‘I've always drawn in a very simplistic style. I never went to art school but I did work as an artist’s life model for many years, which gave me a good grounding in composition and anatomy. I started painting in the street in my early twenties, and that became an education in itself. I learned from my contemporaries.’
Stik's iconic figures first appeared on the walls of Hackney in London in the early 2000s, later spreading to Shoreditch a favourite of the artist and where most of his truly iconic pieces can be found and then west towards the rest of London.
For a long time in his career as a graffiti artist,The artist was either squatting or was homeless, and lived at a St Mungo’s hostel in Hackney until 2011.
Still experimenting, Stik's first solo show took place in the NO: ID Gallery, a squatted art space in Shoreditch. The artist explains, ‘I was broke and could not afford canvases so painted on found and discarded materials, His murals of the androgynous now famous stick/Stik people were rendered in black and white out of necessity rather than any stylistic preference. For these early murals, all he required was a can of black spray paint from Pound Shop and some unwanted white household paint, the legend was born