S5, E5 James Cook | Typewriter artist

In this episode, we meet James Cook - a London-based artist transforming the humble typewriter into a tool of extraordinary expression. Trained in architecture at UCL’s Bartlett School and raised in Essex, James left behind blueprints to pioneer a new form of drawing: intricate portraits, skylines, and architectural scenes composed entirely from typed characters.

With a collection of over 100 typewriters, James uses punctuation as texture and the Olympia SG3 for precision layering. Often spotted typing outdoors at landmarks like Tower Bridge, James blends analogue technique with modern storytelling. Discover how nostalgia, architecture, and innovation collide in this one-of-a-kind artistic journey.

Episode recorded on 18 August 2025

Explore more: jamescookartworkshop.com
Instagram: @jamescookartwork

Podcast details:
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Website: www.artiststales.net
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Transcript

Welcome to Artist Tales podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host, Heather Martin, and in this episode we're exploring the fascinating world of a man whose art is built, not with brush or pencil. With the typewriter's rhythmic punch. Joining me is James Cook, a London-based artist who crafts intricately detailed portraits, cityscapes and architectural wonders, using nothing but vintage typewriters from Essex Roots to architectural studies at UCL's Bartlett School.

James's journey took a remarkable detour during the pandemic when Clattering Keys became his medium of choice and artistic voice. His pieces are composed of thousands of typed characters, letters, brackets, underscores, even musical notation, layered into astonishingly lifelike scenes. Whether capturing tower bridge while seated beneath it, or embedding secret messages into skyline silhouettes, James combines precision, patience, and a little poetic rebellion in each creation.

With over 300 works in exhibition spanning from the Royal Albert Hall to Taiwan Chimei Museum, James reminds us that innovation often begins by asking what if and then listening closely to the clock of inspiration. Welcome, James. Thank you very much. That was a very nice introduction. Well, you're such an interesting artist, so I think it it does you justice to be fair.

So I gave a bit of an introduction to you, but could you tell us a bit more about yourself and how you were drawn into doing art using a typewriter? So, um, I was introduced to typewriter art back in 2014, and at the time I was, I believe I was 17 years old and it was essentially a school project, so art class.

So I. A level Arts was, was where it began. And it was essentially my art teacher speaking to the class saying, okay, students, we want you all to look at artists that have used technology in interesting ways, brilliant history, and we want you to do a project where you basically take that piece of technology in your able to, not necessarily recreate, but be inspired by that artist and how they have applied or adapted that technology.

For me, I had originally looked at the work of David Hockney, who is obviously a renowned British artist and. Somewhere in, in my research, I found that he had used fax machines to create digital, kind of this, this hybrid of analog and digital based artwork. But for me it was, it, I, I wanted to go to go down the route of using fax machines.

'cause I thought that was quite an interesting and novel concept. But it was simply because I couldn't find a fax machine that I then chanced upon the. A typewriter and this long forgotten history of typewriter art, which goes back to the Victorian age. And I suppose very specifically, I was captured by the work of Paul Smith, who obviously most people, when they think of the name Paul Smith, they think of the fashion brand.

So there, there was an American artist by the name of Paul Smith, who was born around the turn of the 20th century. And he, unfortunately was, was born with cerebral palsy. And because of his condition, his, his parents gave him a typewriter at a very early age because they wanted him to learn to read and write.

And essentially because of his, his condition of, he struggled to hold conventional writing tools like a pencil or a pen. So what the typewriter enabled him to do was give him that mechanical control that he didn't, that control, that he didn't have through, through the, the mechanism of the typewriter, uh, simply by pressing the keys with his fingers.

But what Will Smith actually found through typing was that he had this passion for art that was untapped up until that point. And for him, this was his methodology for being able to express his creative side was, was through the use of the typewriter and it was. This, this journey for him, which spanned round about 70 years.

So eventually Paul Smith moved to a, a retirement home in Mary land somewhere in, in the state of Mary land in America. And he, the walls of, of the, the, the care home where he lived are covered in all of his, his drawings. This was a lifelong project of his creating art with typewriters. 'cause he absolutely loved it and he became quite famous for doing it as well.

