Time is a constant. You can be assured, that no matter what happens within your life, no matter the trials and tribulations, loves and loses, that time will continue to march it’s way across your existence.

I find myself contemplating time as I write this intro. It’s pretty hard to believe that it’s been five years since I last interviewed Heesco – it could have been yesterday. In some ways it feels like I’ve just met him at the Sweet Streets festival,  just posted an interview and just painted our first wall together down in Prahran. But, no, that was five fucking years ago! From a dude I met briefly, then interviewed as a casual acquaintance, it’s been a great few years now of close friendship, and ohhhh shit, the stories (and photos) I could share … okay, maybe not now – when we’re all 80, eh?

Even doing this piece, you’d think it would have been an easy task. After all, it’s exactly because he has become such a good friend that I’ve had to think a bit more about how to write about him this time around – because, along with that friendship, I am, at the core of it, one of his biggest fans.

How to not go overboard when explaining his amazing painting skills? His constant experimenting? His hilarious wit sketched out on spew bags? Well, it’s hard not to. If there’s one thing that time has taught me about Heesco, is that he is that he is, at times, bluntly honest, and this has always been reflected in his personal explorations of his work. Over time I’ve come to appreciate both his amazing skills as an artist, along with his skills at being a real life decent human being.

Looking back, there is a great natural progression in his work, and like his wormhole vortexes of light and shadow, rifts and abstract gates within the work he’s pieces for his new show, Incessant, that blunt honesty always shines through – except now, it’s become more refined and targeted, as if he’s looking for a pinpoint of definition amongst the chaos of it all.

I’ve always thought that a photograph was the best way to stop time, to grab a snapshot of a moment that is fleeting and will never occur again – a great photographer not only captures the image, but also the emotion, all those instances of feeling that go along with this reality that we all share. Yet, over time (yes, I know I know), I’ve come to realise that art itself is also as perfect a method of stopping time as any photograph could be. Not only can a painting capture the same essences as a photographic image, but it can also reveal nuances of a hidden world and subconscious that is exceedingly difficult to portray via film. Photography is probably the closest we will ever get to time travel, but paintings let’ us travel to strange dimensions of consciousness that lay far beyond this realm.

As an artist, Heesco has that inate ability to transport us to these other realms. Some are like our own, and some are the product of those far flung universes within his mind – and all of which are constantly, intriguingly, ever evolving.

It’s been five years since we asked Heesco about these realms here in Invurt, and time has certainly marched on – but one thing is for sure, it will continue to do so, and his work will continue to evolve with it. We’ve coupled this article with a fantastic array of photos from the hands of the talented p1xels , read on and find out what the man has been up to during this time …

On a personal level, what have been some of the fundamental things in your world that have changed in the last few years, and how has this been reflected in the work that you have been doing?

Becoming a dad..? My daughter is soon gonna be 3 now. Having a kid was of course the biggest change in my life. It affected pretty much every single aspect of my life. After past few years I feel like I’m a changed person, I guess everyone who’s had a kid would know this, it’s a weird kind of feeling to go through this much change as a grown up man, you know? It makes you reevaluate a lot of things about your life as you’ve known, and you learn to make decisions better, I think. And of course that comes across in my art today, for sure. It sort of made me narrow down my practice, and focus more on the direction, I think.

When we first spoke, you’d only just started to pick up a spraycan – how has working with aerosol shaped your artistic practice since then?

I’ve learnt a lot since then, and I’m still learning. I feel honoured to have so many friends here who took me in, and taught me a lot, and gave me opportunities to paint this many walls. Using spray cans is second nature to me now, I wanted to learn to paint more instinctively, that only comes through with lots of practice and understanding the process and technique. I use cans a fair bit on my canvas paintings, but only to a certain extent though, I always feel that a studio practice and canvas painting in general, is much different than street works, and I treat them differently. Basically, I want my paintings to be paintings with a spraypaint elements in it, rather than a spray painted paintings on canvas, you know what i mean? There are advantages and disadvantages to the aerosol medium, and I been experimenting with it a lot, working to develop a certain unique style and technique.

