Rone is a prolific Australian street artist, who first gained recognition for his large scale, intriguing, female faces. I was invited to meet with Rone in his epic Melbourne studio, on one condition; that I do not, under any circumstances, reveal his identity.

How did skateboarding evolve and influence your street art?

The guys I was hanging around with when I started uni [university] were into skateboarding. After skateboarding it was like ‘what do you do at night?’ and that was the whole street art thing. It was another outlet. It was doing something in the street that you are not meant to; skateboarding has a lot of that same feel to it. I found there were more opportunities for me in art, than there was in skateboarding. I sucked at skateboarding, and I was all right at this so, I kept going with this.

How would you describe your style?

At the moment it is these melancholy looking girls faces. I guess it is very feminine [laughs] but it is a quick kind of poster style.

It developed over, reasons for being really quick and simple to punch out multiple images and I like that. I started doing them really, really big and you could see them from half a mile away. They are huge posters, overhead height. Making an image that is recognizable in the end becomes a style in itself.

Do you try and say anything with your work?

It is more just a visual thing. I do not try and push anything. A lot of people see stuff in my work but I am not trying to say anything.

Have you traveled and painted in many other cities?

Yeah, I just did a big trip.

Where did you end up going and did you leave anything behind?

I did a trip to London, New York, LA, Tokyo and put up posters in each one. When I am traveling I don’t have any other work to do so I can go out every night.

What have you noticed about the style of street art in the various cities you have visited?

That each place is different;

Tokyo is all about stickers; there are a lot harsher penalties for graffiti and, there is not much blank wall space. Tokyo is also so intense with advertising, in every knock and cranny they can find, so stickers work.

Other places, like Manhattan are full of tourist graffiti from people out of town. If you go into Williams Burg, or Brooklyn there is more traditional New York graffiti.

In L.A. everyone is on billboards. They have a train system, but everyone drives cars, so they take out billboards as their traditional graffiti spot. It really changes in each place; there are different styles and different attitudes’ as well.

There is a huge shift right now of street art moving into the gallery, what are your thoughts on this shift?

I think its great in a way. Officially it says ‘if it isn’t on the street, it is not street art’, but if artists, like myself, can survive off that. We come from different areas than traditional artists, and that is just pushing the whole art world, so it is definitely a good thing.

Although, I also hear things like…a friend’s son, he is probably 16. He was told he couldn’t be in the art class anymore because he was doing graffiti style art. He was just banned from the entire art class.

A similar thing happened to me actually. It is insane that it is still happening. You are part of such in such a controversial art movement, what do you hope people take from your work?

I dunno, it is pretty cool when you hear that kids get into art because of us. I had one kid who was doing work experience, and that night he cleaned out his shed to make his own little mini studio. He is only 15, and now he has this mini studio where he can hang out with his mates and just draw.

We are just encouraging kids and other people to do art; get into the whole lifestyle. It is like skateboarding; it is a whole social thing as well as an artistic expression kind of thing.