So I put a drawing up on Instagram. It was one of my pieces that was abstract lettering and someone blocked me. It is interesting that I started graffiti to annoy people initially and then a rather tame drawing can have the same effect. To be truthful all of my work is designed to annoy people. I find ways to do that. Most people though really enjoy my work. If I am targeting anyone it would be conservatives and rednecks mainly. My work is designed to go against the tide. You need a lot of strength to go against the tide.

Luckily for me I have ways to get that strength so I can keep at it for a long time. I do need breaks here and there though. There are a lot of people blocking me on Instagram and now that I know my drawings are part of the reason I feel more confident about them. Why though would you bother going against the tide? There are a number of reasons. The main one is to cut your own path. Or to follow a path that is not so current. Somewhere where people have tread many years, decades or centuries before.

Most of what I do is quite tame. If my work is simply reactive then isn’t that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Especially when you try to live in the culture you are in. It may seem pointless as you can leave the country and do other things but then you don’t engage with the real issues in the culture you are in. It never gets the attention it deserves. It is pretty simple stuff but when you deal with ignorance does anybody really win? Well at the end of the day I get to make my work in the here and now. I get to be creative in a commercial/ignorant world.

What I am up against is simply graffiti culture and where it resides now. That is the biggest threat. But if I can do anything then I can keep making the work I want to make. If people block it then they can do that. It doesn’t even really matter. There is no ideal context simply a reactive context of lines and form. Also the idea of mental illness is stigmatised so people can find that difficult. You were once normal and now you are doing this. Well the stigma is also what I am pushing against. People know I can do a variety of things so why this? It lets people exist in an inclusive world and simply why not?