00:00 Paul Curtis is a Liverpool based artist specialising in street art and large murals.
00:07 Since 2017 he's created more than 200 public pieces, largely in Liverpool and Wirral but also in locations across the UK.
00:18 Now he's launched his first ever exhibition at the iconic Royal Liver Building, bringing together a selection of his work under one roof.
00:26 We've called it In One Place and that was one of the reasons is that, as you say, I've done a lot of work but it is scattered around the city.
00:33 It is, anyone can go and see the street art but I felt that it would be nice to have a sort of collection of my work.
00:41 It's easier and actually I think there's a lot of pieces here that people didn't even realise I did and it's actually been a trip down memory lane for me.
00:49 Paul first came to prominence with his very first piece of street art for all Liverpool's Liverbirds
00:55 An instant success there were soon queues of people eager to have their picture taken with the wings.
01:01 The piece has since become part of Liverpool's fabric and continues to attract tourists to Jamaica Street to become a Liverbird themselves.
01:09 The wings, that became popular in its own right and it was way more popular than I ever anticipated.
01:14 But I think that when I do street art I kind of think that you need to sort of take the popular angle. You can't be self indulgent.
01:25 I always try to make my work sort of bright, something that's going to raise a smile, make people happy for a moment or two.
01:33 In September 2023, Paul returned to Jamaica Street to paint a striking mural of Liverpool poet Levi Tafari.
01:40 One of the UK's most popular performance poets, he's worked locally, nationally and internationally.
01:46 It's an amazing feeling to be the subject of such a popular artist and he's done it such justice.
01:54 And it was a big surprise to I because I didn't know it was going to be done because it was an anonymous donor who commissioned Paul to paint it.
02:05 And also there's a poem underneath the picture and I just see it as respect and I respect Paul's work.
02:14 Anyone who does anything creative and productive in a constructive way that brings people together and most importantly makes people smile.
02:26 Paul wasn't always an artist. He was a geologist in the oil industry for 15 years.
02:31 But it was a redundancy in 2015 and an extended period of unemployment that led to him picking up his brushes.
02:38 You might think it's been difficult but it wasn't that hard. I mean I've done about 230 murals.
02:44 But a lot of them were not kind of suitable for this space or were not big enough.
02:50 So I basically chose the ones that I thought were most suitable and that I liked basically.
02:55 So it's nearly 50 pieces that are on display.
02:59 In one place is on display at the Royal Iver Building until the 23rd of February.
