I grew up in an artistic household. Design and art were pretty much a part of everyday life and I can remember spending hours drawing or looking through art books of all sorts. I though also remember the difficulty of making any sort of living out of art and that is what probably led me to pursue a more rational career in product design; how much more money there is to be made doing that though can at times be debatable.

All through college I drew and painted, mostly things relating to what I was doing at the time, it was still art for art’s sake. It was not until I left and started working did the art stop all together, which was something that always bothered me; drawing or whatever was always a release. I dabbled here and there but never really took it up as a permanent past time again. The answer as to why was pretty simple. I equated drawing to work, in a profession where drawing is a language, so if I was not getting paid to do it, I’d rarely do it.

It’s a sad way of looking at things but that’s the reality many ‘creative types’ face in a world where artists of any sort are not valued as contributing members of society (in some cases I feel this view might be justified at times). They can either pursue life as a starving artist, do something closer to a professional designer in one of several fields but stand the chance of loosing the passion for what made them do it in the first place, OR do something not at all creative for a job and have their ‘art’ as a more serious past time. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.

So the question that then comes up is what does an entire generation of young, very creative and artistic types do, if they can not express themselves through their art? They have no access to more traditional roads such as galleries, usually run by stodgey types, more interested in their commissions and the ‘in crowds’ than the art itself; and Commercial illustration etc. is not only limiting but saturated with more talented artists than you can poke a stick at. The last avenue, the one that offers limitless exposure to what they do, is street art….

By ’street art’ I mean just that. I do not mean ‘taggers’, those that go and scrawl their names, or ‘tags’ over anything that moves, or doesn’t, in black marker. To me that’s not art and while I know to many it is, in some way, I personally see it as a person just marking their territory. Street art is just that, art. It’s often illustrative, creative and in many cases expresses some view of something. Ultimately I see street art actually adding to the urban fabric. Unbeknownst to many, the ’street art’ scene drives much of modern culture in endless indirect ways. Sony very recently conducted a quasi street art campaign throughout the US. As controversial as it was, it shows the power that street art has attained.

In many ways street art is an expression of the soul of a city. The more creative and diverse the art, the more culturally diverse the city itself. In a way, the art found on the streets is a guage to the soul of a city. Melbourne in Australia has a very strong street art scene, acknowledged around the world within street art circles. Even the Melbourne City Council acknowledges the scene. Madrid in Spain also has a lively scene that’s even sanctioned to a certain degree and a recent court case in Canada against a well known street artist accepted the fact the the art undertaken by the person in question did actually contribute to the environment in a positive way. London, one of the world’s driving forces in so many different areas - art, music, fashion, has a huge street art scene.

I personally view authorities crack down on all forms of street art, or graffiti as they like to call it, misguided. While I agree that rampant raw tagging is not something that is desirable, to lump legitimate street art in the same basket is to only demonstrate ignorance of the society which they supposedly control. While the ‘broken windows’ theory of crime control demands that any and all forms of ‘graffiti’ be eliminated, I also feel that it ultimately has the ability to destroy that what makes many urban environments great if undertaken in with a blanket approach. At the same time, many government backed ‘community art’ projects have an almost unbearable funk of socialist ideals to them. Many of these so called art projects are so controlled and contrived, that the end result is worse than the nothing that was there before. Many times these projects are undertaken by older and/or more respected members or organisations of the community. The lack of spontaneity or free form thought is overwhelming…. or is that underwhelming?

To me street art is about the life of a city, a town, a community. It’s raw, underground and most of all unrestrained. Rich street art is an expression of a thick, full and lively undercurrent, the sort that pulls a population forward and enriches their surrounds without them realising it. All you have to do to see what I mean by this is to visit a city, pick one in Switzerland say, where the streets are clean, sterile, and you will see a population that lacks a soul.

Urban Landscape is my documentation of street art that I happen upon. I hope that as it builds, you’ll find things that you find interesting, funny, intriguing and stimulating.