Steve Harradine

Born Jan 8th '75 in Hereford, England, brought up in nearby Ross-on-Wye by parents Phyllis and Terry.

My earliest fanaticisms centred around Spiderman comics, TV, Finger Painting, being the Enfant terrible at playschool, Ready Brek and my Dad's record collection.

Black Sabbath, The Who, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, as well as the sleeve artwork of the aforementioned and others, were an obvious, major influence/stimulus that fed food for thought to a young, free, enquiring, and visual imagination.

Several years of experiencing an authoritarian schooling system replete with the obligatory pressures and the resulting confusion of adolescent insecurity, sadly dampened a once vigorously ambitious soul and left it searching again for something that had been lost or forgotten over a longer, less emotionally optimistic period of time...

So an important event in my artistic and even spiritual reconstruction took place during a school trip to Spain and the Salvador Dali museum in Figeuras...the work struck many chords because to me it was proof that there are no rules and that anything is possible. Dali was painting my strange indescribable dreams and it had never occurred to me to do that before.

My inner child had been stirred but I was still thinking like a problematic 15 year old who didn't believe in much artistic ability; so it wasn't until a full seven years later (including two at the Cleveland
College of Art and Design, Middlesbrough) that I finally found the confidence to apply these possibilities to myself, and to understand how my struggle to find a style and the confidence to do it was a limitation I'd been placing on myself for far too long. It was, to me, the most important lesson I could ever learn as an artist.

My final year at CCAD required a dissertation on a subject of my own choosing. I researched the Psychedelic poster and came to the conclusion that this form of art was what I wanted to do and how I should let my style evolve; I allowed myself to unlock my imaginary door and do what I wanted to do, instead of trying to please my imaginary audience who wanted something (and probably even someone) else. I made me my audience - and was happy to do so...

I could now portray in my posters, the "musical imagery" conjured through listening, as an accumulative image based on such things as instinct, logic, balance, feeling, nature, and the ether… some aspects of course more tangible than others.

On leaving college I produced a Nick Drake piece, several more followed including collaborations with Bob Masse (and more recently Scotty C) as well as commissions for Frankie Miller (Tribute poster)
Damo Suzuki (CD artwork) and David Bowie (apparel).

I also have work published in the Electric Frankenstein Poster Art Book, the Art of Modern Rock, The forthcoming Fistful of Rock, and have had work exhibited in the USA, Brazil, and the UK, including a large digital mosaic piece (entitled Everything She Needs) at the Vivienne Westwood Opus (Active resistance to Propaganda) in Birmingham, March 2008.

Steve Harradine. Feb 09.