So, it came as no surprise to me this week when I received a phone call from Jo Brooks, Banksy’s publicist, telling me that Mr Doodle is also to be represented by Pearl Lam, a glamorous dealer in art and design, rated as one of the most significant businesswomen in Asia by Forbes Magazine, with galleries in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore and an office in London. With contenders from all over the world knocking at his door, it was only a matter of time before more international representation would materialise. Until now, the only art gallery that has represented him is the Anzai Gallery. And on the platform he’s no elusive artist - he seems likeable and jokey and uses his following to promote charities.
Apart from Doodle paintings and drawings he has collaborated on a growing number of brand-name products with designs and performances for labels such as Fendi, Puma, Adidas and Samsung.
In December that year, Sotheby’s got in on the action with a selling exhibition in Hong Kong which saw all 52 works sell out, with prices ranging from $6,200 to $25,640.Īs can be expected, Mr Doodle has a large following on Instagram - numbering 2.8 million at the last count – more than double Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons put together. In 2018 he was given a show at the Ara Art Centre in Seoul where he was spotted by the Anzai Gallery from Tokyo, which gave him two further exhibitions in 2019. But it passed the art critics by.ĭoodleLand was to find a more receptive audience in Asia. He adopted his name after he turned up at his Bristol college one day in his late teens wearing an outfit covered in his own spaghetti-like doodles.įor his first exhibition, at London’s Hoxton gallery in 2016, he covered the walls with a single doodle mural depicting an imaginary DoodleLand vision of the world, where dense clusters of cartoon characters, objects and patterns grow and multiply relentlessly. Art commentators have suggested he suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - although the artist corrected them describing his practice as ‘Obsessive-Compulsive Drawing'. The latest young British artist to crack the international art market is Mr Doodle (real name Sam Cox), a 27-year-old tousle-haired former graphic illustration student at University of the West of England, Bristol, whose work I would describe as a cross between the late American graffiti artist, Keith Haring, and Mr Men.Ĭox, an irrepressible marker-pen doodler from a young age, covered his bedroom with doodles from as young as six years old.
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