Opake

Opake One is a London based graffiti artist and has been practicing graffiti art since the age of 13. Over time he has developed a distinct painting technique and combines both illustrative images of wildlife with elements of graffiti to create a new and exciting body of work.

Opake first started out writing graffiti because as a child he loved the idea that people could paint large-scale pieces outdoors for free. As he started to get more involved in the graffiti subculture, he was really drawn towards painting big, full-colour pieces with other writers (painters).

Opake’s illustrative style stems from his interest in traditional tattoo culture. Big, bold, black lines and block colour. This developed from doing a tattoo apprenticeship and seeing that style of tattooing daily. His interest in tattoos and love of bold colours, combined with graffiti-tag styles, are all evident in his collection.

Opake also has a deep interest in music. This combined with his love of graffiti has inspired the backgrounds of the work seen in this launch collection. Using spray paint and Posca marker pens, Opake has used his signature tag styles to hand-write the lyrics of music, pertinent to each piece. Opake tells us, ”for me, tagging in the rawest, purest form of graffiti and theres a lot of skill involved in being able to write a ”good tag”. And in my work, I want to highlight that element.”

All Opakes works are original, mixed media artworks on board, that have been hand-drawn and finished in resin.