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The New York-born artist is distributing around two dozen of his postcard-sized artworks around the city over the coming weeks in the latest chapter of a project that aims to reflect the destruction caused by conflict and its impact on human lives.
However, what started as an art installation has since evolved into statement on the challenges faced by modern artists as they strive to share their original work and find galleries bold enough to take them on.
He originally painted images of people embracing and kissing on demolition site rubble reminiscent of the debris from bombed buildings in Ukraine and Gaza.
To illustrate the devastation of war, he also painted contrasting scenes showing them in stages of distress, screaming or crying.
Intended to be shown as a powerful installation that from a distance would look like rubble but closer up would reveal its illustrations, he found the galleries in Barcelona, where he now lives, were reluctant to take it on.
After months of rejection, he opted to take his work to the streets, and placed dozens of the hand-painted pieces around the city for local people to find.
As the project evolved, he created lighter, plasterboard versions on material salvaged from construction sites, which he carried in a suitcase to New York to leave in spots around the city.
Now in Glasgow for a family event, he is distributing around two dozen of the pieces here too.
Each small artwork has a QR code on the back to take finders to his Instagram page, where they’re encouraged to share photographs of them and spark discussion.
There are no maps or clues as to where his pieces might crop up, however, he says they rarely wait too long before someone finds them and takes them away.
“I find a place to leave them, take a photograph so I have a record of it and walk away,” he says.
“I try to place them in places where nothing else is around, and where there’s no other street art, or adverts.
“I often put a few on ledges of buildings at eye level and sometimes I wait for a bit and see people looking at it but walking by, or maybe not even seeing it because they’re looking at their phone.
“But it doesn’t usually take long for someone to pick it up.”
Although the small pieces might look like a simple illustration of a couple in an embrace or vignette of a pleasant family scene, they are part of a darker real-life story, he adds.
“At face value the work looks sentimental, but the inspiration comes from destruction of Ukraine and Gaza.
“I was shocked by the destruction to people’s lives.
“The first paintings were done on chunks of rubble, so when you looked closely you’d see the pile rubble was really people’s lives being destroyed by the current madness that’s going on.
“But no galleries I spoke to were interested in a giant pile of rubble in their gallery.
“They all have their own stable of artists and it’s hard for others to break into it.
“Some artists make all the money, and galleries expect people to walk off the street and pay £5000 for a painting.
“I don’t have enough money to go to a gallery and buy art.
“So, I thought I’d step out of all of that and just get on with my own show.”
However, he says doesn’t include the darker images of the project among the works that he gives away.
“What I don’t put on the streets is the other side to the work, which is dozens of similar paintings of people screaming or crying, with faces in their hands which show the rage and frustration surrounding what’s happening in the world.
“The idea is confronting destruction and the madness that’s going on with love and kindness.”
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