Sheffield artist behind spectacular murals for Robbie Williams and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Stepping into Mel Holmes’s studio is less like walking into an artist’s workspace and more like entering an Italian church or the boudoir of a noble contessa.
Floor to ceiling images of plump-fleshed cherubs evocative of figures painted by Renaissance masters, giant murals and an eye-catching depiction of The Apotheosis of Homer – which was one of his early canvases he ‘used to roll up and take on a tour of UK cities to showcase my work’ – all created by Mel.
The studio, in a small industrial pocket of Sheffield, is a world away from any ancient artefacts, but the 56-year-old artist lives and breathes European mural art, fresco painting and marouflage which spans thousands of years from Greco-Roman walls to Renaissance masterpieces and modern interpretations. He explained: “I’ve always been interested in learning about the Ancient Greeks and the recent film The Odyssey got me searching for this specific ‘crowd pleaser’which takes me back to my time as a struggling art student. “The mural is 30 years old and the colours are the same as when I painted them. There’s a bit of dirt and grit in there too, but this was all just picked up at the time when wind blew onto the canvas laid out on the pavement. It was a novel way of displaying my work so you could say I started out as an art busker.” Back in the summer of 1990, when Mel had completed his first year of an art degree at the then Norwich School of Art, he had painted around 15 large scale murals to show his skills – painting directly onto canvas laid on the pavement and members of the public would throw money in his hat.
In 2007, Mel formed his own limited company, Mel Holmes Design Ltd, and his marouflage murals involve hundreds of hours of painting onto large canvases, historical research and an analytical approach on how the gigantic artworks will be installed into homes. His murals have adorned the walls of the rich and famous including the swimming pool in Robbie Williams’s country home and the hallway of Sydmonton Court, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s home.
Such is his attention to detail, it is Mel himself who rolls up the work, seals it in protective packaging and flies with it to places like Sri Lanka to install.
"With large works like this, they are going to be joined in the same way wallpaper has joins," he said.
"The way a tree or figure has been painted will hide this join and if a client's measurements are out I may have to adapt the work and do a bit of serious cutting with a knife before it's pasted into walls or ceilings," Mel said.
He uses the 3,000 year old art technique of ‘marouflage’, where a painted canvas, paper, or raw fabric is glued to a solid support—such as a wall, ceiling, wood panel, or MDF board— without framing.
He also works with homeowners’ interior designers to see how the room works as a whole with his mural.
"Yes, I look at fine detail in my everyday job but you have to see the bigger picture too for homeowners who are transforming the whole character of their room,” Mel whose prices for commissions start at £1,900 per square metre.