and nobody has to curate that.
Speaker 3:It's just true expression and that's what I love about it yeah, the only thing that stops you is your is your own procrastination. And I, you know I love creating and I love getting out there and I think you know if you've got something to say and you know, sitting at home watching the telly or scrolling on your phone, you know it's one of those things that it doesn't stop you from getting on and getting it done. Then it's just such a fantastic opportunity to get out. For sure. I love it absolutely.
Speaker 2:Love it still love it now so I'd love to know about the very first time you took to the streets and I know you've done your free art Friday, so let's talk about that a little bit more. You're very politely dropping free art for people, which created a cultural movement of its own, but I'm talking about the illegal stuff. The first time that you took to a wall, how did that feel and what did you do?
Speaker 3:So I've told this story a couple of times. I discovered Banksy Rat and then that gave me an opportunity to dive in to find out a little bit more about what was happening. And this was right at the birth of the internet. And there were blogs. There wasn't social media, particularly there were these blogs. I stumbled across a blog called the Worcester Collective, which are Mark and Sarah based in New York, and they were documenting what was going on in the kind of early street art scene as kind of tags were turning into street art pieces and paste ups.
Speaker 3:And I just I remember not going to bed one night once I found this blog, going through all the blog posts, discovering who Shepard Fairey was, discovering the London Police, discovering Swoon, all these really early street art pioneers, and just I was. I just saw it was so exciting and I knew I wanted to do it. So I bought myself a tracksuit and told my wife I was going to get fit. So I would leave the house, the front door in the evening in my my tracksuit, run around the block to the back of my house where my shed was, and I would have stencils and spray paint and wheat paste and glue and then I'd go running around my town sticking up tiny little wheat paste and tiny little stencil pieces and then you know, drop everything back in the shed, run in the front door and go oh, you know, just been out for for a big long run. So that was kind of the early doors for me, and, and, and like anybody who's kind of starting out, you, you look at what everyone else is doing and and initially you mimic it. So it was banks, you sell stencils, and it was, you know, kind of cartoony characters in the style of london police, but with my own twist on it. So there were lots and lots of things early doors for. For my dog's eyes, that, um, that didn't sort of say the course, that was just that experimentation, that that that way in.
Speaker 3:Eventually the wooster collective posted, uh, one of the pieces that I did. I did a little series called money flowers where the weeds grow out of this. You know, the weeds grow out of the cracks in the pavement against the wall and I made these, these flowers that are five-pound oats, and photographed them and then made little tiny wheat pastes of these five-pound oat flowers and then stuck them on the wall behind the weeds. So it looked like the weeds were growing money out of them and the Worcester Collective posted a picture of this and I was so excited. It was like alongside my heroes, all these people that I was admiring. One post with my work was being posted on the Worcester Collective and I was buzzing.
Speaker 3:But none of my friends knew I was doing street art. My wife didn't know I was doing street art. I had no one to tell. So I took my wife out to dinner and halfway through dinner said I've got a confession to make. And she kind of looked at me and said I knew you weren't going out getting fit. I knew there was something going on. I think she thought I was having an affair. But I then confessed that I was producing this street art and that the Wooster Collective had posted it and I was really, really excited and I wanted to tell her about it. And she called me lots of rude names and um. And then, you know, said to me like you're a primary school teacher, if you get caught you lose your job and as the breadwinner of the family you know I, you know kids it could have been an utter disaster. So I promised that I wouldn't be running around doing that illegal stuff while I was a teacher, and that's kind of how Free Art Friday started. You know how I stepped into that world.
Speaker 3:So Free Art Friday for me was a way of still being involved in what was happening in street art, still putting work out on the street, but doing it in a way that wasn't illegal. So I would, initially, I'd buy canvases from the range and come and paint those at home in the evenings, and I would catch the train to work on a Friday. So I'd take this picture and leave it somewhere on the way to the station and then when I came home on a Friday after work it would be gone. And I was really fascinated by the fact that. You know, somebody saw this thing and had to make this decision yeah, do I pick this up? Can I take it away? Is it all right? You know, should I leave it there?
Speaker 3:And that gave me a real buzz, that whole story that I didn't know about. You know the who was seeing the work, who was picking it up, who was taking it away. But leaving canvases is really expensive. So and was I at risk of being a litterer by taking something and leaving it on the street? So that's how I kind of started picking up trash you know picking up cardboard, and you know, early days it was doors and bits of wood and bottle tap, bottle caps, anything I could find, and then painting them and then putting them back out on the street, bringing them to life. Yeah, that included tin cans and I suppose it was my can man, my tin cans. Really, that sort of catapulted my work into something more than just a little bloke in a provincial town, in a little tiny private project painting on bits of rubbish.
Speaker 2:Wow, what a journey. Where, or who with? Is the furthest or strangest place that your Free Art Friday has travelled that you know of?
Speaker 3:I've had a few. Actually I've had a few that maybe have been picked up by people that were passing through and then moving on. So I remember one can was picked up by somebody who must have been on the kind of backpack trail and I remember getting photographs of it in Southeast Asia and then Australia and then it was actually gifted to someone else in Australia and then sort of went over to Hawaii and I mean photos from Rarotonga and the west coast of the States. So yeah, I mean it has a little sticker on the back of Free Art Friday saying look, you know it's a gift to you, you know, enjoy it. And then when you're ready to pass it on and that doesn't always happen nowadays, but it kind of when it does and it gets gifted and you get a message from someone saying I just got gifted this from somebody that I just met. I love it and I'm finding out a little bit more about it. That's the kind of buzz.
Speaker 3:But actually the reality of what happens in your work is often different from the stories that you tell in your head, and I'm more than happy to enjoy producing a piece of work, leaving it on the street and then not knowing, because in my head it's much more romantic probably than the real chance. I did very early doors, get intrigued and leave a piece outside the cafe and sit outside the cafe watching to see who was going to pick it up, and saw dozens of people walk past not taking any notice of it and then eventually a street sweeper in one of these big yellow carts came along and then picked it up and then just popped it in his car and wandered off with it. It was just like, ok, you know the the reality versus the romance maybe isn't always the case, but I like to think that maybe he was a massive collector of kind of street art and free art stuff and he's got a big yard full of all these paintings, adam Neate paintings and all these other artists that leave work around the street and collected them there. But I think it's more about the act of doing it. It's a bit like people saying when you're a street artist, oh, don't you get upset when someone tags your work. Well, you kind of do, but then you shouldn't be involved in street art if you worry about it too much.
Speaker 3:It's actually, it's producing the work, getting it up there. That is the fun bit, that's the buzz and then when you walk away, it's not yours anymore, you have no control over it, and that's quite freeing to kind of step away and go. Okay, you know, I'd love it to ride for a long time, but if it doesn't, yeah, that's just you know it is what it's going to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I learned very early on when a friend of mine, who's also a street artist, gave me telling off once when I was very new in the game, because somebody had written something very rude on my unicorn.
