Just another wall for his art

Guo Zhigang creates what he calls "hip-pop" indoor graffiti for businesses and homes in town. Provided to China Daily

From 'street artist' to indoor graffiti designer for local business venues, Guo Zhigang tells METRO reporter Todd Balazovic of his passion for paintings

When Guo Zhigang looks at a wall he sees more than just a barrier. He sees a blank canvas, ripe for his artist's touch.

"Whenever I see a wall that is blank, I want to put something on it," he said.

Ten years ago Guo was a simple "street artist" spray-painting images on the walls of businesses and homes. Then the Wuhan native turned his pastime into paychecks, by providing the gift of indoor graffiti.

The 35-year-old has spent the last five years working as a freelance artist, producing customized murals, graffiti and paintings, anything wall-related, for homes and businesses.

Displaying a ragtag mix of ripped jeans, trucker hat, and dyed blonde, red and blue hair, Guo still maintains his image as a street graffiti artist, but ask him about his work and he reveals an easy-going, intelligent attitude that belies the image.

Guo's most recent project, an entire wall of Niu Da Wan, a noodle restaurant in the Chaoyang district, is a mishmash collage of imagery with paintings ranging from a Na'vi, the blue alien creatures from James Cameron's film Avatar, sporting a sheepish grin while milking a cow, to the intricately detailed face of Nelson Mandela. His overall theme was the 2010 South Africa World Cup.

The piece took him more than two months to complete. He spent four or five hours at a time painting the scenes.

"The owner is a huge football fan so I thought I would help him celebrate the games this year," he said, noting that because the owner was his friend he gave him a discount.

In addition to the football theme, Guo collected random ideas from the people around him, including a football-kicking panda, which he mischievously said looks exactly like one of his friends.

At price of 1,500 yuan per sq m, most of Guo's work ends up on the walls of businesses rather than homes. But as a budding entrepreneur, he said he has been making a push to paint more private residences.

"Though very few people want to pay that price for their personal walls, I have had a growing number of people interested," he said.

One of Guo's more famous works is mural of a large sunset painted in the Memorial Museum of Chinese People's Anti-Japanese War in Beijing.

Guo began painting walls as a youngster, when as a kindergartner he would take pens to the wall of his Wuhan home.

"One day my parents returned to find that I had drawn on an entire wall of the house. Instead of getting mad like most parents, they saw that I had talent and praised me," he said.

Seeing his inherent abilities, Guo said his father immediately went out and bought him paper and pens to draw with, saving his parents the effort of having to clean the walls again.

In middle school Guo said he would sit in class and draw monsters in his textbook rather than paying attention to what his teacher was saying.

"All throughout primary school and middle school I was obsessed with being an artist," he said.

But as Guo grew older and harnessed his skills, he was still urged by his parents to pursue a more "practical" education and, after graduating high school, enrolled in a degree program in Hotel Service at Hubei University. But one year after university he decided the business world was not for him.

"I just couldn't do it. I didn't like the work at all," he said.

So he quit his job and began working for a local club working the lights and painting the walls. It wasn't until 2007 that Guo moved to Beijing.

However, he said he didn't come to the capital in pursuit of becoming a famous painter. He actually he avoids the art community in Beijing. Instead he came to pursue his bigger dream of becoming a rock drummer.

"While I don't play in a band right now, I haven't given up music," he said.

He also made clear that he has no intention of giving up painting on walls. "I will continue spreading my art on the streets and walls of Beijing," he said.