“I sell shapes for a living!” beams Sherwan Rozan (@sherwanrozan). A graphic artist from Johor Bahru, Sherwan’s works are very distinctive, mainly composed of lines, straightforward geometric shapes, and block colours. Kind of like a modernised and more well-ordered Picasso, if you will.
His work varies from painting murals to doing album cover art for clients. And the best part about his body of work is that it is mostly digital, or starts off digitally, so they can be translated and materialised into practically anything.
Who/what inspired you to create your first work of art?
The first painting I ever did was a farewell gift for a friend, Dana Kaarina (@danakaarina). After that I just continued on making and developing my work and I haven’t stopped since. This was never a childhood dream for me, I would consider it to be an adulthood dream – something I’m really passionate about. I guess you could say that I have always been intuitive about art and design growing up. The idea of it has always been appealing to me and it was something I never thought I’d be doing right now but I am very much thankful for.
What was the turning point for you/your craft to become what it has today?
Pursuing art/design as a career without formal education was definitely the harder route for me personally. It was a struggle in the beginning to finding my own voice but I guess now after years of pushing through the process does come naturally. My main turning point would be getting over that first hurdle of self-doubt. Once I realised that I was my own worst enemy everything just became clearer.
In your opinion, what’s the best thing you’ve ever created? Why?
This is a really tough one because I’m always proud of whatever I create and every one of them mean differently to me. But if I have to pick one of the recent ones it would have to be the Facebook Artist in Residence Program mural I did last September at Facebook in Singapore. It was definitely one of the most challenging jobs. It pushed me to step outside my comfort zone and look at my work from a different perspective.
Creatively (cinematography, set/costume design, etc.), what are your top 3 must watch movies?
Nothing really comes to mind right now but I can suggest three individuals that I’m inspired by: Ikko Tanaka, Kunihiko Hayakawa, Takasaki Masaharu