A Conversation with Artist Ornamental Conifer

Interview for Drive Tastefully Quarterly

I have to own up to the fact that I have occasionally let myself be annoyed by the theater of it. The meticulous curation of it. The iconography of perfectly-tailored leather and ironic messaging; the self-consciousness of it. The paradox of individuality through group imitation.

Yet my bias is challenged every time I talk to the man who is, whether he likes it or not, at the epicenter of that culture: an artist, masterfully using sign-painting techniques to adorn motorcycles, helmets, jackets, and cars with playful design and crafted typography. If you follow the expanding rings of the gentleman’s ride trend backwards, from its most commercialized to its purist, at the center you’ll find the stone tossed by Ornamental Conifer, the moniker of British artist Nicolai Sclater. 

Over the past year, I’ve gotten to know Nicolai and developed a deep appreciation for his art and insight. And for those Drive Tastefully readers who, like me, struggle with chronic cynicism, I’m happy to share this interview of the man that made Ornamental Conifer. 

Spencer Canon: 

Let’s dive right into the most important question: what was your first car? 

Ornamental Conifer:

It was Vauxhall Viva E Ferenzi coupé. It was a 1976, I believe. I was coming home from a girlfriend's house on my bicycle and saw this little glorious golden mini--what I saw as a muscle car--on the side of the road. And it was 500 pounds. I went home and told my dad how much I loved it. He drove me out there to see it. He said he'd lend me the money. And I bought it.

Spencer Canon: 

Something tells me that’s not the end of the story.

Ornamental Conifer:

Ha. Yeah. At the time I was really into Custom Car Magazine and Lowrider Magazine. I loved hot rods and muscle cars and things that basically looked like all my toy cars growing up. So I set about destroying this little Vauxhall Viva. I was 15 years old. I chopped the springs. I ripped all the interior out. I ripped the headliner out. And I ripped the carpet out, and I pulled the seats out, and I pulled the dash out, and I painted the dash with some enamel and a brush. [laughs]

And then I got a little red Sparco steering wheel. And I went to the normal carpet shop and bought bright red house carpet, and I kind of wedged it all in with loads of spray glue. I bought some bright red plastic vinyl stuff and covered all my door cards so they were just solid. And I sort of stuck red stuff on the ceiling. And then to really top it off, I bought some red tassels from the haberdashery and trimmed the entire circumference--It looked like a taxi!

I put a massive subwoofer in the back and speakers all over, and listened to Bill Withers driving around for a wonderful Summer. But I paid zero attention to the engine, and seized it. I didn't put any oil in it. So I put an ad in the Viva forum that said 'Free to a good home.' And eventually a guy came around to look at it.

And as we were walking towards it, he starts getting really curious and he steps around the front to see the number plate. And he's like, 'That's my old car! I sold it to a guy called Tom.' And then as he gets closer he says, 'It's been lowered. And what's happened to the interior!?’ And I was like, 'I don't know. I bought it like this off Tom! This isn't original? He told me it was all original!' He said, 'No, this definitely is not original! It's been destroyed! It was in really good condition when I sold it to him!' [laughs] 

Spencer Canon: 

Little did you know that some of the world’s biggest brands would be asking you to paint all over their cars! 

So let's back up. How did you get into sign painting. I mean, I know you studied design in University and briefly held a position at Wallpaper Magazine.

Ornamental Conifer:

Only very briefly. After school I got that job and was like, ‘Yeah, I'm a graphic designer!’ But I turned up on my first day with a cutting mat and a pencil case and a little sketch book and everything. And they said, 'Oh I don't know if there's going to be any space for that on your desk.'

And I was like, 'Oh, how big is my desk?' And I just had this massive Mac on a tiny space, and basically my job was just to take notes from more senior designers and then email the PDFs from the photography department to the Editor. And then sort of just photocopy schedules for people. And I was like, ‘Man, this is not graphic design. I'm outta here.’

At the time I was living in a big warehouse with about 15 other artists, all of which were funding their lifestyle through working in bars and cafes, and all that kind of stuff. We were total young newbie artists putting on our shows and experimenting with a variety of different drugs and kind of just being a little bit ruthless. And I got really frustrated with them because they just all had this pretentious artist thing. And I just wanted to work. 

But then I met my wife. She was my neighbor and one day she said to me, 'Hey, look I'm a hairstylist. If you could make me a sign, that'd be really cool.' And I really wanted to get in her knickers, so I was like, 'Yeah, I'll make you a sign!' So I made this cool little sign. First one I ever made.

Spencer Canon: 

Are you using brushes at this point?

Ornamental Conifer:

Well, at this point I had no idea. So what I did was I walked down the canals and I asked all the people on the canal boats, cause they had these beautiful hand-painted names on all their boats. I said, 'who does that?' And they were like, 'Oh, it's this guy called Julian. Good luck.' And I eventually tracked down the guy called Julian who had somewhat decided to leave society and just become a river rat kind of guy. Very cool guy. Basically just living hand to mouth. Living off 50 quid paint jobs. And then going and buying some groceries and some wood and then just cruising around drinking red wine and just having a good old time. And he was kind of reluctant to share, as many old sign painters were at that time. Because, you know, ultimately I'm coming, 'Hey, I'm moving in on your scene, your territory. Tell me how you do it.'

Spencer Canon: 

Did you promise not to paint any boats? [laughs]

Ornamental Conifer:

Well, I did actually. But he gave me a notebook that he'd made some notes in and he gave me some brushes and he told me where to buy the stuff and then basically said, 'don't ever come back and bother me again, go and do your thing.' 