Speaker 3:No, not comedy cock.
Speaker 2:It wasn't very nice and I was like we'd seen this together. We were eyepasting and I was like, well, this is so upsetting. And he was like you cannot be upset or upsetable, because when you put something on the street, it's not yours anymore, it's the streets, and people are free to interact with it, damage it to add to it. That's beautiful. And he are free to interact with it, damage it to add to it. That's beautiful. And he gave me a real different perspective on it. And it's so true. The joy is in the making and the sharing. And then it's the streets, and if the streets want to do whatever they want to do to it, that's what happens.
Speaker 3:So yeah, yeah, I had a really fascinating interaction with uh Tiger in Portsmouth where I live. There's quite a good relationship between the graph scene and the street art scene. We kind of know each other mostly and respect each other's spots and there isn't too much beef. That goes on. But there was one tagger. I don't know whether he sort of came in through the city or was staying here for a while, but I produced one of my eye pieces really nice alleyway piece, you know, a great photograph photograph took, my photograph left.
Speaker 3:I came back next day and this guy put a big throw up right across the center of the eye in the on all these blues and greens and I was like, ah, shit, took me all day to paint this piece. But you know, whatever, I'm street artist, I spend all day painting. So I just grabbed some paint, went back and repainted the piece, but I used the greens and blues from his tag in the iris of my eye just as a kind of you know, a little nod left, a little bit of his throw up there, just as a just to wind him up, I suppose. Uh, and then, and then the next day he came back, the same throw up but in a different color scheme straight over the top of the middle of the eye, and so I was like, right, okay, so you're using pinks and purples today, I'm gonna do same. So I repaired the piece and it went backwards and forwards about five or six times every day. He'd come and take this, you know, throw a sticker up over there. I'd come back, put a new piece over the top of it using his color scheme.
Speaker 3:And yeah, I kind of think that I don't know who he is and who they are, but I kind of think that they were having fun. And I knew I was having fun and just documenting this process. And it even got to the point where I was trying to work out whether I could hire a scissor lift and just work my way up the wall, right, so the next piece would be six foot up and then 12 feet up and and I could work my way up, he suddenly disappeared, which was a bit of a shame because I was kind of having fun. But um, yeah, it's, you know he was there to try and do what taggers do and cause a bit of grief. But yeah, you have to sort of not take it personally and just have fun with it.
Speaker 2:I heard you give an answer in another interview and I think the interviewer asked what is the difference between street art and graffiti, or is there one? And you give the best answer and you said I can't remember exactly, I didn't write it down, but more or less, and you confirm your what you would say, if I can remember. Yeah, well, what you said at the time was that the only things that are similar is the place and the tools, but they're totally different things, and you went on to explain that a little bit. Is that still how you feel, and can you please elaborate, because I the way you elaborated then was beautiful, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Speaker 3:Gosh, I can't for the life remember what I said. I do still believe that graffiti is the purest of the art forms. You know it's done not for a wider public, it's done for a very, very narrow group of people to, you know, to gain respect from other graffiti writers and that they're not concerned about anybody else. It isn't done for kind of monetary gains. You know the fame comes from. You know the respect that you get from other taggers and I utterly, utterly respect that. It's not where I came from, but I, you know, I am a massive fan of a, you know, a really good tag with really good hand style, with flow, oh, just a thing of beauty. But yeah, it is. You know we literally using the same materials and we're working in the same space, but the approaches are so different. You know, to some extent there's still gamification that comes from both of them. And when you look at the kind of early history of street art, the pioneers who I think kind of started street art kept a lot of those kind of who I think kind of started street art kept a lot of those kind of elements of graph and tagging. You know some of my street art heroes and I've mentioned them. Lots are toasters, right, who started way, way, way back when with really really simple post office stickers everywhere a picture of a toaster, again and again, and it's just like a tag, it's just a visual image of a tag and it's about repetition. It's about getting up as many places as often as you can and early street art, you know, you think, the early deface stickers you think of you know, you know it's just about that kind of repetition, about getting up, creating something, an icon, whether it be letterful or as you move into street art kind of imagery, and then repeating it enough that everyone starts to recognize it. The you know the obey image, you know shepherds obey image that's his. That was a tag, right, it was just like maybe he didn't have good letter form, maybe he didn't have good hand style, but it was like let's create something that I could do so much that people recognize it and it becomes its own thing and I think that's what kind of graph is.
Speaker 3:I know there's lots of talk about 10 foot at the moment and you can't go anywhere in the country without spotting a 10 foot on a bridge and you know the gamification means that he's you know he's got the highest score all day long Because he's getting up all the time, and I love that. But what I don't like about Graff are those really strict rules. I've been using paintbrushes on my wall in the past when I couldn't you know and, and it was like no, you'd never use a paintbrush on a wall, you, there's a whole kind of, yeah, a real strict set of rules which I I'm not into. I just want to do my own thing and do it in the way that I want to do it. So graph isn't for me. I kind of digressed there, didn't I? But um, yeah, no, I. I still think that the graph is the purest of art forms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just thought it was such a lovely way to summarise. I just thought it was really, really, really well done and I agree, I think it's the most pure form of expression and I love it as well. But all the same, for street art and graffiti, anything that you're doing because you want to share from a really authentic place, that's magic to me. I'm going to ask it's going to go back a little bit, but you were talking Worcester Collective, was that what it was called?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Worcester Collective. They were based in I think it's Worcester Street in New York and they did a project called the Spring Street Project where there was an old warehouse building that was going to get developed. I can't even remember when this was early noughties maybe and, yeah, street artists from all across the world came along and absolutely covered and graph writers came every surface. I remember the stair, treads, the walls, that everything was where we're covered with these huge, huge projects. So that was the spring street project and, uh, yeah, the worcester collective.
Speaker 2:Yeah so the worcester collective, and I heard you say in another interview as you can tell, I do my research yeah, you do.
Speaker 2:no, it was. This was your ted talk, actually, which was brilliant. So if anybody's listening to this after you listen to this interview, go and check out the ted talk, because it's brilliant and it lost and found it's so good. But you said in there that encouragement that you received when you were a child was what made you realise I'm an artist. You didn't say that exactly, I'm paraphrasing, but it was a gold star on a fish that you had.
Speaker 3:It was the pike. Yeah, I wish I'd kept it, but yeah, it was the first time that really I'd ever been recognised for something. You know, my friend, justin Monk, can kick a ball really, really well. And you know there was Claire Phillips had beautiful handwriting and I didn't get any of those accolades. I was, you know, bad at spelling, my handwriting was terrible, I couldn't kick a ball. But yeah, that one pike, that gold star on that pike, was the, the thing that really just ignited something in me that gave me some recognition to say, well, ok, you know, this might be your thing, you can do this.
