There’s already a beer in my hand by the time I catch sight of him – it’s Friday afternoon and the bar I’m in, e55, is near-full, and the crowd is drinking their shit away in preparation of the night to come. He’s sitting down in the back corner, and I notice that he already has a jug in front of him, notebook out, writing away – plotting and listing whatever number of things an artist needs to get done in the week before their second solo exhibition.

I first met Simz through mutual Perth crew when I moved to Melbourne two years ago, and, at the time, he had just begun to get back into the graff game after an artistic hiatus. Having relocated to Melbourne a few years before, Simz spent much of that time overcoming the meagre social network that artists often find themselves in when they uproot and wander into a new urban setting.

“It was pretty shit man,” he recalls, pouring himself a fresh glass. “I didn’t know anyone and the people I knew weren’t really into art, so its sort of only been through doing it that you meet people – and you don’t meet people doing graff, its only through doing commission walls and going to galleries or whatever that I’ve met people. That’s pretty much the only way you meet people in the scene – with graff, you don’t see anyone else out painting when you’re painting.

“Well,” he laughs, “you hope you don’t see anyone anyways!”

With a basis in self taught techniques rather than having any formal form of artistic education, Simz eschewed the rigidity of school from an early age, not through lack of understanding, but, like many others, he found himself less than impressed by the rigidity of structure that it attempted to impose upon him, and his already growing creativity.

“You know, I never really saw it as art back then,” he remarks, citing past classroom hours spent scribbling in notepads. “I saw just it as a distraction. Some dude standing there trying to teach you this stuff about a boring topic that you don’t want to know about, that you cant apply to real life anyways, so you kind of draw and create stories and whatever, little pictures with some crazy shit going on to keep it more interesting. I almost failed art in high school – I got a D, I didn’t know what the fuck they wanted me to do, so I just did my own thing, and that wasn’t really what they were after. They wanted artwork that had a direct meaning ‘oh this is a picture about oppression of youth in todays society’ … but I just wanted to do a pretty picture – I wanted to make something that looked cool.”

From those early years scribbling through classes, to his time bombing in Perth and his mind-gathering hiatus in the subsequent move to Melbourne, the past two years has seen Simz focus on his work with single minded dedication. Applying such a wilfulness to succeed with a rigorous vitality, and with a framework of skills already embedded, Simz has thrown himself back into the fray, mindful that the impact of his work is mostly up to the observers interpretation.

“The purpose of my art isn’t specific,” he explains. “I’m really just painting what looks good to me, and what I think would be entertaining for other people to look at. There are meanings there, but I don’t want to sound like a wanker and go into them too much. I’d rather people went in and found them for themselves – if they find anything. Its not like there’s a meaning behind every single individual piece, its a general gist, so there’s all these machines blah blah, this ones kinda dark, this ones kinda light, you know?”

As far as the groundwork behind his compositions goes, Simz takes this theory of observational impact and runs with it. Utilising a direct and honest approach, he often lays down paint in a process of semi-automatism, a technique that allows a degree of surprise to inhabit an artist for the duration they are painting, as well as the finished product.

“Mostly, I come up with the ideas as I’m painting them,” he further defines, and, catching himself, he adds “Well, for a commission wall, I do try and plan it, just a little bit, but the vast majority of the work that I do is just freestyle. I pick a couple of colours, and just snap it out whilst trying to make it work on the wall or on the canvas. You get a sense of freedom like that, and it’s a lot more fun.”

It’s this sense of fun that also grabs your attention when you’re viewing Simz pieces, be they on canvas, or a public wall, which can possibly be traced back to the direct influences and imprints within their formulations. With a noticeable amount of artistic whimsy, even in the darkest of his expositions, Simz has long been a fan of the future, and it is within visual science fiction media, more often than not, that he often finds his prevailing muse.

“I really believe we’re approaching the cyberpunk age,” he states with the grinning tone of a man who has thought the words in his mind a hundred times or more. “Hopefully, sometime soon, I’ll own a hover-car and cyber-brain and all that shit. I’m hanging out for my cyborg implants and memory backups and stuff. I love my Manga, cyberpunk stuff – but I don’t really read that many books, so I don’t get the full effect of the whole sci-fi movement – its mostly all the animated stuff that I draw on, I totally love it.”

