Meet your artist
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Your Artist.
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Steve Porter lives in rural Wiltshire
with his wife and children.
He might look like a gargoyle
that's been chiseled off a church,
but he does his best.
Here is a picture...
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Before all this,
before the clocks went to work on him,
he went to Southampton for a few years
and was given a certificate.
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Here he is putting up
his degree show in 1995.
The masterpiece is over to the left,
just out of shot...
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Before all that,
he was a boy who played
with paints and things.
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Here he is in 1973-ish.
Nothing appears to have changed,
except that he usually holds a brush
with one hand these days.
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His Work
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For about 20 years
Steve has made large-scale
collaborative murals and sculptures
for community spaces
around the UK,
often working in schools
with groups of children...
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He has participated in exhibitions,
undertaken traditional commissions,
illustrated books
and curated a successful gallery.
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His current painting "style"
employs a stark monochrome aesthetic
as a vehicle for exploring abstract ideas.
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He draws in nature, whenever he can.
Trees, seas, clouds, landscapes.
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The Signed99 backstory
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In the July of 1991,
Steve went on a summer road-trip
to Brighton,
on the UK's south coast
with his cousin,
travelling in style by
mud-brown Ford Fiesta.
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On the ancient pier
that climbs out from
Brighton beach
there was an arcade
and in the arcade
there was a machine...
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A machine which promised
to read your character
from your signature...
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The machine accurately described
Steve's character.
Even the dodgy bits.
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The idea of using
signatures as portraits
stuck around until 2018,
when Steve decided to
paint his own name.
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It felt hilariously powerful
to see his signature shown
on such a triumphant scale..
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After a couple of years,
Steve began to wonder
whether other people might enjoy
having their signatures made,
as a way of commissioning a portrait.
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And so Signed99 was born.
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