NEW MATTER

Welcome Future Makers!

We’re excited to welcome this year’s Future Makers – Aaron Marin, Julie Lai and Wadim Petunin – to the Grand Matter family as part of our annual artist development programme.

Future Makers is a year long placement, open exclusively to illustration-based artists belonging to typically underrepresented groups, who are ready to take the next step in their commercial illustration career, with the support of the Grand Matter team and artists.

We had an enormous response to our call out for artists earlier in the year, with so many outstanding applications across a huge array of styles and approaches. As you might imagine, choosing just three artists was a difficult task! Our thanks go out to all who got in touch and shared their work with us, we truly enjoyed taking a look.

As with all of our artists, Aaron, Julie and Wadim each bring with them their own unique artistic voice and style, as well as a creative curiosity to explore ideas and push and develop their practice further. We look forward to working with them over the next year, and hopefully taking on some exciting new commissions and opportunities together! 

Aaron Marin

Aaron (aka NEUTOKYO) is an illustrator and artist based in Upstate New York. His nom de plume a nod to his formative years spent working and traveling in Japan.

With a love for fashion and self expression, he draws people and places in bold and reimagined colour palettes and a mixture of techniques. He aims to capture the defining essence of an environment or person with a fresh perspective and childlike imagination, often challenging assumptions of beauty, power, and intelligence as it relates to the Black experience in America.

View work here

Buildings are characters – just like people, they define a city or a neighbourhood.
So to me drawing them is like drawing a portrait.

– Aaron Marin

Julie Lai

Julie describes her work as "emotive and fluid lines and textures, exploring spaces, experiences and feelings". Mixing traditional and digital techniques, she draws inspiration from both urban and natural landscapes, capturing the feelings and moments associated with those environments and spaces. 

Julie was born and raised in Hong Kong and studied illustration at Falmouth University. Her dream project would be to illustrate a travelogue, and her work lends itself to a broad range of applications from editorial to packaging and branding.

View work here

I like to take an intuitive approach, seeing what colours and marks emerge through the process.

– Julie Lai

Wadim Petunin

Wadim is an illustrator and designer based in Hamburg, Germany. His previous experience in fashion design runs through his work and in his refined yet reflective figurative images. He often explores themes of identity, lifestyle and queer culture, and is inspired by people and their stories.

Wadim creates much of his work digitally using Procreate, introducing a mixture of texture and line work, and unexpected moments of colour. 

View work here

 I often draw from myself, my (weird) experiences and dating stories, fashionistas and gay dudes with tiny heads and big shoes.

– Wadim Petunin

www.grandmatter.com/aaronmarin
www.grandmatter.com/julielai
www.grandmatter.com/wadimpetunin

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