Even if you’re not a regular visitor to galleries, chances are if you’ve walked the streets of Brisbane, then you’ve seen the artwork of SIMON DEGROOT. RAVE speaks to the artist prior to his new show, PAPERPLANES, at Nine Lives Gallery.

Brisbane artist Simon Degroot has been a busy man of late, a new son, a handful of interstate shows, and now his first local exhibition in a good while. His new works, feature a wild combination of playful images, childlike drawings and erratic scribbles. We managed to sit him down for a minute to ask a few questions about the upcoming show and where he gets the ideas...

RAVE: Describe the process you go through in creating a new piece.

SIMON DEGROOT: I always have reams and reams of notepads around with drawings and doodles. These are my friends when I create something new.

R: Over the past few years your work has started incorporating a lot of variety in colour, has this become a more important element?

SD: I like that colour, no matter what it is, can have such a strong impact. I like lots of different colours for different reasons - my colour pallet changes all the time. At the moment I seem to be using quite a lot of black in my works. For me its a cleansing colour and a calm colour.

R: Have you always had a creative side? What were you like in high school?

SD: I have always been creative and made art in some way or another. I drew and painted all through school and it’s really the only thing that I had time for.

R: A lot of people will be familiar with your work on signal boxes all over the city; do you think this was an effective way of building your name as an artist up here?

SD: For me the traffic signal boxes have been a double-edged sword of sorts. On one side, it’s been a great way of exposing my work to a lot of people. But the downside is the work on traffic signal boxes isn’t what I would call my real work. Studio work is much more important to me, and the material I put up at exhibitions is really the work I find most interesting and most representative of my style.

R: What gets you really excited these days?

SD: First up, I’m really excited about all the new material that’s on show this week in Paperplanes as well as all the art I the art I haven’t made yet. But on a simpler note, my son I seem to be rediscovering the immaturity and silliness in art sometimes.

R: It’s been a good while since you have had a show in your home town; what can we expect from this exhibition?

SD: This show, Paperplanes is an exhibition of new works. Since my last Brisbane outing I have entered fatherhood, and I think becoming a dad has inevitably influenced my new work. Scribbles and colouring outside the lines feature strongly in my new material.

PAPERPLANES opens this Friday Nov 27 from 6pm at Nine Lives Gallery (above Mellino’s in the Valley Mall). If you get the chance, why not indulge in some grown up naivety of your own. Fold Rave into a paper plane, and throw it somewhere irresponsible... www.simondegroot.com / www.wehaveninelives.blogspot.com

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