A Loose Lamb In A Jungle

Brainwavecult

Atelier Castellone. Italy.

Born in Germany and carried across the world at the age of three, I grew up in Australia — in Cabramatta, one of Sydney’s most multicultural places. It was there, at Cabramatta High School, that my artistic life truly began.

I met my mentor, the Arabic art teacher Mr. Yousef, who recognised something in me before I fully recognised it myself. He encouraged me to pursue formal artistic training, which led me to the College of Fine Arts. I eventually dropped out — a decision that, in retrospect, was probably the beginning of my real education.

I left Australia behind and headed for London.

In the feverish world of Camden Market, I worked as a designer and stylist, immersed in its collision of fashion, music, street culture, outsiders and beautiful misfits. It was an experience that profoundly shaped my visual language and my fascination with style, subculture and the strange poetry of people who refuse to fit neatly into the world around them.

From London I moved to Hamburg, where my work expanded into interior decoration, jewellery and fashion. In 1992, I opened my own boutique, The Cult Fashion Shop — Lucky Lucy, and entered a world that would occupy me for more than two decades.

Fashion became my playground. Design became my language.

For over 20 years I worked across fashion, styling and design, building worlds rather than simply dressing people or decorating spaces. But eventually I wanted something else — something deeper, stranger and entirely my own.

So I closed the shops, abandoned the fashion world and left.

I moved to Napoli, Italy, to devote myself completely to painting and art.

Today I live in Castellone, Formia, surrounded by the mountains of southern Italy, continuing a journey that began in a multicultural schoolyard in Australia and passed through the underground worlds of London and Hamburg.