Thousands of people have passed Clayton Whitter making his photo-realist street art under the Arndale Food Hall on Market Street in Manchester. But now he's getting a solo exhibition at the Virgin Money Lounge on King Street.
"I'd like to get a bit of recognition for the art" he says "The amount of people who walk past whilst I'm making them and go `Wow' is incredible but no one really knows who I am. I'm just 'that kid on Market Street'."
Clayton is also an actor and has recently appeared in the Shelagh Delaney play The Lion In Love at Salford Arts Theatre. He does his street art as a way of supporting his acting but is now getting recognition for his artwork with the likes of Robert Di Niro sending him messages saying how fantastic his work is. But it wasn't just for financial reasons that acting got him into doing street art.
"I had friends that did it and they mithered me to have a go" he explains. "They'd say 'You'll be great at it'. But I didn't have the confidence. Once I started acting and got used to people watching me I found I could do it."
"The street is my studio" he adds "It's a free studio and a free market. And people know where to find me. I lay the artwork on the ground in the middle of the town centre. The work that is going in the exhibition, hundreds of thousands of people have seen it being produced. Because I make them in front of a live audience I tend to exaggerate movements to make it a bit of a performance. When I start a piece I know I'm two or three hundred hours away from completion."
His work is taken from popular culture and in the collection you'll find The Beatles, Joy Division, Ting Tings and TV shows such as Breaking Bad. These are the things he's painted since he was young and he's even done a degree in visual arts and popular culture.
The show is called Damaged Goods... "I'm hard working but I suppose I am a bit" he says "I suffered brain damage at 16. I got battered with a hammer, mistaken identity. That gave me behavioural problems for years. I went from a meek mild and pleasant young man to quite a ferocious horrible git. And for years, up until going on my degree, I was like that. It was only when I overheard one of my tutors, a guy called Colin Burrows, say that 'I wasn't an angry young man but a passionate young man and that's what an art college should nurture', that I started to get my act together. Colin and Paul Heywood really helped me and I wouldn't have got my degree if it weren't for them."
The show is also called Damaged Goods because the artwork starts as pencil drawings and when they get repeatedly rolled up and blue tacked to the pavement they become a little bit damaged themselves. Instead of cleaning them up and removing the blemishes he has used this as a motif and has even taken it a step further so that now they are aesthetically damaged.
Clayton is Salford through and through and proud of it. He was raised most of his childhood in Little Hulton, went to St George's and has wanted to be an artist since he was a kid. He works hard at doing what he loves doing and in this way his dad inspired him.
"My Dad worked for GM buses and died on the sick in extreme poverty" he says "They were giving people redundancies but they didn't give my dad his because he had been working for them for thirty years and the pay-out would have been huge so they just let him die on the sick. He used to say to me 'You'll never work a job like me' and I haven't, I've always fought against it. He'd always say 'I'd rather you be poor and creative than be poor and making somebody else rich'."
Damaged Goods
Friday 12th-Friday 19th December free
Virgin Money Lounge, King Street, Manchester
Open 10am-5pm, and 11am-3:30pm on Sunday
The work on show at the exhibition will be on sale and reasonably priced.
The exhibition opens on Thursday 11th December with a launch celebration between 6pm and 8pm. To book a free launch ticket – click here or see www.futureartists.co.uk
Words and photos by Steven Speed
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