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Oscar Romp |
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Oscar Romp is a graduate of the Royal Academy whose kinetic canvases capture the energy, atmosphere and intensity of the dance. Himself a jazz dance fanatic and involved on the UK scene for some time, he paints what he knows and loves best. In the centrefold for this issue, Oscar has drawn a slice of the floor action from this year’s Southport Dance & Music Weekender.
As an artist, he’s inspired by the honesty of vision of English painters such as Stanley Spencer as well as the street stylings of American artists like Edward Burra. His canvases are also reminiscent of the late work of Gunter Grass who has also devoted himself to the sinuous contours of dancers. With Oscar’s unique unstill lives and action portraits, you wonder who can tell the dancer from the dance?
Oscar was formerly artist in residence at the London East Aids Network where he produced site specific work to uplift the people and the building. He is currently exhibiting by appointment at LEAN, 60 St Mary Rd, London E17.
Oscar can be commissioned to catch your dance club in session, completing artwork in approx. two hours, dimensions as required. For live drawings, sales and commissions, call 07989 436 899, email oscarromp@hotmail.com, or visit, www.oscarromp.co.uk. |
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Mephisto Jones |
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After a brief flirt with art education in 1993, Otis Chamberlain had abandoned the visual arts to pursue skateboarding, bangin' drums, and inhaling a lot of herb. While highly inspiring, these hobbies hardly paid the rent. Consequently, Otis soon found himself relocating to New Zealand’s capital city of Wellington, where he spent the following decade satisfying his creative urges as a drummer, living and breathing music, yet intermittently returning to the crayon box for a doodle. In 2002, Otis's early graphic influences (graffiti, tags, skateboard art and tattoo flash) combined with his long-seeded love of music, and materialised as the stencil art that appeared randomly around Wellington streets under the alter-ego ‘Mephisto Jones.’ In the two years since, a consistent run of aerosol antics and published work (everything from album covers and tees to skateboards and women’s underwear) has helped the Jones pseudonym receive attention away from the home plate - especially grabbing a music-orientated audience. In between the rattling of spraycans, Mephisto Jones' creative uptime now more frequently accommodates brushwork and graphic design while preparing works for solo and group exhibitions. Coming full circle, he is experimenting with various styles of audio production under the same moniker. For contact info, samples of Mephisto Jones' visual and audio media, and to offer free secondhand chopper-bike parts. |
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David Ellis |
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Brooklyn-based artivist David Ellis finds inspiration by pumping up the stereo to the full and just immersing himself in the flow. For this issue’s Gallery, he’s refixed the cover art of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Innervisions’, an album whose title, coincidentally, was a nod to the intense volume on the arp and moog synthesisers at the Record Plant Studios in LA. The piece has Ellis’ trademark Hokusai vortices creeping over the original sleeve and can be seen as part of his wider project to fashion new material out of old objects. In the past few years, a prolific output of paintings, drawings and films have found favour in the States, Europe and Japan. But Ellis, as leader of the coterie of Barnstormers, is perhaps best known for his murals which have adorned farmhouse barns, heavy goods vehicles and even the walls of the Village Vanguard. Also a self-professed hip-hop head, his work has documented the scene in New York twenty years on from Futura and Rammellzee in a style he calls visual emceeing. |
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Brad Howe |
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Brad Howe is originally from Sydney, Australia where he worked in the animation industry. He relocated to
Amagasaki, Japan (10 mins out of Osaka) in November 2001 to pursue a career in freelance illustration. Brad occasionally exhibits work, performs live painting at music events and sometimes contributes to Wax Poetics magazine. A big music fan, he hopes to work on more music related projects in the future. As a long time reader of SNC, he is honoured to be included in its pages. His influences include many of the artists previously featured in the SNC Gallery, as well as Vaughn Bode, Barry McGee and many music greats from the past and present. He'd like to thank his family and friends for their support, the industry professionals that returned mails and gave encouragement and advice, and most of all thanks to Mizuho. |
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