David Bowie might have achieved a myriad of glittering achievements during his long successful career - but it’s getting Neath artist Neale Howells onto the catwalk of London Fashion Week surely must stand as one of the oddest.
In fact, nothing about the bad boy of the Welsh art world - the man who once infamously submitted to the national Eisteddfod a painting composed from his own bodily fluids - screams haute couture, his daily get-up seemingly consisting of beanie hat, paint splattered T-shirt and battered jeans.
Yet, it’s thanks to the Thin White Duke that Howells’ idiosyncratic and eye-grabbing style will this weekend be strutting its stuff next to models wearing the starry likes of Julien Macdonald, Zandra Rhodes and Simone Rocha.
Sort of.
“The first time I met Neale I stood outside his studio unable to knock the door... all because I could hear Bowie’s Young Americans playing inside,” says Jayne Pierson, the Llanelli-born, US-raised fashion designer with whom Howells is collaborating on his first ever clothing collection.
“So I knew from that point we’d get along famously.”
That feeling was cemented when Jayne spotted an old pair of boots on the studio floor, which Howells had bought from a local charity shop and painted in his own inimitable way.
“We were discussing how we might work together and I spotted them out the corner of my eye,” adds Pierson.
“It was a real Cinderella moment and I told myself that if I tried them on and they fitted me it would be a further sign that this was meant to be.
“At which point I popped them on and they were perfect on me.
“To top it off, Neale gave them to me to keep.”
A former rocker - her band Gouge enjoyed brief notoriety in the States in the mid-’90s - Pierson hung around the record business after the group folded following moderate chart success.
“I got into A&R, styling various bands and helping them with their image, acts like Chemical Brothers and Gwen Stefani from No Doubt, along with Ash - remember them, a really great Northern Irish band.
“In fact, their guitarist Charlotte Hatherley will be walking on the catwalk for me and Neale on the weekend.
“She’s also doing some DJing at the after party.”
And, after later studying fashion at Carmarthen, she had a stint working for such iconclasts as Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood, before starting her own label.
So, as she admits, she’d had a fair wedge of experience dealing with maverick talents before hooking up with Howells.
“It was inevitable we’d work together really, because I think we’re both pretty bonkers in our own way” laughs Pierson.
“I just didn’t know if his designs would work when applied to different fabric - but I knew that, if they did, they’d look incredible.
“From there on it was just a case of trail and error until Neale got the mix right, and I think he really enjoyed going from painting in 2D to doing it in 3D.
“Watching his designs wrap themselves around my creations and accentuate the curves of the jackets and trousers I’d made was a really exciting process.”
The theme fo the collection, she adds, is one of reclaiming, reappropriating and reinterpreting heritage Welsh tweeds, woollens and Royal taffetas with draped and up-cycled leathers.
There are also elements of Celtic myth, stories symbolism, shamanism and spirituality thrown into the mix.
It’s an eclectic and disparate mish-mash, much like how some have describe Howell’s work over years - his large-scale graffiti-style being born from a time-consuming process of layered painting using acrylic, oil, pastel and pencil on wood.
Often likened to the work of Jackson Pollock or Jean-Michel Basquiat, he admits that working with Pierson showed him a whole new way of working.
“Apparently there are these things which exist called ’deadlines’,” laughs the arty enfant terrible, confessing to sometimes spending up to several months at a time on one piece.
“Often I won’t know where to stop and my mum will come in and say, ‘Right, bed now Neale’.”
I feel he’s only half joking.
“I dunno, maybe a painting is never finished, just abandoned - or perhaps it’s only ever completed by the person who takes the trouble to look at it.”
Nevertheless, having to turn this new batch of work around in a matter of days, if not hours, proved a revelation to him.
“The pressure of working with such tight turn-arounds definitely brought something new out of me.
“It was a massive test but I really got off on it.
“Half the stuff I’ve done with Jayne I had a few weeks to complete, the other 50% just a few hours.
“And, If I had to say which of the two I preferred I’d probably the say the part that I managed to do in no time at all.”
That said, it would be impossible to knock out his usual eight foot by 32ft creations in anything near that time frame.
“Oh no, and when this weekend is all over I’ll probably go back to putting my feet up and taking my own sweet time again,” he smiles.
“Pressure is great fun, but only for a while.
“The rest of the time my life is about as exciting as watching paint dry - actually, that’s exactly what I do end up doing - and I kinda like it that way.”
Getting his art seen by a whole new crowd, however, especially those who might not bother to venture inside a gallery or to an exhibition is something Howells has be longing to do for a while.
“I’m really going into the lion’s den here because the critics in the audience won’t be looking it as art per se, but as fashion.
“But I love the reaction on people’s faces when they see my work for the first time,” he adds, although the days of deliberately trying to shock are long gone.
“I always hated being told what I could and couldn’t do with my paintings and would react against it.
“I’m not that manic anymore though,” says the dad-of two, who admits to never having been much of an agitator, even during his teenage years at the height of the punk era.
“I was more into Pink Floyd, to be honest, “ he whispers conspiratorially.
“I like listening to everything though, from George Benson to Benson &Hedges..ha ha.. but music’s always on the studio when I’m working.
“I can’t cope with silence, it’s a bit too deafening for my liking.
“Whether it’s dubstep or Frank Zappa, it all flows through me right onto the canvas.
“I’m like, how do you say it again, a contwit?
You mean a conduit, I tell him.
“A con, a twit - that’s exactly right,” Howells laughs.
Resource: http://www.walesonline.co.uk
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