Sickid
What do you create?
Art I guess, graffiti, public art. I create images that I personally like. It’s for me, not for anyone else.
How did it start?
I always drew and shit, and was always a creative kid, drawing and I liked car- toons. This started in about 2012 or 2013, I think I was dabbling in stickers, I always liked sticker culture and trading and I made my own hand drawn ones. I got the name Sickid because this kid I went to school with, I forget his name, some Jehovah’s Witness, and he was really mean to everyone, and because he was super religious he saw me drawing some devil dude, and he said to me “aww your sick... you’re a sick kid”, but then I liked that. Later on I realized Sickid sounded like I was putting myself on a pedestal, but I guess it started from there. I started wheat pasting posters and got pretty crazy with that, then I got over that because no one was doing it anymore, besides me, so I switched to graffiti and paintings.
What are some of your inspirations?
A lot of my inspirations are outside of visual art, I find inspiration in so many different things, competition for exam- ple, people who are doing more than me, that drives me. I like people who turn from nothing into something. Art wise, I really love old Japanese advertisements, old masters like Caravaggio, Rembrandt, also old skateboard graphic artists. What I do now is Japanese flashy anime art meets skate graphics, I think that's one way to label it.
It’s interesting that you don’t have one or two artists who you really love, instead you take different parts of things you like, whether it’s passion of musicians or the style of advertising. You take from a lot of different things, and that's where the creative part of you comes out.
Yeah, and you don’t really see visual artists getting interviewed on the radio.
There isn’t a huge draw, like ‘the Oscars for visual artists’ ...
I think it’s because there's so much more shit now, it’s overwhelming. Now I just find inspiration from musicians who are really passionate, mainly because you can access interviews on youtube or wherever, whereas artists you have to search for the interviews... go figure.
What’s something that’s hard about being an artist?
Well now we're in a culture where everyone does art, because of Instagram and all this shit. I guess what irks me are the people who have a big following, but don’t really know what they’re doing or why. We don’t need twenty photos of half naked women, with a lavender dress holding a rose. I see that so much, and I hate it, because it’s crazy that Instagram gives validation to artists because they have huge followings.
Do your parents support you doing this?
It’s interesting because my mom’s a very religious person and it makes sense why I paint the devil and shit, because I’ve been surrounded by church my whole life. So she’d never say “go paint” but she’s still supportive of me being creative, so she will catch me when I’m leaving the house, and tell me not to go out, but then I’ll show her spots I’ve hit and she’d be into it.
What do you create?
Art I guess, graffiti, public art. I create images that I personally like. It’s for me, not for anyone else.
How did it start?
I always drew and shit, and was always a creative kid, drawing and I liked car- toons. This started in about 2012 or 2013, I think I was dabbling in stickers, I always liked sticker culture and trading and I made my own hand drawn ones. I got the name Sickid because this kid I went to school with, I forget his name, some Jehovah’s Witness, and he was really mean to everyone, and because he was super religious he saw me drawing some devil dude, and he said to me “aww your sick... you’re a sick kid”, but then I liked that. Later on I realized Sickid sounded like I was putting myself on a pedestal, but I guess it started from there. I started wheat pasting posters and got pretty crazy with that, then I got over that because no one was doing it anymore, besides me, so I switched to graffiti and paintings.
What are some of your inspirations?
A lot of my inspirations are outside of visual art, I find inspiration in so many different things, competition for exam- ple, people who are doing more than me, that drives me. I like people who turn from nothing into something. Art wise, I really love old Japanese advertisements, old masters like Caravaggio, Rembrandt, also old skateboard graphic artists. What I do now is Japanese flashy anime art meets skate graphics, I think that's one way to label it.
It’s interesting that you don’t have one or two artists who you really love, instead you take different parts of things you like, whether it’s passion of musicians or the style of advertising. You take from a lot of different things, and that's where the creative part of you comes out.
Yeah, and you don’t really see visual artists getting interviewed on the radio.
There isn’t a huge draw, like ‘the Oscars for visual artists’ ...
I think it’s because there's so much more shit now, it’s overwhelming. Now I just find inspiration from musicians who are really passionate, mainly because you can access interviews on youtube or wherever, whereas artists you have to search for the interviews... go figure.
What’s something that’s hard about being an artist?
Well now we're in a culture where everyone does art, because of Instagram and all this shit. I guess what irks me are the people who have a big following, but don’t really know what they’re doing or why. We don’t need twenty photos of half naked women, with a lavender dress holding a rose. I see that so much, and I hate it, because it’s crazy that Instagram gives validation to artists because they have huge followings.
Do your parents support you doing this?
It’s interesting because my mom’s a very religious person and it makes sense why I paint the devil and shit, because I’ve been surrounded by church my whole life. So she’d never say “go paint” but she’s still supportive of me being creative, so she will catch me when I’m leaving the house, and tell me not to go out, but then I’ll show her spots I’ve hit and she’d be into it.
More From Issue 01
How do you cover so much ground?
When I was younger, I had time, but now I’m more focused on larger pieces, so now I’ll do one big piece instead of four smaller pieces around an area.
What street or graffiti artists do you like?
In a way I was mentored by Thrashbird, I met him when I was fifteen and he took me out. But I kind of am more interested in graffiti artists, I like these graffiti artist Hamok he’ll paint these drawings of pigs, but will also do animations on his Instagram and do non traditional graffiti. I’ve always been more drawn to charac- ter based people, the people who aren’t into letters but characters. I mean nothings original, everything been done already, so you have to take images and tweak them, or add something. You know what you like.
Are there other forms of art you’d want to try?
I’d be interested in going into oil paint- ing, but not lame portraits, I just like the difficulty of working with oil, and I’d like to get into that. I definitely want to keep Sickid going, but maybe in more traditional ways. I also have been doing body paint and then making masks to put on people, I don’t want to do the same thing over and over.
When I was younger, I had time, but now I’m more focused on larger pieces, so now I’ll do one big piece instead of four smaller pieces around an area.
What street or graffiti artists do you like?
In a way I was mentored by Thrashbird, I met him when I was fifteen and he took me out. But I kind of am more interested in graffiti artists, I like these graffiti artist Hamok he’ll paint these drawings of pigs, but will also do animations on his Instagram and do non traditional graffiti. I’ve always been more drawn to charac- ter based people, the people who aren’t into letters but characters. I mean nothings original, everything been done already, so you have to take images and tweak them, or add something. You know what you like.
Are there other forms of art you’d want to try?
I’d be interested in going into oil paint- ing, but not lame portraits, I just like the difficulty of working with oil, and I’d like to get into that. I definitely want to keep Sickid going, but maybe in more traditional ways. I also have been doing body paint and then making masks to put on people, I don’t want to do the same thing over and over.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN ISSUE ONE
Sickid