Can you tell us a bit about some of the mural projects that you’ve worked on in the past few years? What have been some of the most successful ones, and what have been some of the ones that you walked away from shaking your head?

Some of the walls i’m most proud of are the ones we did around Footscray, the eagle wall with Duke was definitely a big highlight. That wall opened up opportunities for many more walls through the Maribyrning Council, and it also sort of introduced me to the graff scene a bit more, especially out here in the West.

The other important wall was the Franco Cozzo one with Shame, Duke, and Conrad. We self-funded it, used our own paints and had a lot of fun with it. We wanted to create a wall that was important to Footscray and the local community. Shame came up with the whole concept, and I gotta say we’re all pretty happy with the outcome.

Painting in Brooklyn, New York last year with my mate Damien Mitchell was a definite highlight too.

As for not so successful walls, there were a few, I think I’ll elaborate on them a bit more in your next question, haha.

You’ve never steered away from the political side of things, and you’ve courted a bit of controversy since we last spoke as well. From advocacy for Tibet, to idiots getting up in arms and making a fuss over Tony Abbot devil murals, to issues with councils and larger scale commissioned pieces – tell us a bit about some of these things. What do you think you’ve taken away from some of these issues, both creatively and philosophically?

I don’t know, all those political and anti-authoritarian stuff comes from the way I was brought up as a kid, I think. I was taught to speak up when I see something wrong, you know? I never really wanted to be known just for being a “controversial” or “political” artist, man. I never sit and think “who should i criticise next?”. I just follow my instincts and the voice of reason in my head. I wanna be doing whatever that feels right to me as a person and an artist, rather than box myself into anything.

Regarding Tibet issues, I haven’t done any more walls on that subject, because I quickly realised it doesn’t do anything, really, except to serve my ego. My intention was to draw attention to them, and I was pretty blunt about the message, but people don’t really care, most people don’t wanna be confronted with serious issues like that really. They’d rather see a wall with a pretty face and flowers than a burning monk, haha. But on a deeper level I felt as if I’m partially degrading their culture, and their pride, exploiting it and reducing it to a quick poster, or a slogan, an another “street art wall”, you know, when the issue is so deep and complicated and seriously fucked. So now instead, I donate small amount of money to the cause whenever I can. Somehow that feels more honest and more efficient.

As for the Tony Abbott walls, he was an easy target, for sure. I actually was prepared to face much more heat than what I got, which was very few. I’m kinda upset that he got off the hook so easily, he should’ve made to stay longer and held accountable for the things he did. It was messed up that people voted Abbott in, but I think it’s more messed up that the Australian public can end up with a PM they didn’t vote in too. It makes people not care about politics, because who gives a shit who you vote for when they can be thrown out and replaced anyway, you know? Anyway, after doing a bunch of those political walls, I got a bit sick of people keep asking me about politics. I care about politics as much as the next person, but I didn’t want it to be a big part of my art practice, really. If you keep thinking about politics you will drive yourself mad, and it was actually counter-productive for my art. So I decided to do some positive works instead, and the Maribyrnong Council gave me some big opportunities to do that. I painted a bunch of big walls through the StreetWorks program, ran workshops with local kids, put my 2 cents into my local community. I painted a portrait of Malcolm Fraser, and to me that was sort of my way of counter-balancing the Devil-Abbotts, I wanted to celebrate someone who’s made some positive changes while in power too, you know. I’m still very grateful to the City of Maribyrnong Council for all these opportunities, it was great that I was able to contribute.

But, a government is a government, after a while I got tired of having to “please everyone” all the time too, being politically correct all the time. My rebellious side had it, and on the last commissioned mural we did for the Council for the Yarraville Village Store, I added something little that wasn’t in the design we gave them, and they lost their shit. I’m sure your readers will probably have read this story from the media already. The funny thing about this whole “no paid parking” fiasco, is that I wasn’t even trying to be political, you know. I just underestimated the council, and the Yarraville community in general, thinking they’d “get” what I was trying to do and say. I really thought if they just left the wall as it was, with portrait of Nigel, the homeless dude and the “Sensitive Issue” caption, it would’ve just been perfect. It wasn’t offensive anymore, and you’d have this great story to tell your kids, haha.

