Talking all things 'Rude'?

We recently had the pleasure of sitting down and having a chat with our highlight artist of the month Rupert from Rude.

As artists Rude encompass exuberance, playfulness and creativity completely. From their uplifting typographic work to their quirky city scapes, Rude bring all of the fun and colour you could need in a print.

Come with us on our journey to find out more about all things Rude.

Who are you and what do you do?

So my name is Rupert and I run a company called rude and we are a graphics art studio.

How did you started

I went to art college and specialised in printmaking and I didn’t have a job and I just started Rude straight away from college and basically all the work you see is very similar to the work that I started out doing.

What inspires you?

I, well, we do a lot of London prints because we are London based, i was born in London, we love the city that we live in. it’s amazingly creative but we are sort of obsessed with colour, mark making, textures and sort of layers so you know a lot of work is layered up.

What’s your favourite style of printing?

My favourite printing is screen printing because, it's what i did at college and it's an old technique that used to be called silk screen because the screens were made of silk but now it’s made of modern material and it's basically each layer is a colour so you're basically building up the colours, so the most we would do is the 6 screen the less colours the easier it is for example the ‘City orange’ screen print is 6 colour and you print the lightest colour first and then you print the darkest colour last and you sort of build it up. And we do 50 editions and when that’s finished we would then launch another one, often using bright colours, maybe London based but we do a lot of typography as well.

Can you tell us a bit about your process?

I think, so we tend to keep a lot of sketches, we are always sort of drawing stuff and we might work something up that we would then put in the shop. And sometimes it can get tweaked but then often then becomes the print that it sort of is. And you can often tell straight away if something is going to work and then we might do it in other colours and really put our energies behind it. And then some other prints that maybe don’t do as well and then might come back in a different form.

Yeah I think revisiting things is really good, often you can do a load of work and it’s often quite good to park it for a bit and come back to it for a bit and give it a new lease of life.

So do you have a favourite print that you’ve made?

I like a lot of the typographical prints’ I’ve made ...I think I like the typography stuff, especially the really simple ones. We do a piece called ‘I like it in here’ and it’s just quite a nice sentiment cause you can sort of put it anywhere. You can put it in your home, in your office, in your toilet and it sort of just does that perfect thing and it’s just really simple.

How would you describe your work?

Yeah I think it is quite youthful, it can be a bit childlike, naive, I think it’s contemporary as well but definitely very colourful.

How do you hope your art makes people feel?

Hopefully they are filled with joy, yeah.

When you come into the shop It’s a bit like coming into a sweet shop; it's a bit like oh my god I want that I want that, the work sort of pulls you in.

When did you open ‘Everyday sunshine’?

We actually opened it in lockdown, we opened it when Christmas got cancelled.

We were open for two weeks just as the gallery and by February we got the coffee hatch open and the coffee element started and then it started to become what it is today over the next couple of months and we were still very much serving stuff out of the hatch until everyone was allowed to come in.

Similarly to East end prints you have built a community here, how do you expand out of being ‘just’ an Artist?

Yeah I think when we first decided to do the gallery…because years ago we used to have a shop near Spitalfields and we would do screen printing out the back so it had an interactive element. And with this we didn't just want to stand here and sell our art we wanted to add that extra element and I think because of the timings in terms of the pandemic coffee was the sort of easiest thing to do. And it does work really well, people will come in and grab a coffee and grab a card and then they might say ‘ i want that print’ and it does that cross selling thing - yeah it works well.

What has been the highlight of your career?

I think when we get to do the large scale mural projects that sort of come our way maybe every other year, every 3 years? We’re about to do one at [the] school actually, um and it’s when you see your work at that sort of scale that it’s really amazing to see; and yeah to document it and put it online and on our socials it's just really exciting.

Where can we find you?

You can find us in the middle of Stoke Newington, slightly off the beaten track. We're near the highstreet, near church street on the corner of Neville and Barbauld road so were 49 Barbauld road and the shop is called ‘Everyday Sunshine’.

And our socials are @rude.studios or @everydaysunshineshop

Watch the video internet here; https://youtu.be/v9ITkDOtOnk