Success For Peace

Gavin giving Ski Mask his drawing

Gavin is a sketch artist from MI who started really perfecting his craft a couple years ago but has been drawing for about 4. The gaze into drawing was birthed when a friend of his Lance would draw and he would gain inspiration and draw in his of his own mind wanderings. It came to be that his love for music (rap & hip-hop a good portion) was the drive and focus point of his drawings. The music had always given him a drive of enraged confidence to succeed not just in his passions but in daily life.

The trials and tribulations as a young lad in school of feeling isolated and different, people not accepting, created that origin of revenge drive. Using the edge to push to be great as all greats do, we are all driven by something. A sense of purpose and truth. The anger was never put into people fortunately haha, more so a push away from all negative inputs in his life and transforming the energy into something beautiful for the people and himself. The passionate drawings are consistently bold, heavy and piercing. Starting from black and white drawings of artists then grazing the waters of bold colors really added an aspect of artistry to Gavin's ink.

One of the most recent pieces by Gavin "IGOR" for Tyler The Creator not only is just a good drawing for a good artist but the blend of black & white with dark pink is just as powerful as the album cover itself but in a different way. As I spoke about before, Gavin gives the quote "success is the best revenge" good volume. The style of the image gave him a good example to show the boldness he brings, powerful and loud.

Villains are angry people and driven by it madly, which is why they're so powerful in that intense uncontrollable emotion. Its an exaggerated comparison but that's what Gavin's pieces remind me of. A splash of all the negativity in his life put on paper in a form of curation. Whats even more moving is that he mentioned as he gains success and respect, his revenge turns into forgiveness. The sole purpose of the art itself is to spread unifying love and positive energy. But the vessel that the energy comes from is from a negative anger point that is used for the drive but not put into the goal of his art being displayed and gathering people.

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INTERVIEW:

Chase: As an artist I know you started not too long ago and it wasn't something you had dreamed of before, what sparked you to pick up a skill such as drawing and developed it so quickly within 4 years?

Gavin: The whole reason I ever got my first sketchbook was because I saw lances that he used to doddle in all the time and I wanted my own, it was mainly inspired by music I loved at the time and once I started getting better at it that's when I wanted to really pursue it because I knew I could get far with it. Another thing was the feedback I started receiving from people around me, I didn't think anybody would care and I never sought out to do it for accolades or anything like that, but I started to see the positive effect it had on me and others, so that became a part of my motivation with time.

C: You've manifested things at this point in the drawing career, creating a website & making merchandise with your pieces; does your burning passion come from just the fire to live and succeed or does something specific inspire you to help people/be great?

G: Both. From a very early age I felt a little different than pretty much everybody around me, shared different interests and was not into popular shit. To be honest I was very revenge motivated, and still to this day it drives me a lot. Aside from my very close friends, I felt like kids would so constantly casually shit on me in school for small insignificant things at the time. Even if somebody just talked down to be disrespectfully or had a bad encounter with me that I didn't like, it put a fire in me to get back. Not even directly always. but success became that revenge. I knew they were wrong about me and didn't understand myself the way I did. I didn't relate to a lot of my peers. I still always knew whatever I did would be something significant and a bit irregular. I love the quote "success is the best revenge" because it really is true. After I get the success I'm seeking I find myself having a forgiving, sympathetic feel towards people who have wronged me rather than anger and with that comes maturity and wisdom----now one of the biggest driving forces is helping others and uniting people, that's what art does and i'm all for fighting for everything that is right. It's made me a better understanding person and I have full trust in it to guide me through life. Anything that's a product of my art connecting with strangers and sharing positivity/love gives me all the more reason to stick with it. (great Q's btw)

C: That's interesting. You mentioned almost like a phase or cycle in your path to success that was planted from the experiences at a young age. Those are powerful feelings. It's cool that you transferred that energy into something good. You said you have begun to shift your feelings towards those people as success comes. Was it a therapeutic thing for you as well? Helping you grow out of anger mindsets and embrace forgiveness & compassion thru the success?

G: Very therapeutic, I want to clarify not just anger, it frees me from all negativity. I see things differently than I did before and for that I'm so grateful. A massive factor in that was just picking up a pencil and putting myself out there.

C: Do you have plans of expansion on your work? You've dipped ya toes into merchandise now can we expect more in that field? Also I know you're always working, any drawings you're excited to release that you're workin on rn?

G: Yes I'll be working more at that, in the near future I'll have different clothing & items for sale on my website. I've got more than a lot of drawings planned, when I do them I basically plan it out 7-8 months ahead of time. Some ideas I've had for years, right now I'm working on a Marilyn Monroe piece and after that I'd like to do Nipsey Hussle.

C: What inspired the Marilyn piece?

G: Someone from an old skill center class has been asking me to do it for years but I'm inspired a lot too by photography especially portraits of people I want to draw. My whole camera roll is filled with hundreds & hundreds of pictures of different peoples faces.

C: What makes you attracted to the focus on the face? The detail of every portrait on its face from the wrinkles, to the hair follicles. How long does it take to finish a piece?

G: Part of it is me wanting to get to a hype realistic point someday and that takes a long time. The time I spend on them is at least a month, sometimes closer to 2 before i complete them.

C: Thank you for your time.

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