↳

Artist image
Details
Artist:
Neil Edward
Church of Best Ever
Duration:
10 mins
Tagged:

Neil Edward (or Nelly as we like to call him) is one of the world's finest spray-paint artists, and one half of the duo Church of Best Ever. He has been a full-time artist for the past 20 years and is one of our Lead Artists at Global Street Art, designing and painting murals for some of the world's best-known brands. We caught up with him to talk career journeys, favourite projects and street art heroes…

How did you get into street art? What was your journey to being a full-time artist?

For as long as I could remember, art was the only thing that I was ever really good at. I drew and painted from the age of five or six. As a kid we had this book called Subway Art, which was just everywhere - it felt like every household had a copy in the ‘90s. I was also really into skateboarding – the two go hand-in-hand – and a good friend of mine I used to skate with took me under his wing and showed me the ropes, so I started painting traditional graffiti aged 15 or 16. I was living in Bournemouth around 2002 and we had a crew of us who were prolific train painters and graffiti artists. We got commissioned by Southampton City Council to paint an underpass complex, which we took on, because we quite enjoyed the irony of it. They just had one proviso that they didn't want graffiti lettering. So it was the first time I tried to transfer the way I drew in this photo-realistic style into spray paint. I wasn’t sure if it would work but I was actually quite surprised at how easy I found it.

And then from that commission, that spurred on more, so we were doing more for councils, youth clubs, nightclubs, restaurants, then private canvas commissions for people, graphic design jobs, all kinds of stuff. Around 2009, I got my first hand-painted advertising job for Converse – that’s when I realised this could be a career.

With photo realism, the technical skill of it is not really that difficult, it's really the ability to see that’s the important thing. The ability to translate a photograph and paint what's actually there rather than, for example, what your mind preconceives an eye looks like.

How do you paint in a photo-realistic style at such large scales?

It’s challenging because with spray paint, by its nature, you're trying to get it to do something it doesn't want to do - it's made to come out high pressure and fast and cover large areas quickly. It's not meant for delicate stuff. So, yeah, I don't find it easy by any stretch of the word, but comparatively speaking, it was easier than I thought it was going to be. I've got this theory that, especially with photo realism, the technical skill of it is not really that difficult, it's really the ability to see that’s the important thing. The ability to translate a photograph and paint what's actually there rather than, for example, what your mind preconceives an eye looks like.

What do you love about murals as a medium? Do you find it allows you to do things other artforms don't?

It might sound obvious, but it's the scale – the impact of seeing a work of art so large is incredible. 20 years ago, you could have walked around Shoreditch, and there might have been three or four big murals, and it used to really take your breath away when you came across one. Now, almost every surface is covered. But the scale still hasn't lost that impact for me. I really love it, it's amazing.

    What’s your favourite Global Street Art mural you've worked on?

    That’s a difficult one! I like lots of them for different reasons. Technically speaking, a recent one I did for Calvin Klein on our Great Eastern Art Wall was (I think) the best painting I've ever done. It was one of those where I felt like I levelled up a bit, which is nice after 20 years or so! But in terms of my favourite ever - probably the mural we painted for Valentino featuring Kristen McMenamy– it had the Valentino toile painted on her skin. It was such an amazing artwork for a mural - high impact, really striking. No faff, no unnecessary detail. And when you see those drone shots overlooking Old Street that show the scale of the wall – that’s why I do this for a job. Those moments.

    The mural we painted for Valentino featuring Kristen McMenamy– it had the Valentino toile painted on her skin. It was such an amazing artwork for a mural - high impact, really striking. No faff, no unnecessary detail.

    VIEW VALENTINO PROJECT
    What’s one bit of advice you’d give someone when creating campaign artwork for a mural?

    Less is more! And you always have to take into account the local area, the scale of the building, the shape of the building, all that stuff. Artwork always works best if it's adapted specifically for the location. We know our walls best, so we can always help advise on that, or come up with something bespoke for a client.

    What is the craziest project you've worked on?

    Our craziest project? Probably for the 2020 UEFA Euro Final. When England went through to the final, Nike approached us to paint the 7,000 square metre pitch at England’s training ground. So we had like, 48 hours to prep, plan the mural and paint it in time – not to mention we'd never painted on grass before. We even used the paint that they use to mark the lines on the pitch, so it was totally site-specific, and a powerful message. Somehow we pulled it off - I still don't really know how to this day!

    That’s still one of my favourite parts of this job, after 20 years or so, I'm still learning and problem solving. It's amazing that you get tested with new challenges (on an almost weekly basis!)

    Church of Best Ever

    Tell us about Church of Best Ever and your work as an artist today - what are you inspired by?

    Church of Best Ever is a partnership between me and another artist, Hadley. We've been working together since 2008. We were both living in Bournemouth, and one day he approached me and was like “Do you want to do some stuff together?” because I think he'd been trialling this new kind of style, and had seen my photorealism, and we thought it would work nicely together. It turns out it does!

    I think we both have a similar attitude towards art and we both enjoy similar painters' work. What we do is introspective – it’s based on the beauty and the horror of the human experience. We deal with difficult subject matter, like death, or disease, or reproduction - subject matters that don’t often get tackled in this medium.

    It really took me back to the essence of what street art should be. You really got to know the person whose house you were painting - what it meant to the local community.

    Is there a favourite mural you’ve done together?

    Probably the series of murals we created in The Gambia in West Africa. A friend of ours ran an eco-tourism lodge out there – and he reached out to us to paint some houses in the local village. The houses were made using mud bricks and every monsoon season they would be damaged from the rain. So, to help stop that happening, we would paint the whole house with proper latex paint, so the house would last four or five years – through the rains – rather than just one. And then over the top of the latex paint, we painted a series of artworks there over six years. One mural we created was to honour two of The Gambia’s leading wrestlers who were from the village. We went down to the beach and photographed them wrestling, and from the photos we created a portrait of them on the side of a local house. It really took me back to the essence of what street art should be. You really got to know the person whose house you were painting - what it meant to the local community.

    Who are your street art heroes? The G.O.A.Ts?

    My current favourite is Sebas Velasco – I just think he's amazing. He's such a skilled painter, who loves going out into different communities and forming bonds with people in random places around the world, then paying tribute to them in his large-scale murals. I think his motives are really pure.

    Another who's an absolute favourite is Aryz – again, you can just tell he's a true creative, and it's coming from somewhere deep within him. When he started, he had this really graffiti-heavy style, but his progression has just been insane. Year-on-year, he produces more cerebral, high-end, beautiful looking things. And you can just tell he's not stuck in that cycle of replicating previous work – he’s evolving. Those are the artists I find the most inspiring.

    Contact