Penny

PENNY

"I'M PENNY AND I HAND CUT EXTREMELY DETAILED AND OCCASIONALLY MIND-BOGGLING TINY STENCILS WITH MY BARE HANDS ... AND A SCALPEL. IN THE BEGINNING..." - Penny.

He gave up his career as a neurosurgeon and instead uses his scalpel for the more worthy pursuit of cutting holes in paper. The first stencil he cut was in 2001 when he was at Central Saint Martins earning his graphic design degree. "I was so poor at the time that whenever we got a project I would always try to work out the cheapest possible way to do it… most of the time that meant making my course work out of paper, masking tape and found items. I was like an East London Womble trying to recycle rubbish in creative ways, it was a bit ridiculous! A break though moment happened when I found a few cans of car paint in a cupboard under the stairs in my flat and thought to myself, “That’s gonna save money on printing costs!” I started to use stencilling for almost every single project after that. I started off by cutting text for large format posters until I eventually cut much smaller type and from there went on to cut stencils for pictures." Penny finds inspiration in everyday objects and often overlooked ephemera but money is the most prominent recurring theme in his work, which he regards as "representative of a sinister voyeur, an omnipresent force watching over its subjects". Through his choices of the objects he paints on and interacts with, as well as his techniques, he brings the subversive ideas behind street art to a different kind of public property: the type that can fit in your wallet.