Kevin Hughes

From an early age in Liverpool in the UK, I have been a creator and tinkerer, a kind of real life Heath Robinson, (or for my American friends, Rube Goldberg) This mostly involved taking things apart, and being unable to put them back together again, so using the parts to build something new.       

My professional career was as a technologist, computer programmer, project manager and all around “get things done” kind of guy. I tend to think outside the box, and that has worked for me. That brought me to Malibu about 25 years ago.

Along the way I developed a pretty unhealthy and destructive relationship with alcohol, this became numbing, time consuming, and a depressing downward spiral.

In 2017 I stopped drinking, desperately trying to get off the downward spiral, and tried to start healing myself, and make amends to the people around me.

Not drinking, it transpires, actually gives you a lot of time back, and not filling that time with something will, I think, drive you back to drinking. The enemy is in my own head!  So I started looking for something creative, different, and time consuming. I came across some fractal burning videos on you tube and thought ‘hmm,  I could do something with that’.

The real key for me was to be doing something that nobody else was doing, so I started an extensive search to try and find an unexplored niche. I found that, where fractal burning, woodwork, metal, epoxy, and LED lights came together.

My first piece was really simple, but a friend offered to buy it as soon as I completed it, I don’t even have a photo of it. Then being easily bored and therefore refusing to stand still, the pieces became larger, and more complex. As my skills and focus improved, the pieces became higher quality, and better finished. First wall art, then adding coffee tables, then dining tables, mixes of techniques, exploring new ideas. Throwing away a lot of failures, and holding on to successes.

Friends and family looking, became sales, these became art show applications, acceptances and more sales, these became commissions, both for private and public use. So here we are. A 1000 ideas, ready to be realized, 1 or 2 projects at a time.

I do things I like, that I think can be beautiful, spatially interesting art. I hope you agree.

Kevin