Murals Matter
Focus on legendary local muralist, Drew Copus
Drew Copus’ creations can be seen all over walls and surfaces from Bexhill through St Leonards to Hastings and beyond. They are fine pieces of work – and in spite of the fact that many of them are commissions and the patrons ask for something in particular (“I often wonder,” he muses, “what it would be like to just have a wall, a high wall, to do what I wanted on.”) they very much reflect him, his interests and his attitudes. It’s enjoyable to talk to him about his life, which like his art is both colourful and fascinating. But “I am my art” he says, “there isn’t anything in between.”
His work is obviously decorative, largely naturalistic. Alfonse Mucha, the Art Nouveau illustrator and commercial artist, is one of his heroes, and that influence can certainly be seen in several of Copus’ works. Not that they are at all derivative. He has an enormous range of topical interests, each one having at least the breadth of a masters’ dissertation if you were able to engage in extensive discussion: astrophysics, entomology, ecology. He asks me if I have heard of antimicrobial resistance. Not really, I say. It’s the name for the over-use of antibiotics that makes resistant bacteria more common, so some of his work depicts giant microbes. He is also interested in insects generally, so there have been a giant rove beetle adorning a wall in St Leonards, there are butterflies ascending the walls of a shop in Queens Road (where he was free to paint exactly what he liked and which are particularly lovely), and a giant ladybird. Other than the insects, there are painted seagulls in many locations – the ones on the latest mural are eating chips – and the vividness of the colours reflects the vividness of his own stream-of-consciousness articulations.
While Copus is painting, he listens to music. He loves many different kinds, and also plays the guitar and writes poetry. “The other morning I was just dancing round my studio with the dog” he says, “listening to some pop music, waking myself up, giving myself positivity, a lubricant to getting creative.” he says. He was also at one time into American big band jazz, Glenn Miller (!) particularly. Now, because he is essentially (he tells me) post-punk, he listens to Doom Metal and Stoner Rock, and Space Rock, which are all “really down tempo, very bassy, metal but metal slowed right down, quite psychedelic” he says. To my personal taste, Electric Wizard’s Funeralopolis just made me want to get in my coffin and go there, but that’s just me, and if he can use it to instigate or accompany fabulous artwork, then so much the better.
Despite its ultimate appearance of organic spontaneity, most of his work is carefully thought out and planned on an iPad, though on his own admission he dislikes technology. It has taken him over a week working many many hours of each day to finish the recent mural on the outside wall of a local house. It was, obviously, much longer than that in the planning. Like most very good painting, it looks as though it could only spring from that place and in that shape and that micro-world. He works meticulously in spray paint of many thoughtfully-chosen colours, and stencil. He explained that at one stage he used a tetradic palate (derived from a group of four colours in a colour wheel formation, prevalent in the work of Derain and Matisse, for example) to decide on colours for his artwork.
It’s life-enhancing, and characteristic of the Hastings and St Leonards locality, to have such an unusual piece just up the road from where I live. While we were talking and he was finishing off the painting, which is a view of West Hill, accompanied by Jack-in-the-Green and other local celebrities and seagulls, several people passed by and complimented the work. One man asked his name – “oh, you’re the legendary Drew Copus”, he said on hearing it, good to meet you. It was, I thought.
Victoria Kingham
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