Queen
A3 (29.7 x 42 cm) Mixed Media on Canvas
Original Available
Maximalist artist. Dealer of dubious medicines.
I draw every line by hand.
Then I ruin it properly.
Every piece starts on a screen — each line drawn by hand, sometimes down to the pixel. It is printed on Rembrandt canvas in archival ink, and then I work back into it by hand until no two are the same.
The work is loud on purpose. It is packed with symbols, arguments and things I have hidden for people who look twice. Some of it I will explain. Most of it I won't.
THE NAME
The chaos is the point.
It is also the cover.
Every piece is drawn line by line, by hand, and I have been doing it long enough to be fast at it. None of that is the interesting part.
The interesting part is that a piece looks like noise until you stand in front of it for a minute. Underneath there are arguments, opinions, private jokes, and things people have paid me to bury where only they will find them.
Each one is a map of my head on the day I made it. You are welcome to take it at face value — but you would be the one being fooled, not me.
Mountebank /ˈmaʊntɪbaŋk/ · noun · 1570s
A showman who climbed onto a bench in a market square and worked a crowd. From the Italian
monta in banco — “mount on bench.”
Rearrange the ten letters and you get Monte Baunk. Nothing added, nothing left over. I took the name for the performance, not the fraud.
ORIGINALS, PRINTS AND MULTIPLES
THE WORK
Queen
A3 (29.7 x 42 cm) Mixed Media on Canvas
Original Available
THE PROCESS
HOW IT'S MADE
-
01
DRAW
ProCreate on a 12.9" iPad Pro, Apple Pencil. Every single line by hand, sometimes specific to the pixel.
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02
PRINT
Professionally printed by Silvertone International on Rembrandt Canvas or archival paper, in Epson UltraChrome high-pigment acid-free inks.
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03
BREAK
Then I take a museum-quality canvas and go to town — Posca, Mont Marte paint markers, inks, paints, and occasionally some ash from my joint. That is where it stops being a print.
RECEIPTS
WHAT I'VE DONE
AFRICA'S FIRST NFT AUCTION
“I’m closing it down, 35 it is!” Sold a framed 1st Series Collection for R35 000 at Africa’s first NFT art auction, hosted by Momint.
DIGITAL ART WINNER, AGAC 2023
Winner in the Digital Art Category, ARTi Gallery Art Competition 2023.
FIRST SOLO SHOW
19 August 2023, The Gallery Art Bar, Rosebank. My debut solo exhibition.
SOMETHING FOR YOUR WALL
Cafés, shops, dispensaries, offices, homes. If you've got a wall and a deadline, I'll make something for it — at whatever size it needs to be.
TELL ME ABOUT THE SPACEWHERE THE NAME COMES FROM
MOUNTEBANK
/ˈmaʊntɪbaŋk/ · noun · 1570s
A travelling showman who climbed onto a bench in a market square and held a crowd — with a story, a trick, some music — before selling them something. From the Italian montambanco, monta in banco: “mount on bench.”
MOUNTEBANK and MONTE BAUNK are the same ten letters. Nothing added, nothing left over.
I took the name for the bench, not the quackery. The work is drawn by hand, line by line, and it is meant to hold you the way that crowd got held — by looking like one thing and turning out to be another. The craft is real. The misdirection is the art.