And, uh, I believe he passed away back in 2007. So for me, that was my introduction to his work and seeing his work, seeing how he had so ingeniously used, you know, the shapes of letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and was able to puzzle piece together. These incredibly intricate drawings, whether if he was, I mean, he would, he tackled subject matter like American, like classic American railroads and you know, of wildlife birds, you know, animals cityscapes.

And it was just in incredible to see his work. And it gave me, as a 17-year-old when I was studying art, it gave me that inspiration to explore typewriter art and, and to try it myself. And I began with essentially just one typewriter. It was a a 1953 Oliver Courier, and it just happened to be a, uh, this, this elderly couple in the, in the town where I lived in Braintree, in Essex.

They overheard me and my dad, we were basically going to every antique store, charity shop, hoping to find a typewriter and not to any success. And it was only the fact that we were talking to somebody working in a charity shop. This, yeah, this elderly couple basically overheard us and said, oh, we, we've got a typewriter we can sell you.

And um, so they wrote down their address on a piece of paper and paid 15 pounds for it. And that ended up being quite a good investment for me because that was the catalyst for what has now become my career as a, as a full-time artist. And I've ended up producing probably about 50 drawings with that first machine.

And I basically learned everything that I needed to know to get myself started producing drawings in this very quirky, unusual medium. So you've gone from a 17-year-old starting out using typewriters to create art. So I mentioned in an introduction that you went to UCL or the Bartlett School at UCL to do architectural studies.

So why did you choose to do that rather than maybe an art degree? Yeah, so when I was 17, the, the typewriter art project was perhaps, I dunno, one aspect of, you know, a, a much broader course that I was studying. So because it was a levels I had specifically picked. Subjects that I thought I would need to take in order to get into UCL to study architecture.

That was my main career goal. So ever since the age of five, I've had a fascination with buildings and I've loved drawing. So I kind of knew from an early age, well, I thought, I knew from an early age that I wanted to be an architect because I had this passion for drawing buildings. Although I have to say what I've learned much later in life is that whilst I had, I have a passion for drawing buildings, I don't necessarily have an interest in designing them.

And you kind of need that to be an architect. So, um, but it was good experience and I liked the idea that, okay, so perhaps it seemed such a ridiculous idea or, so I was led to believe by many other people around me that being an artist full-time was, was not a sensible career choice. And so the, the compromise was to be an architect, I suppose.

That was, that was kind of my mindset. I knew that I wanted to draw buildings and being an architect was the way to do that. So, so yeah. So I studied at the Butler School of Architecture from 2015 until 2000, uh, when would it be? 2021. So just, just after COVID. And, um, yeah, I, I was, I did my undergrad there, which was three years.

And that was a real learning curve because nothing compares. Or nothing prepares you to, uh, to, to such, such an immense amount of workload being at the Bartlet. You are made fully aware that, that you should be so lucky to be here, is essentially the, the kind of mindset of people is you, you know, this is one of the best schools in the world to study architecture.

We're gonna make you work as hard as possible, and that, that was definitely the case. And there's definitely some, some aspects of, of studying that I have taken on into my career as an artist. That, that work ethic, you know, I think everybody has varying ideas about what hard work is and, and depending on who you are, that is hard work.

But, you know, nothing really prepares you for the, it's a real, a real exercise in, um, tolerance and, yeah. All the good and bad reasons actually. But, um, I think when I finished my degree in 2021, I quickly realized that like a lot of people. Unfortunately, you know, during COVID a lot of people were perhaps reevaluating what they wanted to do with their lives, and for a lot of people it looked like working from home was, was the only solution for them.

I've, I graduated working from home because all the universities were closed, so. I took a leap of faith when I graduated. I decided, well, there's, there's nothing to lose here. I, I'd quite happily give this a shot, and I, in the background, I'd already had typewriter, kind of, sort of wearing away as, as it was like a hobby, you know?

It, it was actually, it was more than a hobby, to be honest. It began as a hobby because I loved doing it so much after I finished it as, as a, um, a subject that I just simply studied as at school in a a level art class. It became a hobby. And then when I was at university, I quickly realized that my degree was so incredibly time intensive.

And as we all know, London is a very expensive place to live, especially for a poor student like myself. Although I was at the time, and in order to afford the rent, I was doing commissions and I. I was grafting in the background because I knew that I didn't have any time during, during the day to, to hold down a, a regular job, you know, whether it was working like in a cafe or, you know, it could be anything as, as, you know, a student, a typical student based job.

