Adam Neate: Art Can be Free

Written by Carly Deblock

On the morning of November 15th, Londoners awoke to find 1,000 screen prints created by one of the most prominent street artists scattered around the city. Some on doorsteps, some by trash cans and some on lamp posts. Adam helped to develop the concept of free art.

5,000 Paintings

Adam Neate, born in 1977, is a British painter who has developed into one of the most influential street artists in the world. His experience with art began around age ten, when Adam discovered his passion for graffiti and began to create. He graduated from Suffolk College and then worked as a graphic designer for two years.

In the spare time that he had, Adam would paint on anything and everything that he could get his hands on. Constantly painting on wood and cardboard, Adam was able to gift his artwork to friends and he even began to leave his paintings littered in the streets. This gave any passerby the opportunity to walk away with an original Adam Neate masterpiece. Adam was painting around 1,000 paintings a year during this time, but he avoided the art galleries for 5 years. Congruent with the original concept of street art, Adam prefers to give his art to the streets he came from. He was eventually contacted by a gallery and hosted a solo show that sold out hours after opening. He quickly rose to a stardom status and claimed a huge name in the contemporary art world.

The London Show

Adam Neate’s biggest project to date took place during the night of November 14, 2008. With an anti-high art mentality, Neate placed his art around the city, where anyone was free to claim his signed silk-screen prints. Adam and helpers scattered 1,000 prints of his art, worth over a million dollars, around the streets of London. People around the city woke up to a city-wide art show right on their doorstep. This was after Neate’s work had sold at Sotheby’s for over $100,000. Allowing the whole population of London the opportunity to own one of Neate’s pieces was an enormous project.

Urban Style

Walking into a gallery of Neate’s works teleports the viewer into a world filled with dynamic colors, movement and emotion. He places focus on the creative process as an artist and less on the product. Neate uses brilliant colors, strong lines and diverse compositions to create eye-catching paintings. His work is reminiscent of the bold Basquiat and it is easily spotted in the streets. His three dimensional paintings, overlaying pieces of cardboard, are intense explorations of motion on multiple viewing planes. Adam’s works are also reminiscent of Francis Bacon in the use of vibrant colors and the successful attempts to create dynamic movement through his artwork.

Free Art

Adam Neate finds a literal and poetic way to give artwork back to his urban roots. As he told the Independent, "It is about putting back in what I got out at the beginning of my career". His method brings art away from the galleries and places it into everyone’s hands - what street art initially intended to do. Graffiti and urban art creates a sense of community between the artist and audience; anyone on the street is invited into the art world. Giving art back to where Neate started his career creates a dialogue and encourages other artists to keep creating.

Neate’s message and urban style relate to many of Thumbprint Gallery artists. The gallery is dedicated to displaying the best in contemporary urban and pop surrealist art. You can browse and buy a variety of works at Thumbprint Gallery’s online store here.

Sources:

http://cloudking.com/artists/adam-neate/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Neate
http://www.adamneate.co.uk