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- My style has evolved from a lot
of experimentation combining the different ways in which I enjoy
making marks in various media. It incorporates photography with
drawing and painting (from the very naive to quite sophisticated)
playing with what works together and using each element to dissect
the other. As for the dark humour, I guess that is just something
you’re born with but I like my work to have a wry smile when
it can.
- It is just what served the brief
best really. Purely by painting them in ink instead of drawing the
portraits instantly gives them a very different kind of life. I
wanted them to be only about the people portrayed and to let the
faces really speak for themselves.
By using very simple but much bolder use of colour and texture the
series instantly has a much brighter and less ethereal atmosphere
than a lot of the fashion based images. It just wouldn’t work
otherwise.
- I’ve been drawing and painting
since I could pick up a pencil and its just something I love. According
to my parents I couldn’t sit down for any length of time without
drawing. I received a lot of portrait commissions as a young teenager.
It was when I went to study art, first at K.I.A.D and then at Kingston
University in London, that I really started messing around with
where I could push such a traditional approach to illustration.
The course offered a lot of room for experimentation regarding style
whilst always providing a firm grounding in concept and content.
I’d always been fascinated by drawing people and how they
can be used in art to make an image instantly accessible. There
is nothing easier for us to relate to visually than another human
and the message that it is communicating through gesture, situation
or facial expression. What is added to or subtracted from the human
image and its environment within the illustration, alongside the
marks and methods used to make it, is what I’m fascinated
in really exploring now. There is a lot of fun to be had there.
- I guess its pretty much impossible
not to be influenced by the environment in which you live. Maybe
if I was from Brazil or Africa no doubt my work would be completely
different but I grew up in small seaside town in South East England
with a lot of faded shop signs and peeling paintwork. This definitely
shaped my love of random textures and fading colours.
Aside from the inspiration I find in conversations, walking around,
art, fashion or magazines one major influence on my work is music.
I am very inspired by the likes of Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart,
the Stooges, Velvet Underground, Matmos, Jeff Buckley, Nina Simone,
Bjork, Bob Dylan, A Silver Mt Zion and Robert Johnson just to name
a few. My dream brief would be to do the cover art for the amazing
Miss Newsom! So to answer your question, all of the above is present
in my work in so much that it has helped form my style of illustration
but with the nature of illustration being to work to a client’s
brief it does not always form the content.
- Morte Per (To Die For) is the
first project from the collaboration between myself and London based
product designer Hideki (
).
We met just under a year ago and started working together in April.
We were very interested in combining our two disciplines to see
where we could push each other and what the end results could be.
The concept for Morte Per itself was born from a conversation between
the two of us about how a lot of today’s products are designed
and advertised to be so beautiful and life enhancing where in reality
they more often than not lead to our own demise.
This demise could be in a number of ways, a very obvious example
being the mobile phone, phone masts and power lines that affect
both humans and the environment in which we live. We decided to
take this idea one step further by using the visual language of
fashion and advertising to design and illustrate a range of products
that overtly aid in a consumer’s death - to make that death
so aesthetically beautiful as possible that the products remained
desirable. All with a little cheeky smile hidden somewhere of course.
The project is based around five products. These are:
- The Suicide Bath
- The Colombian Dining Table
- The Tip
- Youth and Beauty Body Cream
- Choker
The Morte Per exhibition consists of a series of illustrations that
incorporate these designs. Each image is constructed from a number
of elements.
The main three of these being hand drawn figurative illustration,
photography and HDRI rendered product designs which are then brought
together in Photoshop to be dissected with flat graphic shapes and
random textures. All these elements are moulded together to construct
the narrative surrounding each product and explain respectively
their role within the show’s concept.
 
- Sure… Morte Per is being
showcased at this years 100%East at the Truman Brewery in London
which is really exciting for us as its our first project together!
So if you can make it come down and take a look around.
The Vonhideki website will be updated with all the images in the
show nearer to the time of exhibition. In the meanwhile however,
the first two images released from the show are also currently being
exhibited at the Polished T gallery in Liverpool. Limited edition
prints of one of these images can also be bought from the Polished
T Gallery shop and from our website. After 100%East the next Vonhideki
project will be a series of chairs incorporating illustration as
part of the design. These will be available for viewing by the end
of the year.
Over the next month I am working with a young Norweigan fashion
designer called Siri Johansen. I will be making a series of illustrations
around her latest collection and hopefully get those exhibited alongside
the actual clothes before the end of the year.
I’ve just been signed up to a company called Naked Wall. They
promote art produced by a select group of talented British artists
by exhibiting and selling limited edition prints of the artists'
work on canvas.
Ten of my illustrations are now available to buy here
Everything’s really hectic at the moment! Hellovon was started
just under a year ago and I'm really looking forward to where the
work and oppurtunities will take it.
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images used with the author's permission* |
HELLO
VON