So I decided to do typewriter art and basically make myself known online. To people to say, look, I'm, I'm here to be commissioned. If people want family portraits or portraits, pictures of your house, I, I'm here. I can turn those, those images into typewriter up for you. And, uh, that was essentially what paid the bills.

So, um, I was very lucky that I had that skill, uh, that I'd learned. Studying A levels to be able to take that on into my university degree so that I could afford to, to study, to study architecture, thinking that that's what I would end up doing. And, uh, finding myself quite surprised to be coming back to typewriter art again as a full-time gig many years later.

And in a way, you're proving people who perhaps were a bit skeptical. That that was a career choice. You know, you're kind of proving them that actually it is a viable career choice or career path, I would say. So I think the, probably one of the biggest things that I've learned about being an artist is you don't need other people to tell you, or you don't need to step up.

You don't need other people to put you in that place because I, I do. Quite, I do take pride in the fact that I don't have an agent, I don't have anybody else around me that has been able to put me, or I haven't had to jump through hoops basically to, to get where I need to get to earn it, earn a living.

It's social media gets obviously a bad rap all the time and. I, my, my whole business is essentially based on social media and I like to think that Instagram is, is kind of a safe space for people when they come and find my work, because social media obviously can have lots of, it can be controversial, it can be dividing, but essentially what I'm producing is artwork and it's there for people to enjoy and it's that.

That kind of escapism people, just by chance. Most people just find my work, they're scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, and suddenly they come across one of my videos and, uh, it brings, it makes 'em happy. You know, they, they like seeing the work. They, they like seeing the cityscapes that I'm able to type or portraits.

They like the kind of therapeutic rhythmic sounds of the typewriter in the videos. It's, it's very kinetic and it's almost performative the way that the, the videos I put together, the way that I display the work, uh, you have the, obviously the mechanical sounds of the typewriter, you know, the ding of the bell and the character return.

So there's all of these elements that come together, make these very engaging videos and yeah, it's, it's, it's, for me wholeheartedly, it's Instagram that has really sustained my business. And it's the way that most people find my work to begin with. And yeah, after a while. I set up my own websites and started selling my own prints, and I quickly realized that, oh, okay, this, this earns a lot more money than, you know, a, a part one architect student, uh, or a part one would, would earn.

As, as a kind of starting out in a, in an office, in, in, you know, even in London, you know, working as an architect or an architectural assistant. And for me, I, I didn't wanna kid myself that, um. You know, architecture is, is a more serious route. I didn't want to kind of pretend that I was, I was satisfied with that career path because I'd had enough experience by that point.

Uh, when it came to graduating from university, I'd already worked in several offices in London, and I'm, some of them were okay experiences. Some of them were great experience, but, but it, it, it, I didn't feel like it, it didn't feel like a good fit for me. It wasn't, it wasn't enough for me to think that I was happy with, with what I was doing and finding that I could basically be, become self-employed and spend all day drawing with typewriters was, um.

Yeah. It's, it's just been an, an absolute joy up, up and, you know, every day I, I don't get bored of, of sitting at a typewriter drawing. It's, uh, it's 'cause people say, well, how do you, how do you have that enthusiasm? How do you keep going? You know what, what is? And, and for me it's, I, I just, I just love drawing.

You know, there's, in the same way that people, other people love sports, you don't, you don't need to find the energy always. If, if it's something that you, you really love doing. You know? Yeah, I, I completely agree. And, you know, I think quite a few people, and I'd probably say myself as well, would struggle to be, you know, really happy with a job.

And it's not to say I do like my job. I'm not kind of dissing my job in any sort of way, but to have that joy consistently, you know, is, is quite a valuable thing. And I think, you know, it's, if you can get it great, you know, and you could find it great. And I think to that. Probably comes through with your work in terms of if you're engaged, if you're joyful, if you're, you know, happy doing what you're doing, then.

That kind of seeps through the, the work you're doing it, you know, you're not bored with it. Are you bored? Yeah. It's, it's not ab absolutely. It's, it, it's not hard work. It's not, I say to people, it's not work. The, the process of making the drawings is not hard work. It's, it's, it's hard to do, but it doesn't feel like work 'cause it's enjoyable.

