Daniel Sparks AKA Müdwig. Consider us astounding when we discovered we had such talents working in our very team! Like many relationships within Verdant we met Dan on the football pitch and after asking him to help out at the brewery a few days a week we discovered his artistic talents. It only felt natural to ask Dan to contribute to our Cornish Creatives series.
Dan, is an English visual artist that works with several art forms including sculptures, painting and illustration. Daniel Sparkes has exhibited his work all over the United Kingdom, but also internationally in solo exhibitions in Calm and Punk Gallery in Tokyo, Sons and Studio in Copenhagen and Royalcheese Gallery in Paris.
As per normal we asked Dan the Cornish Creatives set of questions and this is his response!
Q1: Explain what you do in one short sentence.
I make oil paintings, drawings and murals pieces that are comically abstracted totems to a fusing of brutalism and nature.
Q2:
Did you study your trade and if so where?
I did study art/ illustration in Bristol , but I got more learning from books and by collaborating with my peers post university.
Q3:
How did you get into your groove?
Probably by not really fitting snugly into the other grooves that I was affiliated with at the time. I'd been painting billboard 'interventions' for a while when the street art thing kicked off in about 2003--, that got me into painting some big murals all over the globe , but I was keen to push my canvas work and not be associated with stencils of monkeys with machine guns.
I wanted to create a totally unique visual world that no-one could have comprehended previously . So I started pulling my conceptual references from traditional to the obscure and contemporary . This approach has cemented me as a bit of an esoteric 'artist's artist' and kept me located in the indefinable slither sections of the art world venn diagram.
Q4:
How long have you been creating?
Like most folk, since childhood , but it became an existential necessity about 22 years ago.
Q5:
If you weren't creating what would you be doing?
Woah ,,, well , I often wonder if art and music hadn't had such a mind altering effect on my teenage outlook whether I would have not dropped all the sports I was into beforehand. I like to think I would have won stages at the Tour de France if I hadn't gotten into acid techno , Steve Albini and the Chapman Brothers.
....But more likely I would have just studied 18th-20th century European military history..
Q6:
What’s beyond your wildest dreams?
Scarlett Johansson.... Everton playing some watchable football.?
Q7:
Who do you take the most inspiration from and why?
I'll always be inspired by Vic and Bob and Freddy Mercury. In terms of other artists, Guston , Rauch and Van Minnen have been very developmentally influential to me in recent years..
Q8:
Why did you create / choose these pieces for the can art?
Between the Verdant design squad and myself we curated a selection of six different artworks for the cans . So the six pack is essentially a mini drinkable exhibition featuring a kind of 'greatest hits ' of my works.
Q9: What does Cornwall mean to you?
It's got palm trees and bamboo so it feels pretty tropical . The roads here are a lot smoother than Gloucestershire, that's important. As a misanthrope with a dull obsession with parking spaces , I struggle with the summer human influx.
There's a lot of positive immigration here as the distance filters folk out so it also feels a bit like Jabba the Hutt's posse are populating it in a semi wild west way...but that's more in my head.
Obviously it's a county with a lot of industrial-ruin-romance and natural beauty lying about so as someone with a penchant for that it's a great place to explore .
It is a place of contradictions , I love that you can sense the history everywhere , places like Penwith feel like they haven't changed for 10,000 years.
I'm even growing to love the constant shriek of seagulls now, in a sort of Hitchcock-ian 'the Raptors will kill us' sort of way.
Q10:
What’s your best piece of work and how did it come about?
I don't think I've created my best piece of work yet , thus I keep moving forward and pumping out the improved visions. So by that definition my latest paintings are currently my best and more accomplished , in my mind. But to pin it down more, Camel Moth E71 & Bovine Prod are two of my strongest from recent months.
Müdwig Has A Beef System IPA
Released Wednesday 21st July 2021
6 Cans / Pieces of Artwork available to collect.
Intense zesty citrus with a focus on limes and grapefruit lead the way with an undercurrent of sweaty gorse flowers for added complexity. Wheat heavy, easy drinking and perfect on a hot day.
