It was almost dark by the time I found the number, the only indication of any type of habitation was in the form of a non-decrepit steel door all stickered, tagged and signed with various recognisable marks – names, logos,characters, and, of course, the stylised, almost runic arrangements of TwoOnes familiar font.

I’d pre-warned him that I was on my way back from work – suited up and laptop slung across my shoulder – feeling ever slightly self conscious as he welcomed me into his studio home – but that lasted maybe a minute, because as I soon found out, he was pretty hard being anything but comfortable around. Showing me his space, enthusiastic and welcoming, we’d stepped upwards of the ladder, beers in hand, and I’d looked around – bookcases, art, bits and pieces of work and equipment across the desk, all the trappings of an artist most oft at repose surrounded by miscellanea of his trade. Taking it in, my eyes had stuck on that which that drew most of my attention – a large map of the world hanging front and centre.

I’d just cracked the Coopers and was fucking around with the recording app on my iPhone, still glancing now and then at the map, when he noticed that I’d subconsciously been zooming in on where Japan was –

“I’m from Yokohama,” he said, grinning and pointing, “this one here.”

Cool. That’s pretty much what I came to realise in the course of our conversation – TwoOnes just a cool dude. Having already had a marked success in Australian art circles, arriving in the country at the early age of only eighteen, and having also recently been featured in the wonderfully devised Street|Studio book, and having partaken in and several group and solo exhibitions, his work, both inside galleries, as well as out on the street and between the pages, has resonated with many.

In some ways the epitome of the modern artist, the path that took TwoOne from his native Japan to his art-cluttered studio is soothingly familiar, and yet at once unique.

“I had too much I wanted to do,” he said as he sat down, immediately going back to the piece he’d been working on whilst waiting for me to arrive. “I didn’t want to go to Uni, because some people go to Uni in Japan as some kind of extension of high school, and I really hated that idea.”

He leaned back, took a drink of his beer, and continued – “So I just had too much i wanted to do. I couldn’t chose – I was stuck. At the the time though, I was was skating heaps, and there was this one guy that I was skating with all the time – he’s about five years older than me – he came to Australia and when he came back he told me how he really loved it, and told all of us his stories – then and one day I saw him talking English to some people from down there and I thought “That’s cool, maybe Ill go to Australia and skate.”

As someone who couldn’t, at first, speak many words of English beyond “how are you?”, it is a testament to the welcoming nature of both Australian culture and the artists here in Melbourne that he very quickly found his feet, and began to meet like minded individuals who shared his, at that time, latent talents –  but it also speaks volumes of his affable nature, a nature which translated easily into the creative direction he found himself pursuing.

“I stayed for about ten months at first, as an English student,” he reminisces.  “I was skating heaps and meeting a few people – when you’re skating, you don’t need to talk, and you still make friends. They took me to lots of bars, and events and stuff, and I saw that there was a lot happening here. One day, one of those friends gave me a marker … I’d always loved to draw – and i was interested in graffiti. I did a tiny tiny bit when I was in high school, the cheap can, don’t know the caps, and all the shit pieces .. but when I got that marker, I started to do a few characters around the city, and I started to met lots of people while I was working at St Jeromes.”

Before long, Twoone had found himself in the thick of it, working on various walls around the city, and sharing his ideas and visions with those he met along the way – at the same time, he began soaking up all that he was surrounded with, channeling it back into his own form and style. By the time it came to the point where he was ready to show his work to a wider audience, he was at only slightly surprised to find that he had garnered an audience who appreciated his works.

“My first show was at St Jeromes, with Monkey, and it was the first time I had a show in which I was selling my artwork – and it actually sold. I was surprised, but I was more, just happy? The way it all happened was really organic.”

From his skating roots, through to his time working on street art, Twoones work evolved both swiftly and confidently. Taking those aspects of his previous experience and melding them with an almost folk-driven aesthetic, he has, over time, produced unique pieces that are recognisable. In any work, however, there is always a germ of inspiration, and for Twoone, this inspiration is currently looking outwards, rather than inwards.

“I guess I get my ideas the same way other do,” he explained. ” I get some stuff from the street, some stuff from my imagination, some from my dreams .. but lately I’ve been thinking that I want to connect a bit more to the world. Before, I was drawing a lot of mystical stories and dreams, but the more I did it, the more I felt like I wanted to connect more with the real world.”

In pursing these connections with a verisimilitudinous world, TwoOne has found himself moving outwards from traditional forms of street art based work, and has, for some time now, embraced various different forms of art outside of a more “painterly” orientation. His exploration of different media seems a natural extension of his painting, and by delving into more tactile work, he has found a note of expansive pleasure in doing so.

“I do everything I can,” he elucidates. ” Painting, sculptures  – I love it. I really wanted to do something 3d, because I used to do a few things with clay here and there – and I wanted to use some wood, so started working with it. I don’t like limiting myself, and if I have an idea in my head then I think i should just do it.”

