GreenPoint EARTH Screens Award Winner Highlight: GOMAD
About the awards
Our Screens2Streets awards offered artists the opportunity to harness the incredible power of creativity to illuminate climate change solutions and inspire the world to create environmentally smarter communities. More than 100 artist submissions were received from a diverse mix of artists representing nearly 30 countries across the globe! From these our judging committee selected 10 Screens Awards to receive a financial prize and visibility of their work.
Read on to learn more about Dutch urban fine artist Marcus Debie - aka GOMAD - one of our ten ‘Screens Awards’ winners from last year’s GreenPoint EARTH: Screens2Streets.
First off, can you tell us a little about yourself and your background in art?
GOMAD: I was born in 1972 and raised in the Dutch city of Sittard, a large industrial zone in the south of Holland at the crossroads of Belgium and Germany, so I’ve always been influenced by other cultures. Like many of my peers, I was heavily influenced by the iconic film “Beat Street” as well as the graffdocu “Style Wars” and started to paint in the early 80’s at the age of 12. I worked as a graphic designer for 25 years, doing murals as a side job until I got more commissioned mural projects to become a full-time artist in 2014. A bit crazy when you consider that a did my first commissioned graffiti back in 1988 already. With qualifications in “Illustration” from the Academy of Arts of Sittard in 1996 and all those years of experience in graphic design, these facets influence my art today.
How would you describe your artistic style and what inspires your work?
“My artwork is considered a pinnacle of post-neo graffitism, the fusion of photorealistic images in a mind-bending surrealistic setup.” - GOMAD
GOMAD: Combining cubistic and organic shapes, in a Picasso or Hieronymus Bosch like composition. It is done in a vibrant and unique idiosyncratic way. My artistic passion has been fostered by nature, people, other art, movies and documentaries in addition to aspects of street art. My early interests in the graffiti art scene have seen me seek out an artistic path painting in language where both urban accents and murals play an influential role. Graphic elements are also featured in my art along with a juxtaposition of classic Greek art, statues, surrealism and cubism. My work consists of large-scale murals, paintings on canvas and sculptures. 75% of my art is done with spray paint but I also uses acrylic, resin, torn paper, rusted bolts and started to experiment with oil painting since 2019. Whether with a specific medium or a special technique, I attempt to harmonize anatomical proportion and graphic dynamics. Conceptual; I create a style in which time is considered as a concept, that by being closed into immaterial solid shapes, is crystallized into geometric shape to revisit the idea of the perpetual presence… get it? ;-)
One of the elements that makes your work so eye-catching is your use of color that flows through your pieces. That’s why we couldn’t believe when we found out that you’re color blind! How do you feel this impacts/add to your work?
GOMAD: By being a color blind artist, I always had a specific relation with eyes and colors. Throughout my research to develop my personal style, I realized that my particularity was a way to differentiate my work from the others and I decided to use the eyes as a trademark. Eyes are the window to your soul and are difficult to paint, to give them that real emotion. I have Deutan color blindness, which is the most common and has the least effect on daily life is a type of red-green color blindness in which the green cones in the eye detect too much red light and not enough green light. As a result red, yellow, green, and brown can appear similar, especially in low light. It may also be difficult to tell the difference between blues and purples, or pinks and grays. Luckily spray paint and buff paint have color codes which I learned to memories and of course all those years of working with colors have trained my mind to memories/recognize colors as they are. I don’t like to use bright and vibrant colors schemes, always less saturated colors which are more greyish. So this is maybe a consequence from my color blindness but also a typical style feature.
As one of our 10 ‘Screens’ Award winners of the 2020 edition of GreenPointEARTH Screens2Streets, what made you want to take part in this competition?
GOMAD: It has been a while a go so I don’t know exactly how I got to participate in your competition. I think I saw a message from GreenPointEARTH on one of your socials and replied to that. I often try to participate in these kind of competitions to show a different audience my artwork and to bring across the message behind my artwork.
Your winning submission featured elements of humans and nature. Can you explain the meaning behind the artwork and why you felt inspired to paint it?
GOMAD: Most of my artworks have a fusion of humans, nature and the animal world, mostly birds. The message behind it is to raise awareness that we have to be one with nature more. Not to think that we are above it all. To appreciate mother Earth more and put a stop the global pollution in the air and oceans, the climate change, etcetera.
What are your creative plans for the future? Any exciting upcoming projects we can look forward to?
GOMAD: Hopefully I can come over to New York and do a big mural for GreenPointEARTH in 2022, something I’ve been planning since spring of 2019. That’s really on my wish list. It’s difficult to plan ahead nowadays because of Covid-19. A lot of planned murals abroad were postponed or cancelled. Travelling to the States for instance was not allowed for Europeans for a long time. That’s why I don’t plan to far ahead anymore because you never know what will happen with Covid-19 restrictions in the near future and not to be disappointed too often when things get cancelled. But within Europa it’s always busy during the summer doing a lot of murals and festivals luckily.