It’s a real shame they had to go an remove it all. We all put in days of effort and it looked so sick when finished, it was an awesome production wall that I was truly proud to be part of. It had the history and heritage of Yarraville, it had local graffiti legends, and we also put up everyone we could think of who were active writers in our area, and chucked up some real old school writers too, some of them long dead. We were getting a lot of great feedback from the community, and I was thinking ‘this wall will stand for a long time’, but man was I wrong!

I guess what I tried to do was an experiment whether I can get the council to allow artists to have a certain level of “artistic freedom”, but it of course failed. Not sure I’d be hired again by them again any time soon, haha. I wish I was around right after we finished that Village Store mural though, so I could weigh in on the arguments, but I had to go back to Mongolia for a few weeks – I think they thought I ran away because I did wrong, you know?

These last five years have also seen a marked shift in the way that street art and graffiti is both seen, and practiced here in Melbourne – more big murals, artists getting paid for commissions, e government getting onside with it all and some even saying that it has now become a part of the whole gentrification of our cities. What are the positive aspects that reflect these changes, for you, and what are the negative aspects you’ve seen?

Ok, it is great that artists can paint big murals more so these days, and good that councils and businesses are opening their eyes to what we can do, sure. But they’re all looking at it from the commercial side of it, their motifs are always about how they can use this for their own benefit and their own agenda, you know. They keep treating artists like us as an extension of their marketing campaign. And being a “lowly artist” with bills to pay, and family to support, we have to succumb to their needs, and follow orders, in hopes that there will be more jobs on the line.

I’ll have to go back to my argument about artistic freedom here. Usually all those big mural opportunities come with strict guidelines, do’s and don’t’s, it needs to tick all these boxes before it can go ahead, and often this process drains out all of the creative energy out of the initial enthusiasm and creativity from the artists. I tried working it from within, I’ve put forward so many ideas on initial stages, only to end up cut right down to whatever they think is gonna work the best, which is how you end up with those bland generic shit. It is always a matter of who’s calling the shots, and if that person has no artistic vision and sensibilities, which is often the case really, you don’t get to go too far as far as creativity is concerned. But public art is tricky like that though. It is “public”, so it has to please everyone, but it should be “art” too, and be a little crazy too. It’s just some paint on a wall, so if it doesn’t work out, just buff it, they do it all the time anyway.

The way things are going these days, not sure you can stop this ‘gentrifying’ process, because people love following trends like a herd. But that’s why you have illegal graffiti, the nice counter balance, haha. That’s the main thing, in my opinion, that people don’t know the history and culture of graffiti, it’s the people who see a big street art mural and like it, and want to commission more of it, without really understanding the culture it comes from, they treat it like it’s a fashion thing, just a pretty image they wanna look at, you know. I painted a commission for an ice bar venue in Fitzroy recently, and they had worked out the image they wanted me to paint already, and the image itself was cool enough, but I could see that it won’t work as a mural as it was, so i tried to get them to change it to incorporate some graffiti elements into the design, but they won’t budge, because, like i said, they don’t understand the culture, they just want a pretty image, a big ad for their business. After trying a bit I gave up, and just painted whatever they wanted and walked away.

It’s all thrashed now, and I knew that would happen, but I don’t care, I thought “let them learn a lesson”. I actually did catch a dude tagging the wall while I was still painting it, and chased him away, but I was more upset that he’d slash my wall while I was till painting it, rather than let me finish it first so I can get my flick haha.

Your work still holds that edge and macabre undertones, but in what other directions has it moved into? Speaking of which, you have been pushing a lot of abstract themes in your work recently, this was always a part of what you did, but it feels as if, especially on your canvas work, has taken the lead in your personal output (away from commission work). You’ve mentioned that the fascination you once had with technique in your work has been overtaken by the creative side of things, is this one of the reasons why you’ve found so much fascination in the abstract realm?

