ManicWorld Magazine

-When did you know that art was your thing?
Art has always been prevalent within my upbringing. I come from a heavily working-class background, yet my aunty was the first person to pursue art as a career. When I was a kid, she would come visit us every summer, and I would ask her to draw me the flowers she would illustrate so well. Thinking back to it, I was probably quite annoying towards her, as she would be trying to catch up with the family as I would be there nearing her waist, tugging her with pencils in my hands nagging “do another one, please, for me!”. She would sigh yet would never fail to draw them out for me, she was one of my biggest role models as a young person; always encouraging me to express myself regardless to the lack of understanding I would inevitably receive from the rest of the family, for not wanting to strive for a more reliable source of income. Despite my aunty being one of my biggest inspirations, art has always been there for me. My main inspirations as a kid would be the animations I would watch on tv (I could name too many) but to name one would be ‘Ruby Gloom’ illustrated and animated by Martin Hsu (alongside his huge team). To watch something so free, exploding with thought-provoking philosophies and ways of being through the indie characters stuck with me. And, of course, Tim Burton and his array of wonderfully weird films, they bring great comfort to me and assure me how important it is to speak through art, too.

– If your inks could talk, what wild stories would they tell about your creative process?I love to sketchbook before anything else, and to journal entry. I am absolutely infatuated with the beauty of character design and development. I believe every single person on this Earth has a story to tell, so different yet similar from another. I like to bring real life people to a different world, by illustrating them into their own peculiar characters. I guess the characters, if they could talk, would natter to one another and argue, feud, yet also bond through their likeness after clashing for their differences. They would likely to tell you about their wonderfully mundane lives, and question why I thought to immortalise them on to the page through pen, and so I would reply “because I find you fascinating” and they’d stare at me oddly until I awkwardly flicked the page over onto the next peculiar creature I have mustered up from my mind!

–  Was there a “lightbulb” moment that made you say, “Time to launch my own store”?
Yes, I had just been mis-marked by my University and told that I could not re-enrol to study with them (many other students had been mis-marked and unfortunately this news was far more detrimental to their livelihoods… we didn’t find out we had been under-marked- so told we had failed when we had actually passed – until 6 months later after the previous misinformed news). So, I received my ‘‘failure’’ on a piece of paper in the mail, and was told I couldn’t re-enrol due to that fact. I thought to myself, if anyone is going to help me, it is me. I had been working on a series in the summer of 2022 called ‘the beautiful mundane’ and was very proud of the characters that danced upon the pages forming their own artworks, I decided I would there on work on putting myself out there by opening a Shopify store (although there are a range of websites you can use so I would recommend doing your research as to what website will optimise the best for you, see everything as an investment as not many things in life are free, so they should at least be worth it). And I decided to upload my first collection of prints on to there after working on this website for a while, I sourced a local printer to produce high quality prints of my artworks and have been making humble sales since.

A year later, I decided to re-enrol to university, since I only had one year left until completion, and graduated in July 2024. But all my progress, determination, grit and passion for my artwork has come from my very own soul. University is great to form personal connections and life-long friends, but I very much wish I did thorough research before enrolling, as the course (fine art) didn’t grant me much, I would recommend a foundation course ten times over, and getting out there in the community by attending stall events and opening your online store, dedication for your craft and constant willingness to practice- alongside healthy breaks.

But, if you are considering Art University, please wonder how it will BENEFIT you, and don’t listen to people who say it doesn’t matter if you don’t attend, it does. It is a lot of money to consider, so honour your future self by being wise with your money, thinking about how the course will help you, thinking about what specific career you desire, and make humble steps from there… Jumping into the deep end isn’t always the best way to thrive!