How Archie Proudfoot Found His Creative Courage
The London-based sign painter recounts how creating a T-shirt line inspired him to pursue his real artistic passion.
Before we all relied on digital beacons to find our place in the world, the hand-painted signs like those designed by Archie Proudfoot were an artful way for businesses to welcome passersby. The art form has experienced a resurgence in the last few years, with companies small and large commissioning artists to infuse their spaces with individuality. “For the generation of people who have grown up around digital, there’s a romance around handmade, crafted things,” says Proudfoot. Magenta recently spoke with Proudfoot about what propels him to create every day.
Move First
I try to make sure the first thing I do is physically productive. I’ll do a collage for half an hour, or if i’m working on a larger-scale piece, I’ll do the next stage on that. I’ll do any administrative-type things after that. Starting the day by doing something with my hands helps to motivate me throughout the rest of the day.
Creative Aid
To fight creative blocks, going back through old sketchbooks is always a good move. Or, making sure that you’ve got something else you can work on just to take the pressure off. One thing I’ll do is draw out an alphabet. For sign painters, going through the motions to paint out the alphabet is quite common.
Room to Work
I work in a shared space with seven or eight other creative people. A painter, a cameraman, a sitcom writer, a set designer and costume maker, an illustrator…there’s a quite varied number of disciplines. I’ve learned a lot from them.
Creative Partners
Steve Powers is a New York-based artist who uses sign-painting in his artwork. I think his work has massively informed how I approach what I do now in terms of sign painting as a fine art.
I usually show my work first to another painter, Adam Bartlett, who’s an incredible critic. We don’t have a similar aesthetic, but we have a similar approach to the work. His work can be very detailed, as well. We often talk about work and what we should do next.
Managing Expectations
The work you do can come to define the work you do in the future quite quickly. You’ve got to be careful not to take work that will lead you down the wrong roads.
I think the large mural piece I did for Ogilvy & Mather last year has come to define what people might come to me for, in terms of my style as an artist and what I can do with sign painting. It’s expressive with lots of colors and styles, and really special.
Fashion First
At first, I thought it wouldn’t be possible to make a living sign painting. I decided to launch a T-shirt line instead; I thought it would be easier. That process, leading up to the launch, to spend the money and order the T-shirts…that was a hugely scary experience. It was harder than I thought.
The shirts were OK. I made my money back, and made a small profit. I’ve still got a few left over. But I learned a lot. I learned that I didn’t want to be in fashion. It taught me a lot about what I needed to do next.
I got the chance to paint my first public shop sign after that. Once I did that, I knew the experience, the feeling, the satisfaction of doing the work was so strong that I knew it was what I needed to pursue. I could really just dig in.
Creative Barriers
There are a lot of different barriers and fears to get over [when launching a creative endeavor]…the fear of public failure, or that you’ll launch something that’s not good enough or that’s going to bomb, or that you’ll get laughed at.
I think it’s the fear that you are going to do nothing, rather than something badly, that overtakes. The worry that you’ll do nothing is stronger than actually doing something that’s not as good as it could’ve been.
Proudfoot will appear as part of Huge’s Make Something You Love event in London on March 8, 2017. To learn more and RSVP, click here.