Although interestingly, other aspects of being an artist, you, you suddenly realize, especially when you get to a certain level of success, you quickly realize, well, this is a business and I have to run this like a business, and suddenly. There are other aspects such as doing admin, answering emails, editing videos, negotiating contracts.

If it's a commercial project, if you don't have an agent, like I don't, then suddenly there is a, I'm not gonna call it a burden, but there's a massive weight on your shoulders to be able to be as good as as good a businessman, as an art as you are an artist. And yeah, that's, that's probably been the biggest learning curve.

I would, I would say becoming a full-time artist is being able to run a business efficiently. When I started, I was essentially doing everything myself in the sense that if someone was to buy a print from me, I would. Print them myself, I would post them myself. Uh, I would email them with the tracking information to make sure that, you know, it was arriving to the customer and that's all well and good up until a certain point.

But if suddenly lots and lots of people wanna buy your work, you quickly, I quickly became a postman. I was essentially packing all my work up, getting it printed locally, and then going to the post office. Getting these, literally getting hundreds of receipts with tracking numbers and then having to file everything in a spreadsheet, making sure that every customer's getting their tracking number and finding that probably about 40% of, because I was shipping across the world because social media is a global thing, you know?

So I was shipping artwork all over the world. Finding that 40% of artwork wasn't making it to the customer, it would either be returned or lost. And, and that would be a loss to, to me, financially, because I'd have to replace it or refund the customer. So yeah, that took me away from actually making artwork for, for back in 2022 to 2023.

It took a, took me away from producing new work and I quickly realized that the thing that's gonna sustain this in the long term is to continuously produce new work. And that was something I couldn't do 'cause I was spending every day at the post office. I, I had to make some changes. Fortunately, there are businesses out there that when, when you are an artist, that there are businesses out there that can support artists with fulfillment services.

So they will contact you and say that, we know you are on Instagram and we know that you must, you've clearly got a website and you're selling artwork already to customers directly. We can take care of that. We can do the printing and the packaging. We can do it all for you. And that allows you to dedicate.

More of your time to producing new work because that's where you thrive. And, um, that change, uh, took place in the middle of last year and essentially that has freed up lots of time for me to be able to do the thing which I'm good at, which is making the art and, and making the videos. So, even though for me, as, as a business, I am essentially a one man band 'cause I run the business myself.

So the website, making the art, editing the videos, everything that gets put out online. Writing my own newsletters, taking all the photographs with the newsletter. I do that myself. But the fulfillment side of the business, which involves sending prints to customers, fortunately is, is handled by somebody else at a company because that, that could have been a real, it was a real challenge and I was, I was fortunate to find a way through that.

It's interesting kind of those challenges that come up and even as you said, you know, mentioned earlier. You know, it's a learning process. You know, you kind of had to learn the business side of things as well as being the artist. So in terms of actually creating your images, how do you approach that? How do you construct those images?

So I did sort of mention, you know, tower Bridge and you sat underneath and created. An image of it, do you take time to kind of construct it in your head, or, or is it now you're, you have a rhythm and you just see something and you kind of know how you, you're going to actually put it onto the page? Yeah, I suppose it completely depends on the project.

So normally I, I, I would say nearly 60, 70% of the time, um, okay, if, if I. Probably it's, it's best to say what my most popular subjects are and that it's normally cityscapes. So if somebody sees a print on the website, it's normally, could be a London Landmark, it could be, I mean, the most popular subject is uh, the New York based landmarks.

So for me, I would love to be able to go to New York. Absolutely physically work on location. Uh, obviously it gets very expensive, so in those instances, I would work from a reference image. Uh, so my most successful print was uh, uh, an artwork called Evening in Times Square. And, um, that. As that was essentially a reference image, uh, or a combination of reference images that I had collage together in Photoshop.

Sometimes I use Google Earth 3D building terrain data. It's, it's an incredible resource. Google Earth for the the 3D building, the 3D scans that they do of cityscapes. For me, being able to capture a viewpoint that is otherwise impossible to capture with. If you were to just hold a camera, because there a lot of my drawings are aerial perspective and I like to be able to have this kind of wide field of view where you see below you and you see this hustle and bustle of pedestrians and moving vehicles and traffic and to be able to see kind of, you know, a more of a panoramic scene where you see like a cityscape and a horizon and there's, these are sort of things you can't capture with a, with a camera.

