One Sunday night in London I decided to meet with friends at a bar in the Banksy Tunnel on Leake Street. While some of us were waiting for the rest to arrive, we took a walk to look for new street art. We found one piece that drew our attention – though it was small, it stood out from the rest. The mural was a cute deer wearing a striped shirt and framed by a white background. Although it looked very simple from afar, upon closer inspection, I saw it was incredibly detailed. I took a photo for Instagram and I tagged the name written underneath @batswearblack.
A few days later, I met up with Bats Wear Black, whose real name is Kjell, at Southbank skate park. He was drawing his third mural: a bat on a lamppost. Kjell was very welcoming; he offered me coffee and snack bars and asked many times if I was cold or needed something else. I noticed straightaway that he was a nice and caring person.
Originally from the Netherlands, he followed his girlfriend to London sixteen years ago.
Kjell explained he is new to the street art scene. A former social worker, he found himself stuck at the office doing a lot of paperwork. Kjell’s job didn’t feel rewarding anymore, and he realised it was time to move on. He spent three years traveling around Europe before becoming a guitar teacher and starting to draw.
“I really like quirkiness and I was doing a lot of Tim Burton because I’m a huge fan, but people were saying that it was a lot like him. Now that I’m in my 40’s I wanted to do something that will look more like me.”
“I really like quirkiness and I was doing a lot of Tim Burton because I’m a huge fan, but people were saying that it was a lot like him. Now that I’m in my 40’s I wanted to do something that will look more like me.”
“I wanted to try a new drawing style, so I set myself a target and drew Bob Dylan for one year, but there’s only so many kind of ways you can draw that, so I used a lot of mixed media. I did it with a spray can. At one point my girlfriend suggested I use fabric, I thought that was a good idea, so I used fabric and that really worked. Then I started to do some of the techniques that I used with drawing Bob Dylan to draw animals, and that style combined with fabrics… it just works and I haven’t looked back since.”
Kjell converted to veganism two and a half years ago, which fueled his passion to draw animals. His work predominantly consists of framed illustrations that can be found hanging in cafes around London. He donates a percentage of his sales to animal charities. “I’m trying to do my bit and spreading the word,” Kjell explained.
This year, as a New Year’s resolution, Kjell decided to get into street art after hearing about the Leake Street. tunnel. “I saw this photo and I saw there is a lot of graffiti. I found out that you could legally do graffiti there. I was like ‘that’s brilliant, let’s do this’”.
With only enough white paint to do the background during a cold afternoon in January, his journey into the street art scene began. That was the day he painted his first mural, the one that drew me to his work. In February, Kjell did his second piece on another pillar in a Southbank skatepark, a little one hanging from a branch.
“I can’t wait to do more pieces. It’s like the walls kind of dictate what I do. I’ve always wanted to do a vampire bat. I’ve done a few bats on a pile of books, but that would take me two days to paint. Then there’s the risk of someone spraying over it, so that’s when the lamp post came in. I came here and I thought how cool it would be for the wings to curl around the post.”
Currently, Kjell is working on skateboards with the goal to finish eight pieces and get into a central London gallery with them: “That’s another New Year’s resolution. Because street art and skateboards go together. There’s a lot of similarity, they don’t really do any harm, but people have really strong views about it. Some people hate it and there’s other people that actively enjoy it.”
“If you look at the skateboards guys, they have a certain style and a passion to get better at what they do, and I think it’s what everybody does. I can be a better guitar teacher, a better street artist. I just want to improve.”
“If you look at the skateboards guys, they have a certain style and a passion to get better at what they do, and I think it’s what everybody does. I can be a better guitar teacher, a better street artist. I just want to improve.”
Kjell hopes that his art has a positive impact on people and serves to encourage them to share his ideals. “People go to my @batswearblack Instagram, and hopefully they see something about the veganism, and if I can make a difference even for one person, to try at least a day a week to stop eating meat, that is really important to me. That’s my journey”.
His murals are already gaining popularity, and people have been reaching out to him frequently with photos of the tunnel piece.“It’s a really interesting media that I really did not expect to be so friendly, I thought people might have a bit of attitude against it, but no,” he commented.
“This morning when I started, there was a guy wearing a suit. He came over and said that every morning he walks around here looking for new street art and takes photos. He said it’s his passion, and that he would come back at six to see the finished work. It’s so cool that people really appreciate it and start to follow it like they’d follow a band or a football club. And I never thought that about street art and I really like it.’
“You need that support, because it’s so cold and I’m like ‘yeah I’ll do another half an hour.’ I can’t wait for it to be like June and do this in my shorts and a t-shirt with the sun on my back. But for now, I know what it feels like to do this in the middle of March.”
After the interview, I went to a café to do some work on my laptop and then came back to see the finished artwork. We said goodbye with the promise to keep in touch for the next piece.
As I was leaving a guy came up to him and said, ‘that’s pretty cool, you’re gonna be the next Banksy.’
Sabrina Ortolani is a London-based, Argentinian-born photographer who focuses on portraits, places, and fashion.