Speaker 3:And when someone says nice things to you, you repeat what you've been doing in order that they might continue to say nice things. So I became the kid that was like can you draw Garfield? Can you draw Spider-Man? Can you do? And I would. You know I couldn't.
Speaker 3:I would go home and practice and practice, and practice and put the hours in and then till eventually I was good at something and I would go back to school again as a nipper and go yeah, I can do Garfield, I can do Spider-Man, and you know, I'm sure it's the same thing with that. You know the guy that can kick a ball for the first time. If someone says to me, wow, you would get at that, then they have that spark ignited in them and then they go and practice and play Kirby and, you know, kick the ball a thousand times until they get better at it. I've always held that story in my head when I was a teacher because I realized the value of a really small statement, a really small comment. You know, a little paper gold star. You know, these tiny things can have such a massive impact on people in their lives and it's really important to offer those genuinely offer words of encouragement when you see somebody that's doing something that could spark something Absolutely so.
Speaker 2:You had this gold star from a teacher, you had the Worcester Collective. Give you that bit of self-belief as well, that you were on to something and you could also do this. What I would love to know is perhaps from your time as a teacher, or perhaps as your time as an artist or a street artist, has there ever been anybody who's come back to you and said you gave me that moment?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there has um none specific that I can kind of hold in my head. I've had some really wonderful messages from people who have made some connection and that always kind of throws me, because you know, we do what we do, we just have a good time right. We create something. It comes out of inside of us, which surprises me sometimes, the stuff that I produce. I kind of look at it when I finish it and think, oh, where did that come from? And then you put it out into the world and then you move on to the next project, you move on to the next piece of work and the next thing you do but it's only when you do get a message from people somewhere down the line that said you know, I saw this piece and it changed everything for me.
Speaker 3:And now I'm producing my own street art or I'm creating work or I'm moved into the jewelry business or I've followed my dream to do whatever it is that you realize that art can be so powerful. You know, as artists we don't really necessarily appreciate the impact that our work that has. But I've, you know, I remember painting at Upfest one year and it was the first year that Hero Cut, the German duo were painting and I didn't know they were painting. They were my street art heroes still kind of are and I turned the corner and turned around to look at this huge wall they were working on and it made me cry and it was just like, oh my god, these two people that are throwing paint on a wall have done something. It wasn't finished, but but something so powerful that it could bring tears to your eyes. And it's such a weird thing, isn't it? You know, it's just a medium on a surface, it's just paint on a wall, and yet it can have such a powerful effect. Really, really throws me sometimes that you know what I do?
Speaker 2:some silly little stick figure or a glassy reflective eye can, can have an impact to the point where people are touched by it or inspired by it wow, oh, you've just said so many things that I want to explore, I want to talk about, but I think that actually leads beautifully into the project that you have just released. It was something that made me cry, actually, when I watched it. So you recently shared a documentary called inside we shelter here sometimes we've got a lot to talk about because I've got a lot of questions for you it was, in one word, beautiful. It was so beautiful.
Speaker 2:Now, I am a film fan and I'm very sensitive to sound. I play music, I'm a DJ, I love movies, I'm very conscious of sound design. So not only was it so visually beautiful, but the sound design was incredible. And there was a point I can't remember exactly, but I think it was maybe from about 19 minutes to 21 or maybe 20 to 22 minutes where the sound and the music and this beautiful shot of you painting it was like emotional. It was gorgeous.
Speaker 2:There was other parts in it where you tell stories towards the end that really got me and I really cried. I've told you already what those parts were and I won't spoil it for anybody who wants to go and listen, but I'm sure when you hear these two stories they might evoke some emotion in you. Now, inside is something I'm going to ask you about. Before I say I don't want to spoil anything. I really, really want people to go and watch this, because it's truly a work of art. It's so beautiful. For anybody who hasn't yet heard about the project, can you please tell us about Inside the Documentary? How did it come to be?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I have to say I can't take credit for the film. I'm just the guy on the other end of the camera, the wrong, you know, the guy on the camera that shouldn't take credit because I'm on screen. So all credit goes to paul granella from strong island, who was the filmmaker, who he's kind of an accidental filmmaker really. I, in 2019, inspired by the likes of phlegm's mausoleum of the giants and roan's big empire project over in australia, where they, as street artists, took over spaces inside and created installations and artwork inside spaces and used the space, I thought I wanted to do that. I was really excited because I paint eyes right and 20 the year 2020 was coming, so I thought I had the title of the show first right 2020 vision. It's so cheesy but it works, so I had right. I've got brilliant. I've got the title of the show. I've been inspired by phlegm. I've been by Roan. I'm inspired by those artists that are moving into these kind of scabby places. Mysterious Al did a great one over in Melbourne when I was there and took over an old warehouse and put on a big party and loads of artwork and I thought, well, I'll do that, I'll paint some pieces, I'll bypass, maybe working with some galleries. I'll just use an abandoned space, paint some paintings, hang them on the wall, invite everybody in, have a great party. It will be kind of grimy. It will be like the old school you know rave days of, you know shimmying open the fire, exit and getting everybody in. I'll do that.
Speaker 3:So I went out hunting for abandoned buildings to work in and you know, long story short, I found one and I found the most amazing one. And I came into this space and it had been bricked up maybe 45, 50 years ago and just left and it was a 1920s ballroom, just the most amazing space. And of course, the urban explorers have got in, the kids had got in and smashed it all up, and but there was something really beautiful and I realized as soon as I stepped into the space that it wasn't just hanging some paintings on the wall, you know, having a party and walking away. I had to do something. I had to do something that was worthy of this once in a lifetime space. So I put aside a lump of cash and I put aside five months and I thought I would move into sculptural forms and I'd move into trying to fill this space. And this was just before, you know, the world's changed and lockdown came and that threw everything out of the window, really Everything that I was planning to do later in 2020 and 21, and all disappeared, like it did for everybody who travels the world painting.
Speaker 3:But I had this little project and thought, well, I've got nothing else to do, I'll just keep this project going. And I'd spoken to Paul right at the beginning and said I've made some films with him, some short films with him, before he's a, you know, beautiful short filmmaker. I said, look, can you just come in and document a little bit of me making, maybe do a few little interview bits, and I've got some social media content to go out when you know, after the exhibition finished, like you do when you have an exhibition, you get someone to record the opening night and you know a few bits leading up to making the work and stuff. And he was like, yeah, cool, I'll do that, I'll pop in. And he said, look, I can't be there all the time, so why don't you document bits? Just use your phone and then you know if you're doing something interesting, stick your phone on the side, record it and I'll weave that into whatever I'm doing and you know, with the world changing, his popping in once a week for a couple of months turned into following me for two years.
