Dirty Hans comes from Liverpool and is a self-taught painter and illustrator with a passion for Pop Culture and a desire to debunk high art. Now known for his mixed media digital collages he works in a genre that, alongside JJ Adams, Mr Sly, King Random and other artists, attempts to create fantastical spaces, where cultural icons come together. They blur the lines between photography, collage and illustration, and all use a mix of digital manipulation, acrylics, spray paint, screen printing and ephemera. Hans’ own style is contemporary urban inspired by 1950s iconography, classic cult movies, comic books and pulp literature.
As a child he was hyperactive and regularly skipped school, leaving as soon as he was able. He channelled his energetic tendencies into creating art as a technique to calm himself down and keep out of trouble. He remembers: “I used to go in my parent’s garage, my mum worked for Wilkinsons. She would have big cardboard boxes and I’d break them up and paint on them graffiti style . . . it evolved that way. I moved onto canvas paintings, bigger and bolder with more structure.”
Hans did not receive any formal art training, instead going on to travel extensively throughout Europe, settling in Antwerp for seven years before eventually returning to England. While in Belgium he refined his style, drawing inspiration from pop artists, especially Roy Lichtenstein, and the art from turn-of-the-century Paris, in particular Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. What had began as a therapeutic pastime became a serious, all-consuming career: “(My) travelling experiences have changed my life and painting techniques also . . . Giving me enthusiasm to focus my unrestricted energies in simplifying my paintings in a bold, fresh,way.”
His most recent work uses images of popular iconography such as film stars, comic book characters, musicians, fictional film characters, politicians, and even the Royal Family. Each one taking around six or seven weeks to finish. Tapping into the endless supply of Western visual cultural history he turns the usual version of his subjects on their head to fit a personal narrative and to litter his canvases with tiny visual jokes. But his collages are usually playful and not vindictive, paying tribute to the objects of his attention. As he says, he wants his work to have an “iconic happy feel good factor”.
Hans work has been exhibited in Antwerp, Brussels, Toronto, Paris, Berlin and Miami.
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