About Artwork

A mix of influences...

Since I was a teen, I have been admiring artists like the Di Rosa brothers, Combas, Keith Haring, Speedy Graphito, Robert Williams, Shag, Reg Mombassa, who ignore the boundaries between painting, illustration, graffiti, comic strips and popular culture, as well as records sleeves graphics or rock, jazz, funk concert posters, and also Jim Phillips or John Severson's "surf art", "street art" or the more recent "lowbrow" American art movement, which blatantly mixes all of the art forms without any complex.

Being more into underground comics and TV soaps than conceptual art, I'd rather express myself through fun, figurative, and quirky graphic design than through some serious theoretical art form.

From pencil to Mac...

Although I love paintbrushes, it is my job as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer that led me to work with a computer (of which I used to hate the idea !) because of the need for rapidity, clearness, and mostly because of the endless modifications you are always asked to do on your designs in this profession !

But by spending more and more time working on the Mac I started to enjoy it, and realised that it could actually help me to do a lot of things I had always wanted to do, and also it develloped my skills in terms of colors and composition for example...

By making cleaner drawings, with accurate lines, I still wanted to avoid the temptation of cold perfectionnism or "special effects" that a computer can easily draw you into. Au contraire, I'd rather use it to simplify my drawings, and take them towards a more friendly, "cosy" style, by giving them that retro feel, which reminds us of the illustrations of the 50's and 60's, which I like very much for their "out of fashion" and yet timeless look, and sometimes completely kitch colours.

Being born and raised in a family of architects and interior designers, I used to flick through a lot of architecture and design magazines, which maybe explains all the references I like to make about space-age constructions and the design of the last 30 years.

My conception of popular art...

Because I create these images on my computer, there isn't really a proper "original" picture, which is why I can only offer them in the form of series of prints, (except for the one-off special orders), which makes them more accessible, at affordable prices, and actually suits perfectly my conception of popular art, addressing to people of all ages and all backgrounds, and not just to an elite few!

I like the simplicity of old picture books by Alain Grée, just as much as the crazy scenes of photographers like David Lachapelle or Terry Richardson, Jim Flora swinging designs as much as Grant Wood's still compositions, Roger Broders as the Freak Brothers, Disco as Mambo, James Bond as Bob Azzam... As many references with no connections whatsoever, apart from the fact that they inspire more joy into my work everyday.

I hope you will find the same pleasure browsing through my drawings that I got whilst making them...

Charlie Adam.