Speaker 3:So I actually spent two years inside this abandoned building and this little project where I was going to have a little show called 2020 Vision didn't open in 2020. Of course, nothing did, ended up, you know, taking until mid-2021 before we opened inside, and it was a project that very nearly broke me. You know, you, I watch grand designs, right and they you see these people with all these really positive bouncy ideas about how things are going to work, and it costs, you know, twice as much, takes twice as long and nearly breaks you and I completely get it. And I've subsequently spoken to Phlegm at length and spoken to Roan about their projects and I thought they breezed through their projects and actually they've said exactly the same thing.
Speaker 3:You know, you have no idea, when you're working on a project at scale, quite how big it is, and Paul was documenting that and we got the show together for a very short period of time, but it was still at the tail end of covid and not many people had the opportunity that might have want to see it and but we had all this documentation, thousands of hours of footage, poor old paul. Um, we, you know, we didn't have a film in mind, so we didn't have a script. We didn't have a film in mind, so we didn't have a script. We didn't have a narrative, we just had thousands of hours of footage.
Speaker 3:And Paul's job was, first of all, to sit and log everything what I was talking about, where it was going on, what was happening and then eventually to put it all together to make the film. And we did some premieres last summer and we were hoping to try and get it onto streaming services, but that delayed huge amounts of things and then didn't quite happen. And so it was really important for me that I get this out for people to see and watch, because you know it does document a time that we all kind of remember. I think we're blocking a lot of it out, but you know a time that did happen and I think it's a project that anybody who's been involved in any creative acts can recognize, those moments of frustration and joy, and you know the kickbacks and the but you know ultimately traversing a tricky time to do something which you hope and believe to be a valuable thing. So I'm so. It's so nice to get it out. You know it's just, it's been. You know we started in 2019. It's now where are we? 2025? So it's been such a journey. You know the whole project's a journey.
Speaker 3:But you know, both of us sitting down with all this footage and Paul's never made a full-length documentary before. I'd never made a documentary before so you know, you know, to sit there in the editing suite with all these hours of footage and the first couple of cuts were five, six, seven hours long and we loved every bit of it, but we realised there's no way that anybody's going to sit for that length of time. So, having to choose these huge chunks of the film, these really wonderful chapters, and going I'm really, really sorry, but you're not in the film anymore. You know, oiking things out in order to build a really strong story and a really strong narrative within a time limited frame was such a difficult thing to do. But yeah, ultimately it's ended up producing a film that we're both incredibly proud of and and we want everyone to see. Yeah, we want to to to watch so a huge credit to Paul.
Speaker 2:As I said at the beginning, I was stunned by the beauty of it. Massive credit to him for this. I had no idea he'd never done a full length film before. That's amazing what he's done, what you've done as well. You were the subject of the film. What I think made it really beautiful, from what you had shared, was the vulnerability. Yes, it was beautifully shot, but the subject was, in my view, pure vulnerability and honesty and authenticity because you're saying this isn't easy.
Speaker 3:This is actually quite stressful. Yeah, just a little bit, yeah, and I don't think I'd realized quite how open and honest I'd been until we actually got to the final edit. And then we did the first showing with a screening of you know, 300 people and I looked at myself, one blown up massively on a screen which is incredibly uncomfortable. It's like why didn't I trim my eyebrow hairs and um and but two that I did actually put myself out there, yeah, warts and all, I suppose. And I remember my wife looking at me going, wow, I had no idea that it was quite like that and I kind of looked at the film and thought, no, nor did I really. I don't remember it quite as shocking, but yeah, it's. It's either Paul's really clever editing skills or I just laid it all out on the line. But you spoke about the music and how that affected you. We were incredibly lucky.
Speaker 3:A guy guy called Chris Whittier, who is a music lecturer at Portsmouth University and a friend of mine and also the lead of a band called the Bee of the Bang and I approached him about helping to create some soundscapes for the creatures. So all the creatures that were in the exhibition spoke and they all talked and they all had a script, but the script was not recognisable. Part of the inside project is that I create a new language for these creatures that's decodable but isn't recognizable at first glance or first listen. And he was fantastic in helping with that. Both paul and I said like we, you know, I want a soundscape to fit in the space. Have you got anything that you can recommend?
Speaker 3:And he said well, I've got a couple of these songs that I've been just noodling around with playing with. I don't know if any of those will be any good, and he sent them over. There were four or five tracks and there was just one track with one particular refrain that we both kind of went wow. One, it has to be the soundscape of the exhibition itself, and it was. It was in there playing and parts of it, and it broke down to the point of nothingness and then built back up again. And then two we were able to work with wit to build extending versions of that music and, and so it's which music? The beat of the bang, that kind of holds the whole thing together and and, like you say, at times it soars beautifully and at times is as empty as I felt.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, it's truly beautiful, but it was again all elements. So the beautiful filmmaking, the sound design, the soundscape and your vulnerability all comes together to do something really, really special. It feels like you're seeing somebody on the point of breaking down but pulling it back. It's like a story of hope. I think I loved it, and you've said that there was a huge edit, and that is the hardest thing about creating content. That's why I have a podcast. I started out doing 10 minute radio interviews, 10 minute edits, but you never just chat to somebody for 10 minutes. You have a really great conversation and I was leaving every conversation so inspired, felt like that person deserves to have that story heard and other people deserve to hear it, so they feel as inspired as I do right now. That's what I feel happened with you that when you shared inside, you were like people have to see this, they have to see the process and connect with it. What did we not see? What was in the five or so hours that we cut out.
Speaker 3:There's one favourite scene that actually we left a little tiny Easter egg in the film. I'm interviewing myself one day with my phone, resting on some paint pots, and you see me just scratching my arm, and Paul edits it really carefully, so there's just too much of a focus on me scratching on my arm and then there's nothing mentioned to it. Again, paul and I have done a couple of q? A's after some showings and he talked about this and there was one whole section, a 10 minute section of the film, where I speak about fleas. So the whole building was infested with fleas to the point where for about six months, every time I went into the building I would have to gaffer tape my trousers to my shoes because I was just getting eaten alive by these fleas, and then every day I would peel the gaffer tape off and stuck to the glue on the inside of the tape with the fleas that had been crawling down through my trouser leg. So so there are lots of kind of little little bits, little snippets like that, and we have spoken about the fact.
