My journey as an artist began in primary school where I was only interested in picture based books and comics due to a lack of academic ability and learning difficulties. While the rest of the class were learning a second language I struggled to spell my own name and attended speech therapy. I parroted MAD magazine cartoons and completed my first mural circa 1989 painting my initials on a weatherboard shed on the property where I grew up in the Tweed Valley. I soon discovered spray paint and applied some band names and a girlfriends initials in the local drains. I began to build up a palette of aerosol colours and applied my first graffiti piece entailing of my motorbike racing number. I occasionally think of these types of early experiments when people try to tell me I’m talented, which I feel is a dismissal of the skills and knowledge gained from years of practice…very few are born with talent.
Countless hours starring at heavy metal album covers and surf logos etched my brain and fed my fascination with lettering as a teen. During high school I was exposed to graffiti art and my mind was blown. Custom lettering that was so skewed it was often indecipherable, bursting with colour, style, balance and form. Uncommissioned art was arts for arts sake, only for those who knew. There appeared no brief and few rules, a middle finger to authority. I would regularly find graffiti in obscure locations and sometimes it appeared on moving canvasses for a brief glimpse amongst a vast jungle of concrete. I spent weekends travelling on trains and busses from the Gold Coast to Brisbane inspired by pioneers such as THC, ACR, TRP, BWP, AKM, KOC, WAR and many other crews. I moved to Brisbane in 1994 after failing art in year 10. I now realise this cemented my passion for a career in visual arts and thus indicating a narrow minded curriculum did not suit a range of learning needs.
I was known by a couple of regular childhood nicknames but it was time to create my own identity and make my own mark. I experimented with a few tags/nicknames and Sauce was a good fit. Family pets always had food names, sauce is a ubiquitous item, familiar in any language and entails a positive meaning to add flavour or zest. Also at the time early Australian hip hop was heavily Americanised and sauce wasn’t ketchup.
At the age of 15 while working as a part time cleaner, I studied a Certificate of Illustration and continued the following year with an Advanced Certificate in Drawing and Painting at TAFE which gave me a chance to hone my skills and build up a folio. If I wasn’t painting I was sketching new designs and planning the next piece. With a couple of mates BNE crew held its own battling much larger and far more experienced crews around Brisbanes South East. Weekend shopping consisted of five or so spray cans on the counter and a couple under the belt. I recall the stores policy was to ask why we were buying aerosols. Id reply “to paint my bikes…I have a lot of different coloured bikes” I’d be back to the following weekend to do the same like clockwork. Back in those days it wasn’t a real piece unless you stole the paint and stole the film for the camera. We had to be careful getting photos developed always using fake names and knew the train timetable and transit network off by heart. I had a blast and quite simply there is no activity that compares to the action packed adrenalin of jumping fences, avoiding authorities and creating something with artistic integrity…there is no denying graffiti is a fun crime! I made friends through graffiti art, improved skills painting large scale works, expanded knowledge of paints and processes. By the end of the 90’s I had also been a participant in numerous legal arts projects and had began to get an insight to how they worked and what they lacked.
I was increasingly asked to do commissions in The Redlands area and was offered a leadership role in a community arts project in 2000 through which many opportunities arose. The Aerograffix group was a platform to solidify aerosol art as a legitimate medium and reach a wider audience. I struggled with a sore back & feet…all I wanted was a job where I could wear comfortable sneakers which led to quitting my trade as a motor mechanic the day I completed my apprenticeship. I have never picked up a spanner since. I registered an ABN and began trading as a self employed artist in 2001. There was a core Aerograffix group to begin and through the course of things evolving I broke ranks around 2005. This came after completing a Diploma in Youth Work finding business and study a challenging juggle. Essentially I just wanted to paint as much as possible and keep the management and organising of others to a minimum. In time I realised I actually got more done solo than in a team scenario however I am always open to collaborations and remain mates with several artists from the Aerograffix days. I endorse the notion that life ruined my graffiti!
During my mid career I maintained an ambition and a thirst to expand my knowledge and broaden my experience. This proactive approach led to being a finalist and winner in numerous fine art and mural competitions all over Australia, 6 solo exhibitions, facilitated hundreds of arts workshops, commissions with 110+ schools and several thousand murals from Tasmania to Mornington Island and abroad. Building my business off the back of community arts projects has seen me regularly travel to Outback Queensland to work with remote communities. These small towns have become my home away from home since my first trip to Emerald in 2004.
In 2013 I changed trading names to The Sauce Studio and operated my own gallery/studio space for a couple of years in Murwillumbah at a time when building a shrine for dead artist was far more important than any kind of opportunity for living ones. Unfortunately exclusionary practices and double standards remain the norm…I used to be local now I just live in the Tweed Valley. After putting years of my career into legal art projects in Brisbane and the Gold Coast Its frustrating and disingenuous to see most local governments specifically excluding graffiti art from their public art programs. Instead endorsing street artists (who’ve never done it on the street) to paint pastiche, paint by numbers art. I believe good art should challenge perceptions and engage the viewer, let them interperate their own meaning. Authorities are still flogging a “zero tolerance” and “wipe out graffiti” approach 30 years on. I have observed numerous successful projects shut down, legal walls and hard earned commissioned murals removed over the years with no respect, let alone a decommissioning process. In my experience this mentality is entirely based on political agendas rather than proven projects and research. The lack of culturally appropriate activities for young people and a lock em up mentality self perpetuates a war on graffiti and further disadvantages the underpriviliged.
In 2016 I fitted out a workshop and studio on my property, having a dedicated space is essential particularly for rainy days. My pace has slowed a touch in recent years as I am more aware of my body since a diagnosis of Spina Bifida in 2016 which explains chronic pain and likely much of learning difficulties as a child previously mentioned. I have at times struggled with injury and chronic pain however always enjoy the painting process and will keep taking on commissions and doing art albeit a more methodical approach 30 years on.
It’s a different world now, robots are already coming for our jobs and the commercial landscape is saturated with products like Sauce beer, Sauce consulting to Sauce swimwear and every iteration imaginable and there’s now some sort of sauce studio in every country. Rest assured you are supporting the original, Sauce One handcrafted artwork since 94.
