Indie Spotlight: Mike O’Shea
Illustration gets naughty in the West Country city of Bristol.
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As a haven for artists, Stokes Croft is pretty much Bristol’s Montmartre; graffiti adorns many of its walls, enthusiastic protesters frequently take to the streets and squatters squat by the legion. In one of its many homely, but seriously cold warehouses – shacked up alongside fellow illustrator Tim Ryan – resides Mike O’Shea; skater, illustrator and all-round joker.
You can be forgiven if the name Mike O’Shea doesn’t instantly click. The 25-year-old has been keeping things pretty low key save for a few t-shirts and skate decks with Howies and The Harmony respectively. His trademark style – think David Shrigley but without the darkness and more willies – is nothing short of loveable and will almost certainly pave the way to success for his new skate brand, Highbrow.
"I did want to be a basketball player for a bit, and I thought about being an actor, but that didn’t last very long," says Mike, contemplating how he came to be an illustrator. "Me and my brother [Steve O’Shea] both drew quite a lot and it’s one of the things I remember always being quite good at. I wasn’t good at much else, but kids always tried to copy me and I always did other people’s drawings for them when they couldn’t do it.”
Following this natural ability, Mike took an art foundation course in his native "ghost town" of Taunton in Somerset before upping sticks to the bright lights of Bristol to do illustration at the University of the West of England. After moving studios a couple of times, a helluva lot of doodles and many hours spent skating, the perpetual lost boy started working towards something more concrete.
Mike gets on his thoughtful camera face in his studio.
Under the desk lies a treasure trove of work from a previous exhibition.
Launched in December 2010, Highbrow is something that he has nurtured from a GSCE Graphic Products project at school, and, of course, a long-term relationship with skateboarding. "I made a skate shop and had a fake company," Mike remembers. "I did all these pictures with t-shirts and logos. At some point I just needed to make something with Highbrow as a product." Cue the debut Highbrow limited-edition deck that turned the musings of 16-year old Shea into a reality.
"I just wanted to do something that I liked and I want to keep doing more. There’s a lot of shit out there, especially in England. There are some really good companies, but there’s a lot of rubbish as well," Mike levels, unflinchingly. "If it goes alright, every now and again I’ll bring new stuff out when I can and when I’ve got money, more limited-edition stuff. I’m pleased with how it’s gone and how the first one’s come out. I’m stoked."
Highbrow is a knowingly ironic name. You see, Shea's illustrations aren’t the kind of thing that you’d want to show your Grandma: there’s a lot of sex, genitalia and bodily emissions. But every now and then you come across something almost heartbreaking, such as his sketch of an old man looking for 'the one'. Mike attributes this to the inspiration he draws from the world around him: "I do take things from what I hear people say sometimes, [the] little snippets of people’s conversations as I walk past them.”
Beyond eavesdropping though, Mike does acknowledge one major influence: Ed Templeton. “He’s a perfect example of taking skating and making stuff and doing really well from it," says Mike. "He’s got to a point where his skating career’s going down – he’s not really skating any more – but he’s successfully gone into the art scene."
O'Shea is not self-sufficient just yet and, like so many budding creatives, has been working as a waiter to make ends meet. “I really need a kick up the arse,” he says, laughing at his situation. “If I could make a living out of it, then that would be great, because I don’t want to do anything else. Just keep going, because when I look in the mirror when I go to the toilet at work and I’m wearing a shirt and tie and a fucking apron, I’m pissed off.”
But ultimately, his contagious enthusiasm and passion for his work leaves you with a tingling optimism for his future. Says Mike: “The only people that don’t succeed are the ones that give up. Even if it takes twenty years, just keep going and have fun!”
Other sources of inspiration
New ideas for Highbrow.
White board, non-corporate style.
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Indie Spotlight: Mike O’Shea (text) by Liz Seabrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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