Featured Artist: Chris Wahl
Being a freelance artist can be pretty tough. You might find yourself struggling to stay motivated one minute and swamped with work the next. You do, however, get to plot your own course and it is in light of this that language like ‘self-taught’, ’autonomous’ and ‘self-reliant’ tends to come up in the freelancers’ resumes.
Chris Wahl grabbed hold of the rudder a short time after high school when, after a brief stint in retail (yes, an oft-told story) he had the opportunity of a six-month apprenticeship with Walt Disney TV Animation Australia. Incidentally, this wasn’t Chris’s first choice: He was originally aiming to become a newspaper caricaturist, but the merging of newspapers in Australia at the time meant fewer opportunities. Amazing how the winds of change can push you to unexpectedly wonderful shores.
Chris hails from Leonay, at the foot of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. From this fabulous location, he produces these amazing works, some witty, others serious and a few that are undeniably dark, but always with a sense of fun. Chris uses a balance of traditional media and digital to produce his work, and likes to blur the lines between, to ‘leave people not sure where the hand drawn ends and the digital begins… to have it blend in seamlessly’. Fair to say this objective is well and truly achieved.
Chris’s work can be found in all parts of the globe, having been sold at Disneyland, appeared at Art Expo New York and more. And if you’re a fan of Warner Brothers’ The Big Bang Theory and think you’ve seen his work in Leonard’s bedroom, you’d be exactly right. The wind is looking to fill the sails of the prolific artist in 2013 as well, with lots of new projects on the horizon.
See Chris Wahl’s full portfolio here