So I, it's really a collage most of the time when it's a cityscape of lots of different images put together. And then what I will do is take that image, print it out as a one-to-one, and I'll have it on the desk next to me, and the typewriter will be right in front of me and I'll essentially feed the paper into the typewriter and I will swap a, a so, so typewriter.

So for people that dunno typewriters, uh, the way that they transfer income to the page. Is through the use of a of an ink ribbon, and as you type, this ribbon moves in very small increments, bit by bit and kind of like an old videotape. So the hammers on the typewriter stamp the ink onto paper. Now eventually those ribbons, they dry up once you've used them, and what I do is when I'm first starting out a drawing, I will use an old ribbon from a previous artwork, knowing that it will leave a very faint impression on the page.

And I can essentially sketch with the typewriter. So I can loosely put in a framework and it's almost of no consequence to the final outcome because it's such a faint impression on the page. The other nice thing about typewriters is when you use them is they emboss the paper because you're physically stamping paper.

It's not just a 2D object that you end up with. It's, it's almost two and a half D. So dunk in itself is, is really valuable for me trying to work out and trying to get the proportions correct if I'm working from a reference image. Now comparatively I do like to work on a location where I can. So, 'cause I'm based in London, it means that I have the opportunity to be able to visit our bridge, for example, or, uh, you know, Greenwich Park.

If I wanted to do a drawing of the observatory or of the university buildings and they, they work really well. Normally what I would do is I'll go to the site beforehand. Take a load of photographs, go back to the studio, more or less, complete the drawing, 75% of the drawing, because for me, going to location is great, but I do find that it's very difficult to get the drawing done, uh, efficiently because, and it's really nice.

I love it. I mean, I love people coming up to me and I'm very happy to talk to people about typewriters and my work. But you do stand out when you're sitting with a typewriter on your lap. People are curious to see what you're doing. For me, the most efficient way to be able to complete a drawing is to get most of it done from the studio, uh, where there's obviously zero distractions.

And then to go to site, get the drawing. I'm also simultaneously getting a video from being on location, so I have a tripod set up with a camera and, um. That's, that's obviously one other, other method for, for producing the work is to do a bit of it from the studio and then to do a little bit of it on location.

Again, it's all entirely weather dependent. So if I'm typing a cityscape, you know, I, I've typically, I, my scheduling's pretty bad, so I always pick the worst time of year to be outdoors and, you know, it's either raining or it's snowing because it's December or January and you learn that those lessons the hard way because there's, there's times in the past where I've turned up somewhere.

It's been so cold or it's been so humid or that, that I find myself stamping holes through the paper because, because the air is so humid that it makes the paper soggy. You don't expect to, you know, when you're working from a studio, you don't have these, these same issues. So yeah, work, working on location is, is a real challenge.

But, um, it, like, like I said, it entirely depends on the, whether it's a good day or a bad day weather-wise. So, so yeah, that, that's kind of the how I. Depending on the subject, you know, I either work on location or I don't work on location if it's a commercial project. So in the past I've done projects with, um, uh, different movie franchises.

They'll normally provide an image, so it could be a movie poster or it could be an actor from the film and they'll say, we, we want you to work specifically with this image. 'cause this is the image that's licensed. This is the one that we've selected. And uh, yeah. It's you, just, you more or less, you know, you just type away and, uh, you hope that you don't make any mistakes.

You don't get a second shot at it. People do ask me all the time, oh, what happens if you make a mistake? Do you, do you use Tip X? And I always say to people, I can't use Tip X because. One thing I did discover earlier on when I first started typing was with, with time tip X cracks, and it's never quite the same white as the paper that you're using.

You know, it's always slightly off white and it really sticks out like a sore thumb. So I, I tried to get it right first time, but I've also learn to live. And appreciate the mistakes that I make in the drawings. I try not to point them out to people when they look at a drawing, they say, oh, you know, they might, they might look at it and say, oh, it looks immaculate.

And, but I'll say, oh, well there are, there's a lot of mistakes there that, you know, I just, I just choose to not point them out to people. But generally speaking, the hardest subjects to capture our people with cityscapes, you have a tolerance. As long as it looks like, for example, the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building, people are gonna be happy.