Speaker 3:Now Paul is now, you know, back and busy and working and in demand and, like all these things, this film is a passion project. Neither of us are making, you know, money from this, so it's a difficult one. But we'd like to maybe do a little bit like when you get the DVD extras. We'd like to maybe package up some of these little elements that were removed from the film and put them as little standalone pieces. There's the whole section with Witt and working with the sound at the university, reversing the voices and all the little things that went along with that. That's the section that sadly didn't make it. So, yeah, there are so many bits that they're still there somewhere. They're on a hard drive in various states of of edit and or not edited, but maybe one day we'll get those out so that people can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, watch the me being eaten alive by fleas.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry you were, but that's a great story worth it for that alone, yeah so, when it comes to sharing, like you said, this is a passion project for you. This is something that you really wanted to share. I am so grateful that you did, because I didn't move to London until 2021, when COVID was lifting, and had you not documented this and now shared it, I would never have known that that existed, and that's why it's so important to share. Was there ever a point where you were thinking this is too much work and I'm just not going to put it out there? And I hope it feels validating for me to say thank you for doing that, because I would never have seen it if you hadn't done that um, yeah, there were, there always is with every project, especially with every big project, where you just want to throw the towel in.
Speaker 3:But when you've got something stuck in your head as a creative and you really want to see it in fruition and you think it's going to work, it's very hard to let it go. It's for me anyway, and I have this dogged determination sometimes that I've got to get it done and I've and I've got to get it out there. The insight project itself, because we were weaving it around what was happening with the world, with COVID, I, I very. There were a number of times where I felt I believed that we would never open it up to the public. So I would build a huge two-year-long installation and the only thing that anybody would see would be the documentation and no one would actually visit the space itself. So I knew that documenting was a really key part. It might've been the only evidence of the artwork ever producing. So in that way, I was determined that documenting was a really key part. It might have been the only evidence of the artwork ever producing. So in that way, I was determined that documenting was really, really important.
Speaker 3:We were both definitely ready to throw the film in the bin and walk away in the editing process a number of times. You know we did what we thought was the finished film and sent it out to a few friends and industry people who kind of turned around and said, put it in the bin, it's not worth anything, no one's going to watch it. And they were probably right in where it was at the time. It was a different film and that forced us to go back and pull some post-its out and lay them on the ground in a mountain shape and work out what was what, and forced us to spend another year working, working on it, but it was the right thing in the end. It was painful, but it was the right thing in the end.
Speaker 3:But yeah, many, many times, both through inside and through making the film, where you want to throw the towel in but you're either so far invested, both emotionally, physically and sometimes financially, that you can't turn around. You've just got to keep going. That's akin to many things in life, isn't it? You know, if you've got this idea, just invest in it, just invest in yourself and your time and your skill base, um, and you know, get out there and get it done, because it's worth it in the end. It really is, and you're all the better person for doing it that's beautifully summed up.
Speaker 2:I'm curious about the language of the little voices and can I ask, were you a fan of pigeons before a documentary?
Speaker 3:I had no view either way of pigeons before the documentary, but they definitely featured a much bigger part in my life than I ever expected them to be. They became my compadres. For a long, long time I wasn't a massive fan of pigeon guam and the, the, the logistics of getting rid of that and opening up a building and and making a building pigeon proof so they can't get in and all those bits and pieces, but, um, I think when you spend time like that, really focused time, understanding this is a very, very dark building, very little going on apart from pigeons flying around, you start to build this relationship and and for me, the idea of a bird is they have the opportunity to just get up and fly away. They can go to wherever they want to be, and I liked the, the, the echoes of that in what we are as triers, and so I created these pigeon-like creatures, my quiet little voices, and for me they represented the triers in the world.
Speaker 3:You know they've got beaks that are tied on. They're not real pigeons and you can imagine them attempting to fly, jumping off a surface and crashing and burning, because they're at the beginning of their journey, but they've got hopes and dreams and, with effort and hard work and determination. Eventually they're going to do like the pigeons do, which is get up and fly and explore the world. So it was more about using them as a I don't know what the word is. I know there's probably some posh word to describe it but it was about trying to mimic a creature that was dreaming of being something pigeon-like, that had the opportunity to fly off and achieve hopes and dreams.
Speaker 2:I love pigeons and I think they have a terrible reputation and needs a good marketer to make people like them again because they're beautiful.
Speaker 3:They are stunning. That iridescence on the chest is just sublime. But you know better than many tropical birds, for sure. But um, yeah, they don't half make a mess, aren't they?
Speaker 2:you know they've got rats with wings, but um yeah, no, I agree with you, they are really beautiful yeah, I agree, and they're resilient and have a lot of sympathy and love for pigeons, so I was delighted to see them in the film and see that they influenced you. But back to the little voices and to talk about the language that you created, and I felt watching it, watching your process, that I was witnessing pure creative flow. When you're creating this language and when you're doing this, it really felt like I was witnessing flow, which I think is the most beautiful feeling in the world. Where do you think creativity comes from? What is it that's coming through you when you're creating the characters and your art?
Speaker 3:oh my god, what a question. Where does it come from? I have no idea. I wish I did and then I could find out where it is and tap into it all the time. There's a lovely quote and I and I often probably misquote it, but, um, it was attributed to Picasso, but I'm not even sure it was. It says inspiration exists but it has to find you working, and I love that. You know I can't sit in a cafe drinking coffee and waiting for the idea of the next painting to come. I've just got to be in the studio and I've just got to be working.
Speaker 3:As far as the language for these creatures, I suppose it's there's one thing to sketch them out and have an idea of what they are and what they look like and then sculpt them. But I felt that, as they occupied a space, they had to be more than just the thing that I do when I paint the mural, that flat image the viewer can fill in all the gaps how do they move, how do they walk, how do they talk, all these things. It's the viewer's job to look at that image and come up with. Now I had the opportunity, because I'm working in space and I'm not used to working in space as a street artist, I'm used to working on the flat plane. I thought I had to take full advantage of immersing people, and so a language felt like the right thing to go, and I don't know whether it was the written language or the audio language that came first. I think they probably both came at the same time but I really wanted the viewer to feel that these things were concrete and real and alive, and in order for that to happen, you have to build all these other elements, and lockdown meant I had the time to do that.
Speaker 3:The written language is a really fascinating one, because I'm a lefty right, I'm a left-handed and all my life writing with a pencil has been a pain in the arse. My hand goes over the top, it doesn't seem to flow very comfortably, my writing's really spider-like and I don't like it, and so I knew that if I was going to do a written script, it wasn't going to be from left to right, because as a lefty, that's just a horrible way to write. So I developed this language. It was literally looking at the letters you know A, b, c, d and then working out a way of creating a symbol which represented that letter and that sound and then building it up and then writing it from right to left rather than from left to right, and then once I you know it took a long time to develop the language, but once I got it, the flow of writing in my made-up language is actually far easier and far more gentle and and natural to me than writing in English from left to right.