His gradual move into a more textural world has also had a blow-back effect on his more two dimensional works, as is evident in his print making. As we talked, he casually cut away at a piece of lino, sculpting his ideas into the soft medium without skipping a beat as he talked – a sign of manifested amenity with his work.

“I had a solo show that featured just lino cuts back in February,” he remarked as he wiped away fragmented strands from the print, “I started working on that show mid-last year, so I guess I’ve been working with it for about eight months. I think I’m getting better, I know how much pressure I need to use now, and I don’t need to dig deep like I used to do, and I work a lot faster without going so deep into the lino.”

His resonance with closer-to-tactile mediums has also brought TwoOne into the circles  of other street artists who have transitioned to different mediums, and it is with his upcoming show with the Wooden Foundation crew that shows that he is not alone in wanting to further expand his mode of expression. Collaborating and building upon their various influences, from working with recycled objects and various other collected artifacts, the boys from Wooden Foundations are taking the culmination of their various experimental mediums into new areas, with predictably impressive results.

“Wooden Foundation is Nails, Bonsai, Oh5 and me,” he explained, further expounding upon how he came to be involved with the show. “Bonsais is one of the guys I’ve been working with for a while, he taught me a lot. We’re just really like minded people, and we’ve always wanted to do something together, so thought we thought, why not?”

Of course, a productive artist can never be content with only one or two shows a year, and it is thus that TwoOne has several other shows already planned for the remainder of the year. Along with showing pieces at Gorker Galleries second birthday show, Forty Thieves, opening on the same night as Wooden Foundations, he is also traversing to interstate surrounds for the next installation of Go Font Yourself, after a “duo” show that he will be involved with here in Melbourne.

“They were kind enough to fly my up to Sydney for that show,” he remarked. “So I’ll be up there in August. I have a few pieces, a few colour prints, and some live painting like I did at Gorker Gallery back in February – they’ll set up a space and I’ll paint while I’m there.”

“I was never really into the live stuff,” he ruminated thoughtfully. “I guess though, that now that I’m opening up my art to more to people – that if they like my stuff, then they might want to see how I make it. It’s great, because you get a direct reaction from them – and some people think up some pretty funny questions! You’ll notice how I have a lot of circles in my prints, and my latest work, and people always want to know what the circle means.”

“I mean, a circle is a circle!” he laughed, honestly. “Sometime, I do have a meaning, but when I’m drawing its like … this is the sun, this is the moon, this is a heart, this is a number three .. and I guess I like circles, because they are such simple things – they can be anything. I like it that people actually think about these things though.”

The things that drive an artist to do what they do, are multiple, and often ephemeral. There is no one reason that a person takes up both the joy and curse of artistic expression, and yet it is often by casting light on these reasons that we get glimpses of something larger. The driving motivation in most case is for self expression and self awareness, and yet,  artists who hone their craft eventually butt up against the economic realities of their profession, and TwoOne is no exception – yet it is his humility that guides him, rather than the prospect of fame and gain.

“I am doing this for myself, and i want to do it forever,” he smiled. “but when you think about it – well, I have to eat too, and pay rent. The best way to do that is to go and work in some kind of job somewhere, but when you start doing that, most of the time in your day is spent in a corporation that you don’t even love. When you get home you’re tired and fuck, you want to draw or paint but you don’t have the energy. So for that reason, I don’t see whats wrong with selling artwork.”

“I wake up at 8am, go to bed around 2,” he remarked, “and I work all the way through.When you’re doing that, you’re wondering -how do i make money? I have a lot of stuff here, and it starts taking over my studio, so I should sell some. Maybe its good enough, and someone will pay something for the work, and then they can take it, and I can eat. Thats one of the reasons I like sharing my work”

We talked on a number of things whilst I was visiting that night, and by the end of it, Twoone still struck me as a cool guy – but, more than that, I saw him as a humble soul – an artist who is as at ease with with his work, as he is with himself. With a simple, down to earth confidence, TwoOne conveyed himself in such way that his mild mannerisms belied a more than tangible, and simmering, passion for what he loves most.

Afterwards, I walked back out into the darkened evening, trench coat firmly wrapped to stave off the encroaching cold, and I reflected on a handful of words that has since come to succinctly describe my impressions of both his work, and his persona.

“I think if life is like pencil,” he’d stated, as our discussion had meandered away from the topic at hand.

“When you’re young the pencil is still long, and you can scribble a lot … but when you’re older, the pencil’s much smaller, and its harder to draw with, so you have to be just that little bit smarter when you’re using it. So when you’re young, you can do whatever, whenever, however  – and some awesome things come up.

At the same time, though, you can still draw with even just a tiny bit of pencil, even at the very top. You just have to really, really concentrate – even holding it is hard – but you can still do it.”

TwoOne has work in this weeks Wooden Foundations and Forty Thieves exhibitions. Check out both his website and blog, as well as the Wooden Foundations blog for his, Nails, Bonsai and Oh5’s collaborative efforts.