Why honesty is the best policy for artist bringing colour to Sheffield’s streets

You don’t have to walk far in Sheffield to stumble upon the work of Rob Lee. Popping in for a pizza at the Picture House Social on Abbeydale Road and you’ll walk through the huge splashes of oranges and brown that swoop over the doorway in giant waves.

Pick up a loaf from Forge Bakehouse and you’ll be greeted with a striking rainbow coloured mural that wraps around the building. Head into the city centre near the Sheffield Hallam University campus and you’ll see a huge mural celebrating 10 years of local magazine Now Then, it’s as distinctive a piece of art as you’ll find in the whole city and it also won Lee the Keith Hayman Award for public art at 2019’s Sheffield Design Awards.

Based in Sheffield, Lee is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily on large scale, site-specific, geometric art – think huge wavy lines, heavy lashings of colour and 3D shapes that leap off the wall. For his latest work Lee has been asked to partake in the Your Space or Mine project hosted by Buildhollywood – in collaboration with Jackarts – a creative agency that finds innovative ways to use public space for art, as well as fill poster sites across the UK.

The works Lee currently has up in the city are optical illusion artworks, with two large scale rainbow-striped pieces located on Shoreham Street and Charles Street in the city centre, plus two text-based pieces on poster sites across the city.

“Artists were invited to create messages of positivity and support,” says Lee of being asked to be involved. “I really wanted to create a message of positivity to go out through the lockdown but I really didn’t imagine just how enthralled in this project I’d become.”

The rainbow striped pieces are in keeping with some of Lee’s other work, acting as eye-catching and immersive pieces that cause one to pause and become absorbed. The text-based pieces, while still rooted in optical illusion shapes and colours, are more of a different approach.

The words that run through the centre of Lee’s new work read: Honesty is the Best Policy.

“The phrase is a proverb grounded in our heritage, dating back to the 1500s,” he says. “It’s so well known that it’s easily disregarded. On a personal level, we can all reflect on instances of dishonesty or honesty in our lives, and times when we should have maybe considered the phrase before we acted. But on a much wider level, that the message includes the word ‘policy’ does give it a political edge. I think this phrase is poignant in society today.”

Lee has been working in optical illusion artworks for years, something that he picked up from a young age. “I’d always been fascinated by optical illusions as a child,” he says. “When I was first starting out as an artist I didn’t intend to put my focus here. It was only as my style developed, and with constant tweaking of the shapes and patterns I use, that I ended up creating them by accident – and this still happens today. These accidents reignited my love for illusion.”

The artistic process is a different one to more conventional artworks and although Lee often paints directly onto physical surfaces, this printed project allowed him to go even deeper than usual. “This project gave me the opportunity to work in a lot more detail which would otherwise be extremely impractical and time consuming to paint by hand,” he says.

As for actually creating the optical illusions, Lee views it as a stimulating experience. “It’s a challenge when actually setting out to create an optical illusion,” he says. “It often feels like building yourself an incredibly difficult puzzle that needs to be solved immediately before you can move on. It’s a challenge I love, though, and something I find deeply interesting. It’s fascinating reading into the science and psychology behind it all, and discovering new ways to dazzle the senses.”

Given that Lee is now incorporating text into his optical illusions, it adds a new layer for him to think about and explore when it comes to meaning and messages.

“I understand the pairing could be deemed contradictory,” he says. “Optical illusions can be described as tricks of the eye. A trick, like a scam, or a con, is a form of deception and could therefore be argued to be dishonest. Some may say an optical artist, like a magician, is someone who sets out to trick their viewers but it is not the artist who is doing the tricking, it is our eyes. The artist is merely informing and reminding us of this fact that seeing is not always believing.”  

So, what may on the surface be a few simple words embedded into some blurred patterns and shapes, actually runs much deeper. “This is why it’s so important,” he says. “That in order for modern society to prosper, that the things we see and look to for information and guidance, are honest and true. Because without honesty, there cannot be trust. And without trust, we don’t really have anything do we?”

It’s not just this work in particular where profound meaning and a wider significance and implication can be plucked from Lee’s work, it runs through the core of much of what he does.

“Most of my work is inspired in some way by technology or nature – or both,” he says. “It’s in my pattern work that I metaphorically communicate this most obviously and in as simplistic and minimalistic a way as possible. With straight lines representing man and curves representing nature. I’m forever tweaking these lengths, thicknesses, and searching for harmonious configurations that send positive sensations to the brain.”

It is an artistic expression of the harmonious nature Lee hopes to see around him.

“I dream of a world where we all just get along. Where world leaders are honest, where they work together and collaborate for the greater good. Where we harness the natural elements and utilise our advanced technologies to live completely sustainable lives. Man and nature living in complete harmony. I believe it’s possible.”

Ultimately though, Lee wants his work to be something joyful. As city centres continue to struggle during the extended lockdown period and more buildings close, his artworks can provide a lift where we perhaps least expect to find it.

“It’s at the heart of a lot of my work,” he says. “One of my main aims in creating work in the public realm is to help people look up a little more: from the floor, from their phones. I don’t know how anyone could argue they’d rather an ugly old – unlisted, of course – wall was left ugly and bare, over it being covered in a piece of art.”

He believes in the power of art to uplift us all.

“Contrary to what certain parties like to have us believe, arts and culture are very important for our wellbeing. It inspires, it makes us happy, it improves our lives. That is not an opinion.

“It would make me very happy indeed to see councils and governments across the world fully embrace this, and work with urban artists to develop city-wide projects.”

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