Speaker 3:Now there's a couple of scenes that I think still made it into the film where I'm in part of the building where I'm actually writing the story of these quiet little voices on the walls of the buildings. In my head it's them writing their history, it's them documenting what's happened to them, and I could just do it without thinking, and it was a really lovely mental space. Where that came from, I don't know, and where these ideas came from, they came from a lack of sleep. They came from thinking about that and nothing else. You know, I would wake up at four o'clock every morning because my brain was just fried, and I would wake up worrying how the letter T looked in a language that I was making up.
Speaker 3:There are, you know it's details that 99.99% of people will completely miss, but as a creative or as an artist, you obsess over. It's like when is the painting finished? You know it could have been finished two days ago, but I'm gonna spend two more days on it, putting things in there that most people won't see, but they have to be there, you know, and you still never finish a painting, doesn't matter where. You know, even if it's hanging on a gallery wall or hanging in someone's house, I can look at it and think, well, I could do that and I could do that and I could change this and I could do that.
Speaker 3:And I think that's what we, as creatives alike we become obsessed. I use a strap line on my social media doing the unnecessary with love. And you know, I really, truly believe that it's, you know, or maybe it's not unnecessary, I don't know but I focus on things that are so tiny that most people will miss them, but for some reason, feel like it's so important that I've got to include those elements. I've got to. It makes the piece much more whole you talk so passionately about it.
Speaker 2:I would like to say when you first go into the space and you're looking around with such joy, it's a trashed building. I was thinking I'm not sure I see what he sees here.
Speaker 3:That's become evident as I've watched the film with audience. They kind of laugh and we're like, oh my God, can you see it? It's beautiful and it was. That was. It was genuine. You know, that wasn't like I've got a camera on me. I've got to say this.
Speaker 3:This was just me, absolutely in all of the space. You know, I had this view in my head that it would be a decayed building. But there's levels of decay to me that have beauty, and I've always loved rust, I've always loved peeling paint, I've always loved cracked plaster, and I think that's part of being a street artist and working outside on these places. And this building was just was that. And then some, you know, know the paint peeling off the ceiling, the vault, this beautiful vaulted ceiling, the parquet flooring with bits missing and the broken windows.
Speaker 3:It, it became a logistical nightmare. I I had a project manager, angela, that helped me organize the building and getting people into the building, and you know I just wanted to open the doors and let everyone in, but this building was falling apart. It needed, you know, we spent a hundred thousand pounds on making the building safe for the public to get in. And when the Arts Council pulls their funding and there isn't any funding there and you're so far into it that you've got no choice but to keep going and trying to find a health and safety officer to understand that I really want that broken glass in the door to stay there, but them saying, well, you can't, you're going to have children in this building, they can't touch broken glass and and finding ways to overcome these difficulties. So, poor Angela, I would say, right, there's absolutely no way we're taking. That broken glass area has to stay there. You have to find a solution to make sure that we can still see these elements. I still want broken mirrors on the floor. I still want, you know, all the all solution to make sure that we can still see these elements. I still want broken mirrors on the floor. I still want, you know, all the, all these bits and pieces.
Speaker 3:That makes for logistical nightmares, but ultimately it's the thing that made it as special, as when I first walked in and it was fascinating to see people. To get into the exhibition, you had to climb through a hole in the wall, um and uh, and people didn't know what they were coming to. We kept the whole thing a real secret until, um, you know, they walked into this room and just to see people's faces and their faces were the same as mine in the film when they came to the exhibition and they walked into that room or walked into the end of that room, you could see their faces light up. I you know, I realized that it wasn't just me that found it special. But yeah, when I first started, when I first came in, it was a pretty rough looking space.
Speaker 2:It definitely becomes. You can see your vision. At the end, you are successful. I have a couple more questions for you. The first one is something that I struggle with. I can only imagine that it was something that would have happened to you. I am asking this question for myself, but I know other people will have had this experience as well. When I play a really great gig that I've been nervous about and excited about and putting a lot of work into, or when I release something that I have poured my heart and soul into, it's a pure adrenaline. It's such a high and you're just. You finally have done the thing, and it feels amazing. And after that high comes a huge one Hell yeah.
Speaker 2:I call it the fun down. Come down, the fun down, it's like a come down. David Speed gave me some good advice once. When I mentioned it to him. He was like well, plan the next thing, go like what's next, go for the next thing. That was a good way to deal with it. But I would love to hear, I'm sure, if you spent two years of your life pouring your heart and soul into this and then it's finished and also likely possibly let me know this documentary and the buildup and the excitement and then you release it and then it's out there. Is this something that you've struggled with as well? Do you have any tips for me and for everybody else, please.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think David's advice is fantastic about jumping straight into the next project With Inside. It was so big and so magnified and I wasn't sensible in kind of looking after my own state of being, my mental health, my physical health, my mental health, my physical health and so I did. I crashed, and I probably crashed for a year and struggled to do anything. I mean, I worked, but it wasn't a great place to be in. I still feel the ramifications of it in maybe not always a positive way. I'm so proud of what I did, but I think that exhaustion and that come down masked a lot of that, and it wasn't really now until the film I watched the film again that I can go oh, wow, yeah, I did that, I did that and it's funny all the way through the film we talk about we, we're doing this, we're doing that, we're doing this, and I had some you know some help from, you know, whit with the sound and Paul filming and Angela project managing, and there's a handsome Dave, who you'll meet in the film as well, who was an absolute legend to help me build things, and a few people helping along the way, but I almost felt like the risk was shared by saying we, when it was my project. But yeah, the come down was really really tough, really really hard. And it's only really now, I think, that I'm starting to feel like I've I've got something else in me that I can take forwards. So I do.
Speaker 3:I am working on other things I am working on and it says at the end of the film I've got, you know, he's got something up his sleeve. Um, the sleeves are big things and they take a really really long time to to pull things out and sometimes they don't come off. And I've learned the hard way by publicly saying hey, everybody, I'm doing this, and things fall flat on their face sometimes and they don't happen. So I've got some things in the pipeline and they're kind of cool and they're and I'm really excited by them, but they're not quite ready. They definitely won't be ready for another year, I don't think. And whether I even associate them with my dog's eyes, I'm still not sure.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's nice to have little side quests on things. But yeah, I get the quick fix from painting walls. I love that. I can get in, paint the wall in a couple of days or even a day, and get back out again and that's a lovely adrenaline boost and a kick and a, and I really like that, uh. But some projects are a little bit more long-winded and more time consuming, and so I'm going to sort of take those over quietly and then maybe I'll surprise people at some point with something else that's going on brilliant.
Speaker 2:Well, I can't wait to see what is next for you. I'm so excited, and if this was something that you managed to do in such a struggle of a time as COVID, I can't wait to see what you can do when you have resources and people who are able to easily hopefully attend and perhaps help. It's going to be amazing. So, whatever it is, I'm excited to hear what's coming. I have a couple of quick fire questions for you, and that was one. I actually have made a note here. Handsome Dave. Oh.
