26 year old Ivan Smith hasn’t always painted.
After completing a degree in Computer Arts at Abertay University, the Dundee-based artist picked up the (digital) paintbrush for the first time, marking the beginning of a series of bold, expressive portraits.
Using bright colours and confident, ‘messy’ strokes, Smith has created a distinctive range of paintings – which he is insistent be accessible to all. Pricing prints of his work extremely moderately on his Etsy shop, the full time freelancer is shunning the elitist world of art buyers.
Having garnered an impressive Instagram following and extending his skill set to painting physically with acrylic, Ivan is exploring the boundaries of artistic mediums. We caught up with him to chat 70s culture, Instagram artists and making a living from your Photoshop skills.
How long have you been making art?
I've been doodling most of my life, but only working on it as a serious career thing for about 6 years.
Do you tend to favour digital drawing over traditional paint, or balance between the two? Why is this?
I work digitally 90% of the time because it's easier to make money out of it, and I'm full time freelance, so need to. I definitely prefer a balance between the two, they both have their own advantages and disadvantages, and I learn a lot about each medium doing both. Also I'll sound really old and boring here but it's bad for your back to be sat down all the time (digital art) so I like to alternate days now and be stood up (acrylic painting) as much as possible!
I actually enjoy painting with acrylic right now over digital, but I'm only still learning (I'm self-taught, didn't go to a proper art school or paint before my 20s) and it's like a side hobby.
Tell us about your subject matter.
I paint and draw quite a lot of things but I'm probably mostly known by my followers for painting messy colourful portraits, usually of miserable looking people in cool clothes, smoking cigarettes and scowling. I also design the posters for Jute City Jam club night, which is usually a cartoony scene featuring recurring characters, inspired by funk and disco and 70s/80s culture and film.
How would you describe your style?
Usually very colourful and bright, nearly always messy and covered in splashes of paint, I don't really work well with fine tight line drawing or precise clean art and never have really been in to it.
digital art is definitely becoming more and more the standard for creative production
Who or what inspires you?
Hundreds of painters (my faves on Instagram right now are @nogobed @ellysmallwood @milkformycoconut), but also fashion, film (lots of crime like Tarantino's stuff, and films like Boyz N The Hood and Menace II Society), good photography, and lots of music (lots of 90s hip hop, shoegaze, 70s punk)
From your own work, which are your favourite paintings?
Probably the first ever Jute City Jam poster I did, my portrait of Father John Misty, and my Treat Your Girl Right piece.
Are there any other artists whose work you consider yours to be similar to?
Probably the artists I named above since I copy their work all the time, except they're much better!
Where would you love to see your work hanging?
I guess the dream goal is a fancy famous gallery one day, but I'm not that fussed really, I like the idea of it just being blu-tacked to the mouldy walls of skint students just as much. I want art to be accessible for everyone, particularly working class people, and I am not a fan of the whole art world culture of selling overrated art pieces for millions of pounds to minted tax evaders who don't even care about art. I don't think I'd ever create art aimed at that audience, I'm happy selling my prints quite cheap so they're affordable to everyone.
Do you think that digital art is the way forward, or that we will always rely on traditional mediums?
I think if you're poor and in your teens or 20s, just starting out, then your best bet to make a living from art and pay the rent is definitely to get Photoshop on your laptop and start creating digital art; it's a lot easier, quicker to learn, and more cost effective than trying to sell paint on canvas.
Also pretty much every piece of modern entertainment we watch uses digital art (whether it's an animated character or a graphic or the credit titles etc) and most of the clothing and fashion we wear is designed using digital art techniques these days, so digital art is definitely becoming more and more the standard for creative production.
There will always be a place in the world for non-digital work though, usually as a more expressive and thought provoking medium rather than a way to make money.
Do you have a favourite art movement or historic period of art?
My art history knowledge is really bad, I honestly don't know much at all! I did read a wee book lately introducing Modernism which I found in a charity shop and that was cool, and I like any sort of weird art movement that annoys most people and makes them say "that isn't art!", like that urinal by Marcel Duchamp (I just had to Google that name).
I love all the creative stuff that was going on in the USA over the 50s, 60s, and 70s
It's not really an art movement but I love all the creative stuff that was going on in the USA over the 50s, 60s, and 70s, with beatniks and poets and writers and artists living together and collaborating, counter culture and punk and all that (Jack Kerouac, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Iggy Pop etc.) A lot of really important and cool stuff came out of that, I watched a documentary on Robert Mapplethorpe's BDSM photography lately and it was really inspiring.
Are you working on any current projects?
I'm just creating new pieces for my Etsy shop, mostly musician portraits for now, and also working on portrait and poster commissions between that. My main "project" right now is trying to get better at acrylic painting, and once I run out of the paints I own, I'll replace them with oil paints and teach myself that too. So I guess that's my big project for 2017!
You can find more of Ivan's work on his Instagram here.
