THE ART THAT MADE ME, by artist Rob Ryan

Designer, illustrator and artist Rob Ryan is renowned for his papercut artwork. Here, he reveals the art that informs his practice.

Photo by Hugh Kelly

PUNK ROCK

I was 14 when I got into punk. It didn’t take me long to realise that a lot of the so-called anarchy it claimed to represent was really just pointless posturing. But what did inspire me was its self-determined energy. You got on and did things. You didn’t wait for permission or money; you just did it any way you could –forming a band, making clothes, or writing and printing a fanzine. It was freedom of individual expression in its purest form.

Image: Courtesy of Shutterstock

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

I shall never forget first seeing this movie – it was unlike anything I’d seen before – a whole crazy world, where almost anything could (and did) happen. It helped me to realise that, if you have the strength of will, you can make anything you want to. 

Raoul Dufy (Hayward Gallery, 1983)

I was a student of Fine Art at Trent Polytechnic from 1981 to 1984, an unsure yet confident 20-year-old who preferred to draw with coloured pencils, and paint with watercolours.

A New Spirit in Painting had just opened at the Royal Academy, a super-show of heavily encrusted oils by the likes of Julian Schnabel and Georg Baselitz. What a revelation and an antidote it was to then discover the pure joy and lightness of touch of Dufy. His exquisite use of line and colour showed me that you didn’t have to paint heavily to be deep – and I saw that lots of ‘things’ that thought they were deep were in reality shallow, and vice versa.

Image: Courtesy of Bridgeman images

Picasso 1932 (Tate Modern, 2018)

Mind-blowing. A shot in the arm of pure creativity to remind you how much can be done in a day, week or year if you can commit and work, work, work. It helps if you’re a genius – but you can still do a lot with a small brain!

Image: Courtesy of Shutterstock

Seinfeld (1989–98)  

Perfectly crafted art, totally in control of its medium. So simple, yet so complicated. This TV comedy spanned 180 episodes and exposed pretentiousness, awfulness and humbug, while being brave enough to point the finger of accusation at itself. It is a pure, complete masterpiece.

Image: Courtesy of Getty images

Rob Ryan’s first book of his collected artwork, I Thought About It in My Head and I Felt It in My Heart but I Made It With My Hands, is published by Rizzoli, New York. For more on Rob’s work, see robryanstudio.com