Speaker 3:Handsome Dave's a legend, absolute legend, yeah.
Speaker 2:He's mentioned quite a few times. I'd written it down. I was like tell us about Handsome Dave. We don't hear his backstory.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was looking for someone that could help in an unusual project and, uh, his name came forward. He's a local chap, uh, works a lot building festivals and festival sites. And then I brought him in and said, like this is the space, I need to do some stuff. I need to make it safe, I need to fix the roof, I need to get the rid of the pigeons, I need to, you know, do a whole bunch of health and safety things. Angela's going to be on your case going we need to fix this, we need to make this safe and, by the way, I've got this idea about building these huge wooden igloos, and I'm a painter, not a sculptor.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, hans and Dave was the person that. He was great, you just go. Yeah, we can do that. You know, dave, I need to collect a hundred doors and build a maze in the middle of a building. Oh, great, get the doors, we can build that. And so I don't know where the name Hanson Dave came from. It was. It was gifted to me as, like, you need to go and speak to Hanson Dave, so he'll have to tell his story as where, the where the name came from. But, um, he's handsome in every way, shape and form, because if you need stuff doing, hans and Dave would make it happen. And so, yeah, he is a legend.
Speaker 2:I love that. Like I said, I like to research and I like to come with questions that hopefully aren't too repetitive. One question that you'd been asked before was an artist that everybody had to be aware of, and you said Phlegm, and you've mentioned Phlegm again today. That was quite an influence on you. That was a few years ago that you gave that answer. Is there an updated answer to that question? What artists do you think people need to be aware of right now?
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, it's who do I love at the moment. I'm a massive fan, more recently, of a French artist called Bom K B-O-M dot the letter K, beautiful work. It's pretty dark but he's very exciting. I don't know if he speaks English, so I know very little about him, other than every time his post comes up it melts my heart and I really like it.
Speaker 3:There's an emerging artist, um, a guy who I've met a few for a few years now. He's kind of. He came and helped out when I was doing a book tour in Peterborough, uh, and his name's Paul Neen K-N-E-E-N. Um and um he's. He's made that big step of moving out of a day job and moving into to being a painter. And I'm in a really lucky position as an artist is that if there's artists I really like, I can reach out to them and agree a trade. And I've just done a trade before and I've got a really lovely piece of his which is going to hang hang on the wall soon. So, yeah, paul, yeah, he's such a lovely guy and very, very humble, but I really like his work. I still adore phlegm and what he's done with his mausoleum of the giants projects. His comic book work, his war work is so simple and yet utterly sublime. I'm looking around the room. I've got lots of artwork by lots of people.
Speaker 3:I've got to give a shout out to a guy who shares a studio with me, matt m1 m-1 one, a stencil artist whose work takes stenciling to a whole new level the, the painterly quality, the looseness, it's everything that stencils aren't supposed to be under spray, and soft, drippy colors. He's got a show show coming up at the Corner Collective in a month or two time. But I come into the studio in the morning. He works nights and I work in the daytimes in the studio and so I come to him and see the leftovers of what he's been working on the night before and I always kind of look over at his area and what he's been working on and it's always very, very beautiful. So yeah, going to give him a shout as well. So we're going to wrap up very shortly. I have one more question I again heard in another interview.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll say this I obviously do my research. You do you do really well, thank you, yeah, yeah. However, when I was researching, looking on spotify for my dog size podcast interview, whatever all I was getting was anxiety music for dogs like I um, there was a it's uh.
Speaker 3:I get those adverts saying we can put your website at the top of google right, analytics and stuff like that. And apart from one veterinary site which and it has the phrase why does my dog sigh? You know my dog sighs is the top 10 pages of google on that search. But, um, yeah, it's, yeah, the whole veterinary thing is uh is kind of funny yeah, I thought it was quite funny.
Speaker 2:But something that you said in another interview was that you had a quote maybe not a quote, maybe a motto to live by and this again was quite a few years ago now, so I'm checking in but the quote was three things I loved work hard, be nice be nice.
Speaker 3:Be nice, no excuses. Yeah, and I stole it from one of my kids' schools. It was the motto of the secondary school for a while and I just thought it was so brilliant because it distills everything. Actually, you know, I really really try and live by it and it's not always easy, despite the fact that it's very, three, very, very simple things. But every decision that you make you can look at one of those three elements and work out whether you're you're doing it, whether you're living by them. You know, I often get asked by you know school kids doing projects on my work, or you know what? What advice can you give me? You know, moving forwards, and I just think those three things work hard. Be nice, no excuses absolutely fits. If you mess up, you have to, you have to accept the fact that there are no excuses and you have to own up and you have to put your big boy pants on and say sorry and put it right and move forward from there. And there is no excuse not to be nice, be civil. But you know, and you know you're only going to get somewhere if you work harder than the person next to you. You gotta, you gotta, smash it right.
Speaker 3:That's that when I first stepped into working full-time as an artist, my wife went from a part-time teacher back to being a full-time teacher so that we could afford for me to try that. And it was such a big thing for her to give up that I knew I had to make it work. She gave me a year. She said I'll do it for a year and then, if it doesn't work, you go back to work full time and then we'll carry on as we were before. And so I knew I had to make it work. I knew I had to work hard, and I was a primary school teacher for 20 years before that, and I can tell you I've never met any group of people that work harder, maybe, maybe those in the NHS. My son's now in the NHS, I know he works super hard as well. But you know, primary school teachers or teachers full stop. They give everything. They work so, so hard for the pupils that they teach way beyond what they earn and the hours that they're supposed to be doing. This idea that they have these wonderful long holidays just doesn't exist. And so that work ethic from from teaching stepped into what I was doing, and knowing my wife had stepped back into that and she would given up so much meant that working hard is is is something that I knew I had to do.
Speaker 3:It's frustrating. Sometimes I see some incredible artists, really really talented artists, but maybe they haven't quite got that motivation to really really work hard. And it's a tricky old game out there, especially with the world like it is at the moment. You know there's a a lot of, you know, amazing artists that are, you know, having to navigate really, really difficult times and you know that's that can be pretty tough. But yeah, I try and live by those three. It's interesting that you picked up on them, but, um, yeah, they are very important.
Speaker 2:I picked up on them because I thought they were beautiful. I love a quote. I'm a big fan of a quote. Yeah, I love lyrics as well and I've seen that you have lyrics in your and you had lyrics in your exhibition. Is music and words and lyrics and quotes something that you feel is important in your work?
