Mickey Hands Up # 1

An interest in vintage animation, comics and illustration led Richard Levine to a career in motion graphics. During his time studying at the Chelsea College of Arts, he veered away from print design and chose to base his final-year project on a clay sculpture.

Hovering between representation and abstraction, his colourful atworks explore the structure of iconic imagery by playing with colour and geometric shapes. One of the nation’s favourite symbols – the humble pooch- has been transformed into something which is both recognisable and unrecognisable all at once.

By playing with geometric shapes and blocks of colour, the East Sussex-based artist exposes the details of the pattern while allowing his audience to appreciate the overall form. This is created by rendering an image into a 3D form and wrapping it with a texture or pattern before running it through several transitions.

“My work is experimental and playful and is not constrained by a single discipline. This creates a feeling of kinetic energy, depth and movement.”