I paint full time, always wanted to be a full time artist, work for myself and live off my art, and it feels great. But it also means I have to do a lot of commissions to support my family and art practice. And I used to have big issues with commercial work, you know, I used to feel dirty, like you’re being used, like a painting monkey, like I’m selling my soul etc etc. I guess I was young and naive, still very romantic about my art. But then I told myself if I wanna become a “professional artist” I should be able to paint anything, and that shifted my attitude a lot, and made me see things from the other side.

Each commission work is different, and it’s mostly stuff I would never ever think of painting at all (like once I was commissioned to paint Dame Edna riding the Black Caviar horse inside someone’s house, haha. I did it, and walked away having learned how to paint a realistic horse and Dame Edna too, haha). I realised that I’m actually being paid to experiment, challenge myself and learn shit, so since then I had no issues with commission work, it became actually a lot of fun. And I was doing a lot of portraits and figurative stuff mostly, so I guess I got a bit tired of doing that all the time, and that’s when my personal stuff got more abstract. It felt really refreshing just to play with colours and shapes and experiment, and not worry about trying to make it look realistic, but just go with the flow and render and add or take out bits until the painting becomes “something”.

I got more interested in the process itself of painting, mixing and experimenting with colours and shapes, without any rules or guidelines, you know?

So, this upcoming show is called Incessant, which is a pretty apt description of the way in which you view art- and you have some pretty interesting things to say in the description that you wrote about the show, and that painting should be a personal experience – how has the work for this show been influenced by that personal experience?

“Incessant” refers to that constant urge to draw, paint, and create. It’s a pretty straight forward painting show. I’ve been enjoying experimenting with the subject matters and different techniques in my recent paintings, and the results came out pretty interesting. I wanted to create paintings that should trigger something in the viewer, make it suggest a shape or a scene, or a certain atmosphere, without actually being anything. So basically all the works are open for interpretation by the viewer, and having it open like this allows me to be more creative with the paintings, and allows the viewer to develop a certain personal relationship with each work, and assigns meaning to them based on their own emotional response to the works, rather than me dictating what it is and isn’t.

In overall though, it is about finding a right balance between colours, shapes and forms. All of the paintings start off with a smudge, a brush stroke, a big mess really, and then I begin to play with it till it starts taking a shape into something, and after a certain point it becomes a ‘thing’ of its own, and all I need to do then is just to follow the process through. It’s quite an organic process, and I really enjoy painting this way. Each step of the way it is about evaluating the balance, between figurative forms and abstraction, between colours and tones, brushstrokes and spraypaints, sharp or soft focused details etc. I’m aiming these paintings to sit in this in-between area, between high and low art, I want it to have elements from as many different influences and sources as possible. There’s a lot of influences from surrealism and gestural abstraction to graffiti and sci-fi illustration, without necessarily being neither of those things.

Just following on from that, how to do mitigate the pitfalls of the personal experience of painting for yourself, with the professional side of producing so much commissioned work?

Doing a lot of commission work really made me miss the creative, spontaneous side of painting. Commercial work is all about producing concepts that meet someone else’s expectations and what they want. It’s usually a long process from concept development to the finished result, a really different creative dynamic than painting for yourself in the studio, you know. The commercial works really helped me improve on my technique, and dealing with people on professional business level, and my personal works are the counter balance to that I guess, where there is no brief to follow, all you need to do is just sit down and paint and lose yourself in it, you know. And I honestly don’t think I would’ve been painting on this level if I hadn’t done a lot of commissioned jobs. It creates this sense of urgency, a guilt even, to be more creative and productive in the studio, and push myself as an artist.

So, looking to the next five years, what do you think we’ll be talking about in 2020? What roads do you want to travel down, both professionally and personally?

I really don’t know, man. I just wanna keep painting and go wherever it takes me. I’ve got a nice balance of business and creativity going on so want to keep that up and work towards becoming even more independent, so I can keep doing what I love.