Influences are influences, and they are only as effective as the artist that wields them, so when it comes to his own work, it is apparent from the contentment in his voice as he talks that he believes he has taken those various predispositions and brandished them as effectively as possible, even if he feels he is still somewhat at the beginning of his journey.

“I’m pretty happy with the work I’m doing at the moment,” he explains. “I don’t do a lot of acrylic stuff anymore, I pretty much do purely aerosol, but I have a long way to go on that. I don’t ever really have the feeling that I need to move away from it as a medium of it as I’m always learning new shit every day.

There’s a million artists out there, that, I believe, in my head, have better technique,” he continues humbly, “and that’s why I don’t ever get bored of it, as I’m always trying to push towards that level, or higher. I think, hopefully, that I’ll be where I want to be with my art in about five years.”

As optimistic and solidly grounded as he is with his aims for the future, Simz also seems reflective of the lessons and directions he has learnt in propagating his previous artwork, and, looking back on his first solo endeavour, he acknowledges the differences on both direction and organisation of his upcoming show.

“It was pretty good,” he smiling responds, “but to tell you the truth, I wasn’t a hundred percent on the works that I put out there. I was just trying something different, it was a different technique and it was mostly markers. I sold a couple pieces, so people did like it, but this next one is going to be almost the complete opposite. It’ll be a lot less refined. Bigger. More colourful, more shading, a bit prettier to look at.”

“There are a few hate pieces in there as well, a couple of burning cop cars,” he laughingly adds, “much of the same sort of ideas, but jut more substance and feeling. The last one was a bit too clean and a bit sterile; this one is raw and dirty.”

Straight down the line, his aim of having his art viewed by more people is simplistic, yet sophisticated, and as the interview winds down, I get the sense that his motivations revolve purely around the acquisition of knowledge, rather than the acquisition of fame that, secretly, motivates a large majority of artists, graffiti or otherwise.

“I want people to take the piss out of me, and critique their heart out,” he enthuses. “I want them to get drunk, get a little bit loose, and then tell me what they really fucking think – do they like it, or do they hate it? Is something good, or bad? What needs improvement? I want to employ everyone as harsh critics. I want people to tear it apart – but they have to be drunk!”

Somewhat ironically, I’m suddenly staring at my empty glass, sitting besides an empty jug, and I think over the conversation before asking Simz the question that has been in the back of my mind throughout the conversation – in this day and age, what makes a good graffiti artist, and what does he think that he, and others, can do to take it to the next stage?

“I think you just have be across all levels,” he concludes, reclining back as he finishes his beer, taking in the hum of the bar around him.

“There’s a lot of good art out there, but I think when I get there, I’d like it to be better that what’s out there at the moment. I think I have bigger ideas than that. I’m not dissing all those crews at all, because they’re fucking good at what they do, there’s a lot of skill. In my opinion though, there’s not much in the way of pure originality. Everyone has their style, but the boundaries are not being pushed as much as they should be. I see a lot of the same shit, which is all good, because it’s real clean and refined, but I don’t think there’s anyone that’s really, really pushing hard. The quality is there, but I think that everyone needs to think a little bit bigger, and more creatively.

“I could just throw my name up a million times in the city, but that’s not going to get me remembered on a world scale or anything like that. You have to be doing the bombing, the illegal stuff. You have to take your time to do the legal shit, the pristine, really refined work, and you have to be drawing all the time. You also have to try and do canvases to push into other markets – I don’t really like corporate types – but those people in the corporate sector, well, they wont employ you to do a mural in their house, but they might buy a canvas that will look good on their wall, you know?

“I just think,” he says, smiling, nonchalantly pulling out his notebook again, “that a good artist is someone who’s trying to explore all the different routes in front of them.”

For more information on Simz Mecha Graffical solo exhibition, check the Facebook event page, of the At Large Gallery website.