But if you are. Trying to capture somebody's likeness or face if it's such, particularly if it's a celebrity, you know, there's, there's no, there's no margin for error. You have to get it right first time. And, um, yeah, it can sometimes take two or three attempts to get the drawing right. Probably working on a project with, uh, amnesty International.

It involves reporters that were essentially, uh, imprisoned for all the wrong reasons. And I have to, because it's such an important project, I have to make sure that I'm capturing their likeness. They can't just look like anybody. So it's, uh, it's, it's, it's definitely a lot more pressure for me. It's the artist to, to, to, to type pe, uh, to type portraits.

And like I said at the beginning, you know, my, I suppose my ev ever since I was a child, my primary interest was drawing buildings and it was only when I started typewriter art that actually I started to draw portraits of people. Up until that, you know, up until the age of 17, I'd never drawn. A person before because I just wasn't interested in, you know, I wasn't interested.

So, so yeah. So it's, it's been a massive learning curve. And you've mentioned that whenever you're out, you get people coming up and asking you questions. Mm. And also people found you on Instagram and other social media. What's been the reaction to your work? It sounds quite positive just from what you've said already.

Yeah, it's, it's a really nice, I would say 99% of people have a, have a nice thing to say, and for me it's, it's incredibly rewarding to know that. People when they see the work that they are, they're so impressed with it that they leave a comment and they, they say something really nice, or they'll share a memory.

It might be about a family member that had a typewriter growing up, or it might be themselves, you know, they had a typewriter growing up, or it might have been a present that they were gifted for their, uh, for Christmas or for a birthday. Uh, they were given a typewriter by their parents. Or they used to work in an office in a typing pool, and all they heard every day was the, the click clack sounds of typewriters.

So it casts a wide net of interest. I don't think you have to be into art to, to be interested in the work that I produce. I think the fact that it's made with a typewriter, it, it kind of draws in another layer of people. And I've, I kind of approach it. Like, I'm really open to people. If they, if they send me an email and they want to ask a question, they'll be getting a, a response from me, you know, as opposed to anybody else, you know, that it will be me that's answering them.

And, uh, yeah. It's, it's, it's just a really nice, and, and, and also like the community of, of people out there that are, uh, typewriter enthusiasts. You know, I, I tell people, because a lot of people say, well. Are you the only artist that makes drawings for typewriters? And I'm not. There are other artists out there.

It's a very small group of us. There aren't many people that do it, but the ones that do, we all share a Facebook group chat where we talk to each other and we, you know, say hello and. I've had the pleasure of meeting, uh, a typewriter artist who's based in America, and she came over to, uh, to the UK last year.

Was it last year or the year before? She came and visited me at my studio and, uh, she bought some of her drawings with her, so I got to see her work up close and yeah, it's really nice to, it's just a nice community of people, you know? It's, uh, yeah, I, there, there really isn't any bad feedback about the work that I produce because it's, it's apolitical.

I'm not there to incite political messages for me. First and foremost, I like to produce cityscapes and scenes, and I like to conceal hidden messages in the drawings, and sometimes those messages resonate with people because. It might remind them of that location, whether it, for example, it could be a, a scene in New York, and I've happened to mention the name of that coffee shop that this person who's seen this drawing visits every day because it's there, it's on route to their commute to work, for example.

Or I'll put in specific key dates. And those dates might relate to, you know, the history of a certain location. It could be. The founding of the Bodily Library, which is a recent project of mine I worked with, uh, Oxford University's Bodily Library. And, uh, yeah, drawings packed with historical information about locations.

They become like, they become puzzles and um, and games for people. And what I really like is, you know, when you, if you go to a gallery, you might. Stop and stand and look at a picture for 20 seconds or 30 seconds and then move on to the next picture. But what I suppose I, I want people, I try to encourage people to look at my work a little bit longer because from a distance, each picture could just look like it's made, you know, in pen and ink from a distance.

It's not that obvious that it's been produced by a typewriter. It's certainly when you get closer and closer, you start to draw in and you see that it's made of letters and numbers, punctuation marks, but then when you get even closer, you might spot that there's a hidden messages, uh, uh, here's a message or, or a, or a phrase or a key word.

