• Drawing from his professional experience in the advertising industry working on campaigns for a variety of brands, his work is born out of a passion for crafting engaging visuals, communication through design, behavioural science and marketing psychology; understanding the science behind the things we buy, buy into and / or share.

    Mr. Controversial said: “Each piece should be instantly relatable to the viewer, as if you have stumbled upon something that hits the nail on the head of your own everyday life, making the ordinary extraordinary & hilariously absurd. I want to create art that speaks to people on a personal level (the inner you) as if I know something about them that nobody else does”.

Who is Mr. Controversial?

Mr. Controversial is a 30 something London based Artist who transforms vintage imagery relegated to the past and brings it back to life with oil paint, silkscreen printing and relatable captions that tell comical, satirical and sometimes dark stories. With sell out collections and solo shows from London and throughout the UK, Mr. Controversial is quickly becoming the one to watch in the art world. Instagram users are re-sharing his work and flocking to his page, collectors and investors are buying more and more and his presence in high street galleries is rising with his sights set on going global this year.

His work plays with the concept of ‘The Familiar Surprise’. You’ve not seen this image before presented in this way but it reminds you of something familiar. He creates imagery that elicits an emotional response and triggers a nostalgic or cultural memory packaged in satirical, relatable captions and quotes.

Drawing from his professional experience in the advertising industry working on campaigns for a variety of brands, his work is born out of a passion for crafting engaging visuals, communication through design, behavioural science and marketing psychology; understanding the science behind the things we buy, buy into and /or share. On a lighter note, he pokes fun at problems that arise from the digital age and personal frustrations of the social media obsessed world we live in. Relatability, shareability and storytelling are now the foundations of his own artwork and no longer Ad campaigns for brands.

Mr. Controversial says; “Each piece should be instantly relatable to the viewer, as if you have stumbled upon something that hits the nail on the head of your own everyday life, making the ordinary extraordinary & hilariously absurd. I want to create art that speaks to people on a personal level (the inner you) as if I know something about them that nobody else does”.

“When I’m not creating in the studio, I spend many hours in my favourite coffee shops sketching out ideas and wrestling with concepts that have been rattling around in my head. Many people come in and out throughout the day and I like to earwig in on conversations, deconstruct them, and almost psychoanalyse them. I then put them back together with a funny twist and use that as a basis for a piece of art, I then set about creating the imagery around the caption. A lot of my work is based on conversations I’ve personally listened in on or things I’ve seen on social media posts or comments. I always try to find the funny angle, especially with stuff that’s often quite dark. I have a fearless approach to my work, whether that’s taking the piss out of Oat milk drinkers, social media influencers, online dating or our own insecurities that rattle around in our minds fuelled by advertising, consumerism and capitalism.

  • In a world where nothing is truly original, I can only create art that is authentic to me. I guess that’s what makes your art truly valuable. My work, My ideas, my world view, my commentary on the world we live in. I believe great artists are commentators and a voice of the times in which they create, their work serves as a snapshot and a window into that specific time in history for future generations to make sense of when they look back.

    In the year 2123 when someone comes across a piece from my 2023 collection entitled; ‘Oat Milk Drinking Twat’ (in either a museum or a skip depending on how successful my art career was), they’ll hold it up as a turning point in milk consumption, shifting consumer attitudes towards mass industrial farming and realise that this beautifully branded crushed oat juice was the trojan horse in the rise of veganism, putting it in nearly every fridge in the UK… well, hopefully."

What’s with the name?

Mr. Controversial isn’t controversial in the way you’d expect. He explains; “Aside from the casual profanity in my work, the satire, dark storytelling that at first you laugh at but once the laugh is over you realise it’s quite tragic. I’m controversial in the way I am taking the fine art world by storm, even though I have just recently come onto the art scene (with no formal art education, no financial backing, no connections) I’ve already made an impact and captured the eyes of established collectors, independent galleries and an engaged audience.”

He argues his ‘lack of’ traditional art training allows him to create outside of traditional form and convention; “I envision the piece I want to create based on the caption and pull together the various elements in order to create it, I don’t allow my limitations to prevent me from creating. If I have to learn oil painting, silkscreen printing, building a large sculpture… I’ll figure it out. I believe true creativity is working outside your limits but being bold enough to bring your idea into the physical world.” A true mixed media artist willing to use any medium to achieve his creative vision.

“I represent a new generation of fine art; social media savvy, not tied to the old conventions and willing to bulldoze through gatekeepers. I take the same mental resilience, discipline and controlled aggression I’ve learnt boxing over the years and channelled that into a (what I feel is) a stale art world in need of disruption. Your favourite artists and brands we’re once disruptors and David’s in a world of Goliaths.”

A fresh approach to fine art. He experiments with Oil painting, digital art and hands on silk screen printing which varies depending on his latest collection and what he’s inspired by. “One month I want to sift through vintage books and magazines to create a piece, the next month its simple text against oil paint, whilst I’m doing that I’m trying to figure out how to get a 7ft sculpture made. Yeah… I’m obsessed with keeping my work fresh and collectors guessing but sometimes I have to reign it in a bit.”

He is also controversial in his fearless approach to art, not worrying about who he offends or pokes fun at. “Some of the captions are bound to offend, unsettle and provoke thinking… but isn’t that what art is about?”

I fuse vintage imagery with traditional fine art and social media content to create art which explores how we currently live our lives in this new digital world and just take the piss a bit. My approach and the way I communicate is dark, satirical, fearless, and controversial. I like to explore this notion of Individualism; in such a politically correct world where people strive to be the cleanest version of themselves, we’re all just humans with our own fears, desires and self-serving habits. I like to unearth these and repackage it in to something relatable and funny.

Behind the beautiful imagery is a dark story about yourself, just waiting to be discovered”