What is your background and your relationship with art?

A lot of my relationship with art has come through my relationship with my home city of Bristol. Growing up I didn't take much of an interest in the visual arts in a formal setting but I saw a lot of graffiti around my home city and found that very interesting. I think growing up in a city that has a lot of art on its walls draws you into it whether you're fully aware of it or not, plus Bristol is home to great street artists like Inkie, Cheo, Nick Walker and Banksy so you can't help but get inspired by them. The fact that street artists are usually self-taught like myself helped me to think that I could get involved with making art and create something that would give a voice to my own ideas and thoughts about the world and issues affecting myself and others. Later I discovered other artists through taking more of an interest in the history of art and discovered the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kurt Schwitters, Cy Twombly and many others. I really love the visual language that Basquiat created. The rawness of his work really spoke to me and Schwitters work helped me to realize that you could use different objects and collage in art, Twombly helped me to see that you could do a lot with simple lines and abstraction. All of these different ideas and visual cues have given me a relationship to art that I am really glad to have discovered and helped me to express myself in new ways and develop a strong affinity with visual art.