And so I, I, I like people in the comments, you know, they, they'll, they'll leave a message to say what they found in the drawing on social media. They might say, oh, I found this message and this what this, this is what that particular message means to me as a person. And yeah, it, it just, like I said, it just costs such a wide net of interest.

And, and what's really nice is obviously if I have an opportunity to do an exhibition, you get to put a name to a face. So a lot of people that follow me on Instagram who've been following me for a long time, they suddenly might turn up to an exhibition and they'll introduce themselves and say, oh, I'm, I'm so and so.

And you go, oh yes, I know that name. So it's, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's nice, you know, I couldn't think of any other job where you get to, to deal with the public and it's such a positive, it, it always is a positive, uh, always a positive response. You know, it's, it's so rewarding to deal with people that are so, so enthusiastic about.

What I do on a daily basis sounds really positive. And as you were talking, you know, kind of words, funny enough words came up in my mind. You know, it sounds like you know, firstly that your work resonates. The word resonate came up, you know, it kind of taps into something, whether it's the technology, whether it's the image, or probably both or maybe a number of other things, but also I think there's a certain.

Playfulness in a really nice way of those messages or words that people can look out for or just stumble upon, you know? Mm-hmm. I did think, you know, in in North America it's finding Waldo and over in Britain it's finding Wally. I think it's that kind of sense of you're finding something with Yeah, I mean, it's, that, that is where's, where's w slash Walder?

I mean, he, that, those, those books by Martin Hanford, uh, who, who's an incredible. Illustrator as a child, they, they really inspired me. I remember when I was about five years old and my mum went into labor with my younger brother and sister and, um. Unfortunately, my dad also was unwell at the time, and I was, I was sort of for a very short amount of time.

I was raised by, you know, extended family, our aunties, uncles, and grandparents. And I remember being given a Wes Wally book and just being so, uh, encapsulated and, and engrossed with those illustrations. I would, I'd look at it for hours and hours. You know, and, and they, they, yeah, I, the, the, um, the inspiration is, is evident in the work that I produce.

I love, there is a, there's a, there's a specific word that they use to describe that style of artwork, and it's a German term and I, I, I'm not gonna try to pronounce it 'cause I'll get the pronunciation really awfully wrong. But, um, it goes back to a renaissance, uh, this style of work. There's a, there's a German term for it essentially means jam packed art.

And so it's a scene that's jam packed with lots of details, uh, that your, the viewers left to, to find. So, yeah, I, I, that, that style of work definitely resonates with me. You know, the, the, where's Waldo, where's Wally books? You know, when you look at my cityscapes Yeah. There's, there's lots of, you know, there'll be pedestrians, uh, somebody might be tripping over or, you know, yeah, something's happening.

There's, I really like to include myself in the work as well, so, you know, I normally 'cause typewriter ribbons have a black and a red side. Most of them do. And so because I'm sort of known for wearing a red jumper, I normally type myself with a red jumper and so people are able to spot me in the drawings.

So it's, it's kind of like a meta reference because I'll be typing the drawings and you'll see me with a typewriter in the drawing typing the scene, if that makes sense. It does. It's almost like finding James in self-portrait. Really? Yeah. I'm sure there's no copyright infringement involved with, uh, hope not.

Mom's the word. We won't see anything. Yeah. So what's next? Where do you think you, your art career will take you? Oh, do you? I don't, I dunno, really. It's, it's so hard to say. It's, I, I, what I'm doing already is enough and I, and I, I'm never, I'm never striving or I'm, I'm hungry to create art, but I'm never feeling dissatisfied and thinking, oh, do you know what?

I'm not quite there yet. I, I need to do this, or I need to do that so I can be, you know, so I can prove myself what I, what I already have. I'm, I'm very grateful for, you know, the people that already follow me online on Instagram. The people that reach out to me in emails, the exhibitions that I've done, the, you know, the opportunities that I've had to, to collaborate with people and, and yeah, it's.

It's, uh, yeah, the, the thing is, it, it's a funny thing to say, uh, but I, 'cause you asked me at the beginning, you said it, obviously, you, you had an interest in doing typewriter art, but then you went to go and study architecture. And I, I suppose for me, it took a long time to work out what my aspirations were.

