Callum Porter has just finished his second year of Graphic Design & Illustration at Ulster University Belfast, Callum loves hip hop, movies, gaming, and creating visual art inspired by his passions. He talked to The Jumble Magazine about finding inspiration and overcoming a creative block during lock down.
I would describe my art as a part of my personality, because each piece has a meaning to me personally in some way or another.
I’ve always seen creating as some sort of escape from reality, I suffer from anxiety, and anytime I’m drawing or designing something I feel more like a kid with no worries. Sometimes I do get stressed with it but that’s normal, everyone gets stressed.
Although it doesn’t really show in my art I’ve become a fan of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenery in the past few years. The game The Last Of Us was a huge inspiration for me as it brought out so much beauty within a destructive environment. Another one of my main inspirations tho is my love for Hip hop. The form of storytelling through rhyming, rhythm and the beats always make me visualise what the artists are saying. A lot of the time when I’m listening to music I seem to visualise what the artists are saying- in an illustrative way, sort of like a comic. If anyone ever watched the Netflix series The Get Down, there’s a visual style of art in that which helps portray the music through comics.
I really struggled creatively through the lock down, I finished off my uni work and I could not concentrate on anything, I lacked so much inspiration for 2 months. The Goodfellas poster I made helped me get back to myself and back to creating again- slowly but surely.
As for the local art scene: I love how everyone is so talented yet so different. I feel like Belfast and NI as a whole has so many creative people that go unnoticed. That’s so sad to think; because I know so many people who are unbelievably talented at what they do.
You can check out more of Callum’s work on Instagram.
The Jumble 