Suffolk artist and print maker Mickey Gibbons, has spent most of his career in London working as an award-winning creative director within the publishing industry. Mickey studied Illustration at Portsmouth and went on to work for English Heritage as a small finds illustrator before moving to London to become a freelance magazine designer. His innovative design work has included sports, music and lifestyle titles that he has taken from conceptual ideas to the news stands.
After rediscovering his love of drawing, Mickey began using a cheap pack of felt pens to quickly and expressively record the infinite complexities of East Anglia’s beauty. Mickey’s art is made ‘en plien’ at a wide range of locations including rural landscapes and industrial heartlands.
Mickey also uses the photopolymer plate process to produce limited edition prints of the drawings. He has also recently self-published a curation of the felt pen drawings in a book called ‘Sheet137 – Lowestoft’.
The focus of Mickey’s work is on the physical act of drawing and the fragile opportunity of getting just one chance to capture a fleeting scene. His obsessive love of the vast Suffolk skies and moving seas allows him to exploit the inherent range of a felt pens tones and mark-making which references both the Impressionists and Japanese calligraphers before him. There is a desire within his work to bring a sense of contemporary modernity to landscape art that embraces both its abstraction and serenity.
