At Thinkspace's "Ink Advance" show Friday night, I discovered Acorn, a street artist who's been showing with GhostpatrolMiso in Melbourne, Vienna and Berlin. Together, the three of them have created a limited edition book of drawings titled Ink Advance, which was released earlier this year. Acorn, a.k.a. Scott Kennedy, originally hails from Vancouver, but has been living in Edinburgh recently and now seems to be traveling so much I imagine he's not sure exactly where he lives at the moment. Reports are that he's settling back down in Vancouver for a while. Apparently Acorn has only been drawing seriously for about four years (he's just 21), but he's already developed a really singular style and a cast of intriguing characters.
Acorn is a true street artist who's getting up all over the world. He says that this first character's arms are unfinished because he was caught while painting it in Bucharest. I want to stress that this intricately detailed piece was painted with brushes, and is not a pasteup. I think that's pretty amazing!
Fortunately, Acorn hasn't limited himelf to painting graffiti in places beyond the reach of most of us artizens. His insanely detailed drawings, which span the realms of pen, pencil and watercolor, are loaded with cryptic symbolism and feature a cast of characters that include (in my interpretation) Icelandic ninjas, a cat army, tree-eating Chinese dragon wood-processing stills, futuristic fashion-forward Yakuts with winged chandelier headdresses, children inside cumbersome robotic exoskeletons styled after ancient Japanese armor, and a host of strange rubbery monsters.
Acorn gave some insight into his work in a recent interview:
"Usually when I start a drawing, I don't have much of an idea what I'm going to do until I get halfway into it.
I think mixing cultural influences has really helped me progress when it comes to style. I guess I was first into Japanese stuff, but then I got really into Mexican and Aztec patterns and such. Also Russian costumes and stuff like that from the east are really inspiring. I guess that got me more into it, because it seems more like fantasy than just fashion.
I think imagination is far more fulfilling than reality. If someone can look at my work and make up their own story for it, then that makes me happy."
Some of my favorite Acorn drawings are in his forest series. I guess it makes sense that someone named Acorn would have an affinity with trees. (Though to be fair, he says he started out as Acornlique and shortened it to Acorn for convenience in tagging, and not due to any particular affinity with oaks.)
You're going to need to click into these to see how cool his detail work is. Keep in mind that the originals are small drawings... the linked images are just about actual size.
Found Here: http://commandax.blogspot.com/2008/05/acorn.html
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