About
Brian Tait’s roots are simple: skateboarding, sign painting , drawing, painting, punk rock, hip-hop, graffiti. He grew up immersed in Florida’s late 80′s & 90’s scenes, making ‘zines, playing music, traveling for skate contests and building ramps with his friends in every place they could find. Late nights of snaking wood and nails and mornings of cutting transitions were among his first forays into alternative DIY creativity. An adrenaline junkie from the word go, he just wanted to move fast, whether on board, with brush, or spraycan. Skateboarding and art became addictions, and soon everything else fell victim. Stemming from the graffiti influence he thoughtfully went into sign painting, which would set the tone for the next 15 years.
His philosophy: do something different, stretch the boundaries, make a statement. Tait’s work is all by-products of the prevalent punk attitude and the observations he’s made of the world around him. Tait’s obsession with traditional techniques mixed with his love of mechanical production, architecture, art nouveau, and his ongoing exploration, has produced a wide range of tangents including graffiti, sculpture, furniture, and folk influenced work. He works in sizes ranging from 4”x 6” to 140’x44’ and paints on anything from found doors and tabletops to electrical boxes on the street to skateboard decks to canvas and paper. Tait prefers mixed media, “anything fast, glue, gel mediums, tape, acrylic, aerosol enamels, pen and ink, anything loose and fast.
What do you think of Banksy’s work? Are you influenced by it?
I think banksy’s smart and funny. I would say i’m influenced in some part by everything i see. As far as work, not really. Its not that his style is realistically new, it’s more about getting up & concept. The one thing that really influenced me from him, was putting pieces up in the museum. That was huge!
The film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, a very perceptive examination of hype in the art world–of which I don’t think Bansky was guilty–turned me on to his work.4