Bobby Rogueone

A Life Lived in Colour

Catherine Lawson

If you google Bobby Rogueone you’ll find a man with many titles: graffiti artist, master of photorealism, urban storyteller and street artist amongst others. When we catch up for this interview, it’s no surprise that we start with how he would describe himself.

“Nowadays I’m a mural artist. I started with graffiti as a lot of people do, but I refer to myself now as a mural artist.”

Before we dive in to discuss his new mural of Sir Alexander Fleming in Darvel, we take a moment to look more closely at the path that took Bobby from being a wee boy with a spray can in hand, sharing his art under cover of darkness, to the prolific artist he is today, sharing his art with the world.

“I was 11 or 12 when I first picked up a spray can. It started because at that time the Hip Hop scene had come over from America and I thought it was really interesting. By the time I was 15, I was out doing the whole rebellious graffiti thing.”

I ask if there were ever any brushes with the law back in the day and he tells me he may have been pulled up a few times. Undeterred, however, he continued, and thank goodness he did because his contribution to the Glasgow art scene and beyond since those early days has been remarkable. Turns out, it was always in his blood.

“Art was a big thing for me in school. I didn’t pay much attention to English and Maths – the boring subjects – I focused on Art. There was a big mural in my school that said ‘No Problem’ and it was such a prevalent part of the building, bringing colour and life to our surroundings. It actually inspired my career in many ways.

“Art can focus kids – it can give them dedication and focus. I grew up watching a lot of the guys around me going on to become architects or graphic designers – jobs which used that creativity and focus, and if you didn’t learn your craft in college, you learned it on the streets.”

For Bobby, he learned from both, but it was during his time at Cardonald College that he started to realise his work on the streets had earning potential.

“One of the lads in the college asked if I’d spray paint the students’ union. I spent weeks doing it and at the end I got paid. It wasn’t a lot, but I got paid and I was so chuffed. Shortly after, a guy with a skateboard shop asked me to do his place and it went from there. I realised mural painting was a thing and that I could make it my job.”

While he was developing as a mural artist, Bobby was also exploring other mediums, experimenting with acrylics and oil paints, and holding exhibitions in Glasgow which were successfully raising his profile. Working relentlessly to get his name out into the art community felt like a constant hustle and while it was paying off in commissions, his growing success didn’t always go down well with the people around him.

“It takes a lot of personal resilience to keep going in those early days; I’ve seen a lot of artists give up because it can be such a long struggle, and it can be very competitive. Not everyone goes on the journey with you – there can be bad feeling when you start experiencing success and when that happens you just have to focus on the work you’re doing and the people who genuinely want to see you do well.”

In the 30 years that Bobby has been creating murals to light up our towns and cities, he’s observed the mixed reactions and changing perceptions around art on that scale in public places.

“At the start there was a bit of confusion about what was going on with street art and then people started to love it because it brought colour to the city. The Glasgow street art scene is very popular now – it’s changed massively in the last three decades. There are so many artists getting into it now because it’s easy to upskill yourself on the internet.”

The growing number of artists taking to the streets with spray cans isn’t the only change that Bobby has observed in recent years.

“There are lots of English companies coming into Scotland to do mural work now too because they’re usually creating a brand and that’s how they want to advertise it. Even murals which celebrate Scottish legends are being outsourced in a space which should support and promote home grown talent. The Andy Murray mural in Dunblane is an example – it was painted by a London-based artist.”

For the people of Darvel in East Ayrshire, however, seeing a renowned Scottish mural artist celebrate their very own Darvel-born legend, Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin back in 1928, has been an immense source of pride.

Painted on a gable end at The Corner – Darvel’s outdoor community space – the mural which was commissioned by the Darvel and Area Regeneration Team (DART) is one of several 100th anniversary projects which will celebrate Fleming’s famous discovery, and it depicts the iconic image of the scientist examining a Petrie dish.

“The Darvel mural is one of my favourites. I worked up three designs for the team to look at; a black and white, a colour and an abstract. They picked the black and white which I think works really well. The Darvel community was great. People were stopping to talk to me about what I was doing, and I got a great welcome wherever I went. You don’t always get that curiosity. In bigger places like cities, locals can sometimes be negative, questioning if their council tax has been paying for art instead of potholes. The mural in Darvel was commissioned by a charity, though, so there was a lot of interest in it from the beginning. They made me feel like I was part of the community.”

Sparking curiosity has always been one of Bobby’s main aims as an artist and as he reflects on which of his murals he particularly enjoyed doing, he brings to mind the Hip Hop Marionettes mural – a piece which captured the public with its colour and comedy. Unfortunately, the building has since been renovated into student accommodation, erasing the much-loved mural along the way, but fans of the Fast and Furious franchise will know that the Hip Hop Marionettes mural is immortalised in the Hobbs and Shaw movie. Another project which he describes as being particularly memorable is the mural he painted in the Cowcaddens underpass which has now been sadly vandalised. It depicts a series of hand shadow puppets created by family and friends just after lockdown; a poignant reflection of his closest circle which he shared with the wider community.

As we talk, I get a sense of the energy and the ‘self’ that goes into creative projects of this scale and I ask Bobby what he does to re-charge in-between murals.

“I usually take a week off after projects. Sometimes I go to the gym, sometimes I binge watch TV and sometimes I do other creative things: I make models, sew and fix things, re-upholster furniture… I have tons of creative hobbies. I’m hot-wired into the creative side of my brain.”

Whether depicting historical figures, movie superheroes, abstract concepts or the everyman, Bobby has devoted his career to using that creativity to explore the full gamut of human emotions in glorious, spray-painted technicolour. With work already underway on his next project, set to cover a 72-metre-high wall, speculation has already begun as to what he might be planning to share with us next…