About Deelaps

I went from sketchbook where I started to mimic the pieces I'd seen in London and the iconic Subway Art book to my first piece back in 1985 and continued through 1986/ 87 on my graffiti journey. Primarily using car spray cans acquired from Halfords and bombing our local park's derelict air raid shelters I worked alongside my mentor Jump2 aka Chris and a few other friends ( Dave – ‘DeeOne’ and Steve – ‘True’). We were known as the Style Dominatorz. I remember standing in Covent Garden and not having the nerve to approach the Trailblazers (later to become the Chrome Angelz) and watching them flick through designs in their famous 'Piece' books. Mode 2 was my favourite his characters in particular were so stylized and instantly recognizable.

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My first tag was 'Bestone' but that has now transformed into 'DeeLaps'. Whilst we scored some paid work for a local store, sports club and landed in the local newspaper much to my parents dismay I guess the biggest milestone for me was meeting Henry Chalfant co-author of Subway Art who was working on his new book Spray Can Art. 

Henry met us all and took pictures of the latest piece Chris had done solo using my lettering design for 'Next' which appeared in the book (p59), that blew us all away. Chris also had a character piece of a melting face which I think he'd done in Ladbroke Grove on the final page behind James Prigoff which was cool.  Things though trailed off for me in 1988 as my focus shifted away from the Hip Hop scene and onto other things...

However, I never did stop sketching and have recently been inspired by the new street art scene now so accessible via the web and platforms like Instagram with artists like HelioBray, Josh Keyes, DigitalDoes, KipToe, Golden305 and my favourite duo PichiAvo. This new world of street art has finally led me to hit the canvas in place of those old air raid shelters to combine my graffiti roots with some contemporary painted art. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did in creating it.