Behind Portsmouth's most famous mural

Profile of artist Mark 'Rocky' Lewis. The artist behind the world's longest chaning mural

Transcript

00:00I'm Mark Edmund William Lewis, aka Mark Rocky Lewis on social media. Founder,

00:07director of artandsoultraders.com. I've become a muralist when I was 17, 18 years

00:15old and I've never done anything else. No qualifications, they wouldn't let me into

00:20local art college, so I thought I'd become Portsmouth's most famous artist

00:24instead. One of the biggest famous projects is this one, the map mural of

00:28Portsmouth, which is now well famous because it's the only forever changing

00:32mural in the world, where I come back every summer and add more detail, people,

00:36businesses, local independent, family-run businesses to it. So I was always good at

00:41art at school, it was my best subject. I was a bit of a rebel. I started graffiti and

00:47spray can art when I was 13, 14. I think I got arrested when I was 14 for

00:53spraying a subway up in Waterlooville a day after it opened. And then, ironically,

00:5920 years later I got paid by the local council to paint it up properly with the

01:03local youth centre. And it's still there now, looking great and not been touched or

01:08graffitied. Then I tried to get into art college when I was 17, 18, but they

01:14wouldn't let me in because I had no qualifications from school. So in 1990 I

01:19started the business of painting satellite dishes as they started appearing everywhere.

01:24And everyone started complaining about them, that they looked ugly on the houses.

01:28So as I was a muralist artist anyway, it was obvious to me any white canvas in the

01:33streets was up for painting. So I started designing them. The first one in Waterlooville,

01:38Paul and Angie's house, London Road, painted a smiley face on that and had such great reception.

01:47I just carried on doing them for other people. Then appeared in the local news and then in European

01:53magazines, Sky TV, you know, Teletext. So basically I was the first person in the world to paint satellite

02:01dishes as a business. And I met Prince Charles, Lady Diana. Well, any visitors or locals,

02:09when you come to this mural, you're witnessing and experience an interactive painted mural where you

02:19can not only look at it and guide yourself around the city with it, but also it's got local residents

02:26on there. It's got local people on there. It's got stories, hundreds of stories on there, very personal

02:32ones. It's all interesting. It's got local family and independent run businesses. It's got historical

02:40interest in their characters and stories. So as far as I know, and I've looked all over the internet,

02:47no one's ever done this before. And this is what I pride myself on and enjoy most is coming up with

02:54unique novel, original ideas and running with them until other people start copying them. Then I move

03:01on and I come up with another one. It's great. You know, it's the one thing I would hate to be was

03:08doing the same old thing over and over again, like eyes. You know, we're only limited by our imaginations.

03:14So I'm waiting for more people to come along and come up with some crazy ideas. One thing we need more

03:20of is some more people on beastly nudist beach. So if you want to volunteer there,

03:29and next five, 10 years, I'll be here every summer adding more to it. Hopefully it goes as well as it

03:35has been last four or five years. That's when I've had time to spend on it since the Arts Lodge.

03:41And it's my main income now. Every summer, I really, I'm pretty semi-retired. I only have to work four or

03:46five months a year. We use chyme eco mineral paints that not only can last over 100 years, but also

03:57they store and absorb all the pollution from the area. And as it's a roundabout with five roads going

04:06off of it, just a few hundred yards from the sea, it's a very busy and polluted area. It seems the

04:13catchphrase for the mule now is the more you look, the more you see.