I, I. For a long time, like I said earlier, since the age of five, my aspiration was to be an architect. And so for a very long time because I, I, I had such a long development, this, this hobby of creating typewriter art. There was such a long lead time before it actually became a, a business, you know, so I didn't just jump into it straight away.

Last year I celebrated 10 years of typing, and I had an exhibition. And really, even though I've been creating typewriter art for 10 years, it's only been the last three years that it's been an incredibly successful business for me. Now, for a lot of people, if they're starting out, if they want to run a business or, or, or become a commercial artist or whatever, you know, there's that.

I almost feel like sometimes there is a little sense of, you know, there's, there's no sense of overnight success. Most, most of the time you have to work on it. You have to hone your skills before you can get there. And for me, because I, I'm not gonna say I didn't have an aspiration for typewriter, but because I had other priorities that in architecture along that, along that learning process, I just, I just did it because I enjoyed it.

I didn't do it because I felt like it owed me anything. I didn't feel like, oh, I need to be good at this because eventually it's gonna become a business for me. I think if I had felt that way five or six years ago when I was still studying architecture. It probably would've scared me too much to turn it into a business.

It's only because it's, it's been this very slow growth in terms of developing my skills, learning how to run a business, learning how to understand social media and how to kind of market my work. It's, uh, it's actually been a real benefit being able to do it very slowly because. The risk is if you do have a sudden short burst of overnight success, you dunno what you, what the next step is to sustain that.

And sometimes that does happen to people where they have overnight success, but then they dunno what to do next. How to, you know, continue that success. Uh, whereas for me, I've, I've learned from my mistakes, you know, I've been able to work out. Videos resonate with people, what's subject matter as well? Uh, whilst at the same time trying to keep it fresh.

I don't try and repeat myself in terms of subject matter, but I've worked out what I enjoy. I've worked out what other people enjoy when they see my work. And yeah, just lots of different aspects of the business. You know, I, I probably, I, I know I keep describing it as a business, but it's essentially what it has become.

It's, it's, it's a full-time. It's a full-time thing. You know, even, you know, a lot of people, you know, they, they, or not a lot of people, but sometimes people will say to me, oh, it must be so nice being self-employed. 'cause you get to pick and choose when you work. But it's not the case, you know, I find myself working during the week.

Sometimes I'll work weekends. Sometimes I'll be working until nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at night. Sometimes if there's a deadline, if it's a commercial project and they've only given me a week to complete this drawing because maybe it's a film and the film comes out the following week, you know you've got that pressure to.

To basically work until the early hours of the morning just to get a project done. But in those sense, do I feel like that's a burden? I've, I've chosen that, that career path, you know, I've chosen to do this for, you know, to be self-employed and to do, to do that, and it works for me. I know it probably wouldn't work for other, necessarily everybody.

You know, that kind of working, doing bits here, bits there. Oh, I need to do a little bit of the weekend. But, uh, yeah, it's, I, it works for me, you know, so, yeah, I'm not, not sure what I'm trying to say, but basically it's, um, I think I've, I suppose what I'm trying to say is the, I talk about it like a business because that's fundamentally where I've learned the most over the past four to five years.

It's the art I've, I've been working on since 2014. But really in the last four or five years, it's the business side of it that I've, I've had to learn because it's some, it's not just enough to have a skill. It's you need to know how to make people aware that you have that skill and you need to be able to let the world know, you know, you need to be able to give people something that.

It's more than just the element. It's, it's the, it's the business side of it that really you have to have to work at. Great. Well, thank you. It's been a really wonderful and interesting conversation, so best of luck with continuing your business and your art and yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing more of, of your art going forward.

Yeah. Thank you. It's been, it's been a really nice conversation. It's been, it's been a pleasure to speak to you. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for tuning into my conversation with James. His work reminds us that even the most familiar tools can be reimagined to tell extraordinary stories. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out James's website and social media handle all linked in the show notes.

And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend. Leave a review, or help spread the word. Your support keeps this series alive. In the next episode, I'll be speaking with Amanda Cotton, A 3D designer and contemporary sculptor who work challenges the preconceptions that shape her daily lives.

Amanda's pieces explore identity, body image, and the human lifecycle with boldness and sensitivity. Her recent projects, including the UK's first non-binary sculpture, are redefining how we engage with public art and personal narrative.