Gallery – Matt Sewell
This month we greet the summer with the charming handiwork of street-artist and illustrator Matt Sewell.
“I don’t like keeping still,” says Matt Sewell, “If I don’t have much illustration on then I’ll go out and paint some wall or try and paint a load of canvases for a show. I won’t do any graffiti for half a year then I’ll get back into it again. I haven’t got a very long attention span.”
Which might go some way to explaining why Matt’s commissions run the gamut from magazine illustration to interiors to his latest project, toys…
“I’m doing a limited edition range of resin-cast Japanese figures,” he explains, “Momiji really like what I’ve been doing and are going to do a limited run of my characters.”
Born and raised in County Durham, Matt is 29 and currently London-based, after a spell in Manchester. He studied Illustration & Animation at Ipswich and received his first commission from The Level magazine (now defunct) before going on to work extensively for The Guardian. It’s a long time since he was forced to graft as “a maker of black puddings, a postman and a vibrating hairbrush salesman”. Instead he’s done illustrations for everyone from The Big Issue to Puma, interior design as far afield as Tokyo’s Hank-Yu Department Store and as near home as Top Man in Oxford Street, London, and he’s held exhibitions across the UK and in France and Japan. He also sells work through his site www.mattsewell.co.uk
“These two are collectively called ‘If You Fine Her, Keep Her’ [above and top], and I did them last summer. There was a special person involved but we’ve split up now. I don’t have a way with words -I’ve always wanted to be able to write songs, but I just can’t do it. I think songs can summon up exactly what you think of someone so much better than pictures. I’m also rubbish at expressing myself vocally and a lot of my life has been fucked up because of this. So sometimes I try to express myself through my paintings. Some can be a bit raw and soppy but I mean it at the time. These two canvases are from one of my more lyrical moments.”
“I painted this big fella Manchester City centre, in conjunction with this design event called Doodlebug run by this guy called Barney, an eccentric Manchester face. I’m not showing off but I finished it in under three hours. It was a structure covering a broken statue, a real vandal had actually managed to chop the head off a bronze figure. Now that’s skills. I’d forget about it but it’s on the main bus route and I loved looking at peoples’ faces going, ‘What the fuck is that?’”
“‘Hiding Place’ is a screenprint my friend Fran produced for me. It’s all about finding your space, disappearing and staying hidden. I walked past this building completely covered up with leaves, it stuck in my head and I drew it. Everybody needs a hiding place – I’m from the countryside and I just want to disappear into the fields most days.”
“This was for the cover for a ‘zine I did for Analogue in Edinburgh. I’ve been drawing trainers since I was about ten years old, I think. Back then they were more like weird sci-fi techno trainers. Now it’s all about a nice pair of legs in a nice pair of pumps.”
“I got commissioned by Gravis to paint a canvas which later got cut up and made into thirty or so high top trainers. The canvas was massive and was too big to get out of my studio so my mate Ruse ended up having to dropping it down the side of two flights of stairs and I had to catch it at the bottom. Gravis are a snowboarding kind of company that also makes shoes – I’m doing a other one for them at the moment.”
“This one’s called ‘The Hills Are Alive’ and I painted it a year or so ago, on the side of my favourite bar, Common in Manchester. I haven’t really painted too many walls in the last year or so, which is a shame because I love it, but it’s all swings and roundabouts and hopefully that will be changing soon. In any case, the arrangement I had with Common was that they let me paint the walls in return for free booze – brilliant!”
