Its Malarky! Flitting between sunny Barcelona and rainy London its great we could catch this jet setting artist, illustrator and troublemaker and show you his wares. Malarky is his own style, and he has perfected it into something like an addiction, each image working more perfectly than before. It feels like ever single pen line is calculated to add cool and the second he has given you enough he'll stop. His images are like a precise form of anarchy free, and bold but measured and fully formed. There is an immense satisfying sense of completeness about his work, in that, unlike so many artists you are never left wanting by his images. This probably reflects his graffiti roots where you have to concentrate on getting it right in one stealthy (or down right dangerous) shot. Given more time you get a subtle palette complimenting the naive style with a contemplative touch that reminds me of painted Mexican churches and :atin iconography. Malarky is the whole package fully formed and just itching to take on the world. Great talent caught here on Illustration Rally!
My name is Malarky, I am an artist and illustrator, currently floating between London and Barcelona.
What do you do:
I paint and draw on anything I can find because I love to do it, my head spills over with ideas and I'm lucky if I get 1 in 10 down in some sort of recognisable visual form. I get agitated if I'm not able to get to a pen and paper when I need too.
I get inspiration from everywhere, from the people I'm with, to a stain on the wall of a dingey pub that looks like an astronaut wolf. I guess it has a lot to do with interpretation, if I saw an astronaut wolf that would make me smile so I guess my head is looking for amusement in everything I see and I try and put these thoughts onto paper/wood/whatever.
If I'm not drawing i'm probably drinking tea or eating nandos.
How did you start:
Creatively it all started when I took up skateboarding back in 1998, back then I was at school and and money was tight so £25 T shirts and £55 skate decks wasn't really an option. I used to get black decks and plain t shirts and doodle on them or do stencils, its was just a bit of fun, a little side project from skating. The urban exploration side of skateboarding had a cross over with the graffiti scene and a lot of times we would find ourselves in skating in a place where people were also painting, so everyone kind of got to know each other. Some writers showed me how they would draw/tag on the old royal mail recorded delivery stickers that you could get from the post office and stick them up around town, so I got busy doing that while working full time in a skateshop, until I could save enough to go to university.
I moved from London to Newcastle to study, the furthest north I'd been before then was Northampton so it was a bit of a culture shock! Up there I got more into graffiti more and started painting more trackside and street bits, got in some crazy situations and probably came close to death more than once. I was still doing stickers and now paste ups and through that I met some awesome artists, this was the first time I'd met someone who did art as a job and had a studio, right then, I knew thats what I wanted to do. Some small galleries started opening and taking on my work and I was getting little sales here and there, I finished off uni and got a job in an architecture practice, working there all day everyday further encouraged me to work hard at my artwork. I saved money for months and months and moved to Barcelona to work full time as an artist.
A Personal statement about you or your work:
Never too serious, but deep enough to make you think, and then hopefully smile!
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