Creator Spotlight: Vince Kamp
Versus is proud to host our first traditional portrait artist; Vince Kamp for his inaugural NFT drop.
Vince Kamp is a UK based artist and is acknowledged as one of the UK’s most evocative and exciting new painters. Fascinated by the dark, gritty underground world of urban subculture, his paintings delve beneath the surface of social class. Recently he wrote, produced and directed the short film ‘Queen of Diamonds’, starring Georgia May Foote and Tamar Hassan. Following on from which he created the Queen of Diamonds series of paintings.
What influences your creative process?
I’ve always been heavily influenced by cinema and story telling, I will often write a complete screenplay first before casting characters for my paintings. My paintings are all quite dark, subtle and intense. I’m always imagining there’s something surreptitious going on, in what might be a perfectly innocent situation. I suppose I’m always looking out for something intriguing, a backstory, a moment of tension… something that will make you wonder about these characters. Who are they? What goes on in the moments before and after the painting?”
Tell us about your upcoming drop? (anything special about the piece/process?)
This painting is titled pulvis et umbra sumus. Which means ‘we, like all other things, will one day perish’. And therein lies the truth. We are all but dust and shadows. Particles that one day will cease to exist. When you think back to early art drawings and sculptures, they too are vulnerable to time. They are lost, stolen and destroyed. Can this painting live beyond those confines?
Will the intensity of thoughts that embodied the man I translated into art remain. He wondered as I painted, if he could somehow live forever - perhaps be seen in another lifetime. Would his soul now somehow be preserved, not by canvas and paint but by the blockchain? Or would he too finally succumb to the dust and shadows …
