Since graduating from RCA in 2005, London based artist and illustrator, Neal Fox has had work featured in The Guardian, The Independent and completed projects for rockers Babyshambles. The artist has also managed to put together some impressive solo exhibitions at Galerie Daniel Blau in Munich and Galerie Suzanne Tarazieve in Paris of his personal work. And on top of all that Fox also continues to finds time to publish Le Gun, an annual Arts Journal, he co-founded whilst at RCA. In his newest work the artist uses stained glass windows as his canvas and draws inspiration from the wild stories his grandad used to tell him and crazy modern day pop culture. Dazed caught up with the artist to find out more about the exhibition, opening on the 7 July, and what new mythology he is creating in his art.
Dazed Digital: What inspired the work that will be featured in the exhibition?
Neal Fox: I've been doing drawings for a few years now which use my grandad John Watson's ghost as a kind of shaman figure, on a cosmic journey through time and space, a crazy bender through pop culture. He was a bomber pilot, a writer, a chat show host, a publisher, a Soho drinker. Growing up i was inspired by his mythology, but my drawings have become more and more about collective mythologies. The figures who feature in the windows have all been in my drawings in the past. They are all iconoclasts, and they have an element of debauchery to them. I think of them of as kind of alternative saints, who have shaped the ideas of the people and culture that followed them by breaking the rules.
DD: Why did you choose the medium of stained glass and what kind of challenges did that pose?
Neal Fox: It was suggested to me by my gallerist Daniel Blau. He had made a series of windows with the artist Matt Mullican, at a great place called Meyer of Munich, where they have been making stained glass for hundreds of years. I liked the idea of using such a loaded medium in my own way. I spent a lot of time over there working on it all. I was a novice but they had experts in the traditional methods helping me get the hang of it. Its quite painstaking work because all the black lines are hand painted on to hundreds of different pieces of coloured glass and then leaded together. I overdosed on bratwursts and schnapps and nearly killed myself skiing on several occasions. I stayed in the factory at night which is full of old stained glass windows, so i had some weird dreams.
Text via Dazed Digital
