Working under his tag name Stewy, the anonymous street artist started making designs in 2007. His early works were hand cut: he later switched to making predominantly laser-cuts. When selecting subjects, he takes care to contextually link an image to a location – what he calls ‘psychogeography’. Each one takes a week to cut and minutes to spray. Examples include punk poet John Cooper Clarke, Quentin Crisp and Frank Sidebottom in Manchester; Malcolm Maclaren in London; Tracey Emin in Margate; David Hockney in Bradford; and Sylvia Plath in Hebden Bridge. Stewy cites the influence of Blek le Rat, a Paris-based street artist whose work pre-dates that of Banksy. Stewy also teaches in schools, using graffiti to help encourage children to engage with subjects across the curriculum.
