Adam Neate

Adam Neate (born 1977) is a British painter, conceptual artist and described by The Telegraph in 2008 as "one of the world's best-known street artists". He specialised in painting urban art on recycled cardboard, and has left thousands of works in the street for anyone to collect. He is a contributor from the movement in transferring street art into galleries. Neate's street art has garnered global interest, having been documented on CNN reports and European television. Major collectors and celebrities are fighting for his original works and international critics have lauded the artist's work. Since 2011 Neate has been mastering his own language of 'Dimensional Painting'.

Adam Neate was born in Colchester, Essex and grew up in Ipswich, Suffolk. In the mid-1980s, aged nine or ten, he became familiar with graffiti art through a cousin, who was interested in it. Neate watched VHS videos about graffiti, as well as groups such as the Beastie Boys and hip-hop music. Then he borrowed books like Spray Can Art and Subway Art from the library: he was attracted by the colourful quality of the artwork, which he wanted to emulate.

He did not study painting, but graduated in design at Suffolk College, then moved to London and took a job as a graphic designer at Glue London, a digital advertising agency.

He also took up painting, which he had long wanted to do. Using aerosols and found objects, he painted on cardboard boxes, which he collected from the street, avoiding the use of canvas because of its cost. His work can have two and three-dimensional qualities, as he tears the material, builds it in layers and staples pieces together, mainly making figurative images, which include self-portraits and portraits of friends.

In an essay in December 2012, art historian Ben Jones wrote "In Adam Neate’s most recent work, space itself becomes the medium. The accumulated plasticity of Cubism’s two distinct phases has been re-energised by Neate’s own distinctive mode: Dimensional Materialism. To get the full multi-dimensional effect, the viewer is asked to activate their own viewing space ...as you move and change vantage point, negative space is held in balance, unleashed, then restrained again. The image resolves itself. Foreground to background shifting, space dissolving, volume folds in, energy pushes out ...Neate’s compositions are mapped by sensations of simultaneity. Multiple moments of past experience are elided with a slowed down and extended present moment."

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