Zoom on the creative process of Speedy Graphito

Can you remind us who you are and your artistic practice?

My name is Speedy Graphito and I am a polymorphic visual artist.

What is your background, how did you start creating?

I started to create since childhood. At the age of 9 I started taking drawing lessons, at 14 I started painting theater sets. After a classical art education – Maximilien Vox school of applied art and Estienne school in Paris – I started to paint in the street under the name of Speedy Graphito in 1983. My street work was based on the canvases I used to paint at home in the form of small graphic stencils. Today I divide my time between the studio where I produce works for exhibitions in museums or galleries and frescoes for urban interventions or festivals.

In your daily work as an artist, what inspires you?

The world in which I live. I paint under the influence of life, of my desires, of my intuitions, of all those things that shape us and create the individuals we are.

What is the trigger for the creation of a work?

Inspiration: my works are not the result of reflection, but rather of intuition. The subjects impose themselves on me as predestined. I consider my works as answers, a projection of my view on the world around me.

Can you explain to us the way in which you build a work? What are the different stages of creation?

I have several creative processes. My driving force is most of the time the desire to live an experience with a material, tools, a new way of painting. In the studio, it can be by smearing the support to break the phenomenon of the blank page. It can also be by starting from a dark background and sculpting it with touches of paint like flashes of light, by cutting out images on the computer and assembling them to create compositions, by using earth, wood scraps, cut metal… to make sculptures. Even a piece of wood and a sandbank is enough for me to express myself. In general I use what I have on hand, the variation of materials is always very inspiring. The novelty calls for creation.

For the frescoes, it is often my studio work that is the pretext, the desire to try a new technique on very large formats. The use of the stencil is also a way to find my first pictorial experiences on walls.

Find here the works on the artist available on fluctushop.fr