Speaker 3:oh, massively. Yeah, absolutely. Music's the first thing that happens in my studio, it's the first thing that goes on, it's the last thing that goes off. There's something quite magical about one simple lyric. I I don't know if it's been I've been working with spray paint for 20 years but my brain is fried. I have no memory at all, but play a song from 1992 and I can sing you every lyric to that song and my brain has the capacity to capture that.
Speaker 3:And I think you know there are some lyrics that have stayed with me for such a long period of time and I don't know why that is. They have such a resonance to them. So, yeah, I can repeat them in my head almost like a mantra while I'm painting for five hours, and they start to fit into the titles of my work. Nearly all of the titles of my work come from lyrics of songs and my everyman character, which I know we haven't spoken about today, but often features lyrics from different songs and times in my life and I think they can say so many things. I'm not a poet by any stretch of the imagination, but I can. I can recognise when a group of words have a resonance and I like to capture those and and put my own spin on them within my work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can you tell us a few of your favourite artists, so musical artists.
Speaker 3:Uh, musical artists I love uh the Smiths, I love Radiohead, I love Blur smiths, I love radiohead, I love blur. Um. I love um, oh gosh, my uh mountain goats. My son's just got me into the mountain goats, really like them. Um, damien Rice, I like as much as I'm quite a cheerful person. My artwork is quite melancholic and my choice of music is often the same um, I'm happy to absolutely get lost in the um the, the dirge of the wedding present or ride or spiritualized and um or all you know. Very depressing music, but it makes my heart sore.
Speaker 2:I love it. We haven't talked about your everyman character, but do you want to give us a little bit of insight into everyman, for anyone who doesn't know?
Speaker 3:it's been with me the longest out of all the my dog size elements really, and it came from when I was a teacher and I had a kid in my that came to my class that was very reluctant to pick up a pencil and after a very long drawn out spell I did persuade him to pick up a pencil. And he had a blue piece of paper and a pencil which he held in a fist grip, and I asked him to draw something and he said, oh, I'll draw a picture of you. And he drew this square-headed, flower-hand stick man with uneven feet and a great big grin. He said there, can I go and play now? And I just thought thought you, little shit I've.
Speaker 3:I've spent my life trying to develop the nuance of emotion in my artwork, to get people's hearts to pump, all the hairs on the back of their necks to stand up. And there he was, for the first time he ever held a pencil and he absolutely smashed it. And I've still got this little scabby bit of blue paper. And this guy is long grown up now and I bought him some beers and told him the story and it was that image, that really really simplified image, that I thought if I if I can pair it with these melancholic song lyrics, these these moments of kind of melancholy, that it could become really, really powerful. And I used to paint them with leftover paint that I had on my palette so I didn't want to waste it. So the backgrounds were always really muddy colors and then the character would go over the top and it's developed and refined over the years and lots of people call him my hug man and it's a great paste up.
Speaker 3:It's a great free art friday piece. Yeah, it's, uh, it's. It's quite phenomenal. How many people have him tattooed on their bodies, which is so lovely. My postman's got him on the back of the leg. And the amount of times I get sent a photograph from somebody else in the city going oh postman's got your everyman tattooed on the back of his leg. So, yeah, I love him to bits. He doesn't fit in with any of the other stuff. It's a very disparate set of work that I do, but yeah, he'll be with me for a good while longer oh yeah, it's lovely.
Speaker 2:And when you say about this kid absolutely smashing it with something quite simple but impactful, when people say to me oh, I'd love to do art but I can't draw. I can't draw a stick stick figure, and I'm like stick stick is such a fantastic artist I I don't know him, but his art is literally a stick person, but it's so expressive and impactful and I absolutely love it. And then I show them stick and I'm like you can be an artist. Look, stick is drawing stick people beautifully, expressively. It fair does. But you can do that too. So don't put yourself down. You know it can be something so simple, but if it connects with you, then that's all that matters.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely yeah, completely agree yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're at time. I'm afraid, in fact, we've gone over. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. It's been lovely. I would love for you to tell people where they can go and find the film, and when I say it is a must see, I really mean that. So please, please do. I will link it in this description as well. Wherever you're listening to this, it will be linked. But where can people find it? Where can they find you, and is there any final places you think people should go and check out to see your work?
Speaker 3:oh, brilliant, that's very kind. So I'm on all the socials at my dog size and that size is in s-i-g-h-s, not s-i-z-e, which I often get confused. The other one is my dog's eyes, which I'm not, and you can see the film. The easiest way of seeing the film is to go onto my website, mydogsizecouk, and it's on the home page there, the link to it. It's actually a link to Vimeo, so if you jump on Vimeo and search my Dog's Eyes, you'll find it as well. Yeah, that's probably the easiest way of finding me and finding the film. It is a full length documentary. Please don't think it's a reel that you can watch in 15 seconds. I think our concentration spans are changing. I'm really, really proud of it and I hope people enjoy it and get something from it for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I really want to thank you sincerely for putting it out. Like I said, I moved to London after this had taken place and I never would have seen it if you hadn't done this. So all of the hard work and everything you put in, I'm grateful that you did. Thank you. Thank you for sharing it, thank you for your vulnerability and your authenticity. It's been beautiful to see, and I watched it several times. Actually, I watched it first and then I watched it one time with kind of out of the corner of my eye while I was painting, for the sound. The sound is amazing. The music, the sound. So I watched it with my eyes a couple of times and also with my ears. So please go and check it out. Please go check my Dog's Eyes out. Can't wait to see what's coming next for you. I really appreciate your time and wish you all the best.
Speaker 3:No, well, it's been really lovely to chat to you. I've you know your podcast was new to me and when you reached out I had a listen and I think you got really lovely interview style. I've really enjoyed listening to some of the other episodes as well. So if anybody's jumping on because they heard that it's they're coming, go and have a listen to the podcast and some of the other guests, because they were really really great. You mentioned david speed when we were talking. I'm a big fan of david. He podcasts so well, right, really really good. I've never met him. I've chatted to him online a little bit but, um, he's listen and there's some great podcasts that are worth listening to oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate that, and david is a really special being. He's one of those people that when you're in his presence, he makes you believe that you can do anything, like he just has this.
Speaker 3:You're like, I can do anything we need those people in our lives, don't?
Speaker 2:we. Yeah, he's really special. So thank you so much and I wish you all the best. Can't wait to see what's coming next. Thank you, there you have it. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of this is disruption. If you've enjoyed today conversation, make sure to follow the podcast and never miss an episode. You can find us on all major podcast platforms Apple Podcasts, spotify, etc. Stay connected with us on social media. You can find the podcast at this Is Disruption pod on Instagram and TikTok, and you will find updates and snippets of upcoming shows. Until next time, keep challenging the status quo, embracing your creative spirit, and be brave. Go and create. Thank you, and see you in the next episode.