So I went off and made this sign and she loved it and she gave me a six pack and some candy floss, cotton candy and...

Spencer Canon: 

And married you.

Ornamental Conifer:

Yeah, about two and a half years later.

That started it. And then I was lucky to get picked up on a job with [apparel brand] Ted Baker. They wanted me to build an installation for one of their stores. So that was kind of a big break for me. I had a funny little little brown leather briefcase that had been hand-painted, and inside it had all these little wooden plaque samples of things I painted. And it got me quite far because people would just like the bizarreness of seeing something tactile turning up in their offices. I was also this kind of slightly odd guy. I was riding a '61 250 Triumph at the time. It was constantly flooded. You had to tickle the carb until the bowl was full to start it. And then you know, petrol would go down my arm. And then there's just oil, the smell of oil from my jeans cause I've been riding this thing for 30 minutes to get to this meeting. So I'd always turn up in leather with a helmet and be smelly and covered in oil and petrol, and then pull out all this art.

Spencer Canon: 

So that became like your personal brand? [Laughs]

Ornamental Conifer:

The design world is great like that because it's small. And it felt like you could become known just being around. So, ie, me smelling like petrol oil. Having an old motorbike that was always breaking down outside pubs and stuff. It was kind of like, 'Oh that's that Conifer guy.' That really helped.

Spencer Canon: 

So you paint your wife's sign. It's kind of an assignment, like for very practical purposes. And you want to be an artist. But at the same time you still need to make money.

Ornamental Conifer:

Well, at that point I was exhibiting art as Nicolai Sclater. So the reason I came up with Ornamental Conifer was because I kind of had this grandiose idea about one day becoming a studio. So I came up with the name, a studio name. And it made total sense to me because as a graffiti writer, I'd always worked anonymously anyway. So it was like, why am I going to use my awkwardly spelled name as my, you know, my business. So I came up with a name and then I was putting work in shows as both people. I was like, Ornamental Conifer was putting pieces in, and Nicolai Sclater was as well.

My work hadn't found its own style yet. So, I guess what I was doing as Ornamental Conifer was kind of mimicking traditional sign painting, then modernizing the colors, simplifying some of the type, and no serifs. It's kind of a little bit more Constructivist approach to the kind of Victorian sign. It was very bold, san serif, Modernist approach, but with all the drop shadows and the bells and whistles and the cast shadows. Whereas Nicolai Sclater was a lot more illustration based. Kind of like a New Yorker cartoons kind of thing. But I was shit at it. I was screen printing them myself, however, and I knew how to elevate the work through the materials. My work has very little substance to it and it didn't have any then because I was just learning.

Spencer Canon: 

What do you mean it has very little substance to it?

Ornamental Conifer:

Oh, I don't think it's as heavily involved as fine artists. My work is more commercial art, or at least, it lives in the commercial realm. But the direction it comes from isn't necessarily commercial. I mean, maybe I'm just a shit judge. I shouldn't judge my work.

I think you get what you’re given. Like my work doesn't go up in people's living rooms very often because you couldn't bear to live with my stuff for 30 years. What I’d call fine art has a story to it. But with my stuff it just says 'We go together like fish and chips.'

Spencer Canon: 

Is it fair to compare the two?

Ornamental Conifer:

Yeah you can sit and stare at fine art until you're dead. Whereas if you've just got a piece that says some words on it, I don’t think that has the same depth.

Spencer Canon: 

You recently did a big project for Hot Wheels. I remember you turned them down at first. Not many people would do that.

Ornamental Conifer:

Initially the first time I turned Hot Wheels down was because they were offering me a modern car. The second time I turned it down was because they came at me with some ideas. And then I said this isn't really how the process works so we can kind of put it on the back burner. Then they came back a third time and were like, 'Look, we really do want to do it. So what do you have in mind?' And they liked what I showed them and they said, 'Yeah, that's great. That's cool.' But I've probably said 'no' more times than I've said 'yes' in my career and it's often helped me. Cause sometimes if I say 'yes,' but I want to say 'no,' then the thing always turns out shit.

Spencer Canon: 

Help me understand your idioms better. There’s messaging over most of your artwork.

Ornamental Conifer:

My messaging has changed over the years. It used to be witty. It used to be a lot more optimistic, and I think I would try and make people laugh a little more. Now it’s a little bit more simple and geared towards a positive note.

I think the wordplay comes in because my parents are both writers, and the first time I ever figured out that you can play around with words, my mom and dad used to always sign my birthday and Christmas card as 'Dumb and Mad.' And they showed me that switching letters creates a whole new meaning to these words. So they just switched the ‘M’ and the ‘D’ around and put them in different places, but then all of a sudden it was a humorous signature and I was like, ‘Fuck, that's cool.’ 

Some of my childhood we had a house in Norway. It was a timber house; a traditional hut built out of logs that are cut and stacked at right angles all the way through the entire house, red paint on every single thing. It was traditional. It's not that my parents were that way inclined or my grandparents are that way, but everything is hand painted and handmade. So we had this big dragon bench and at either end of the bench was Dragon's heads and it was painted red, but then the outside bead was painted green and then his eye was painted yellow and then you had this different colored red tongue. So it was all elaborately done.

And then there's lettering on everything, and there's runes everywhere. But you go into anybody else's house and it's exactly the same. It wasn't that I had an eccentric, artistic ancestry. It was just traditional stuff. You'd sit there and make a bowl because you had nothing else to do and you needed a bowl. And then when the bowl was done, you're like, well, I'm going to paint it so everyone knows it's my bowl and then I'll put my name on it. That was just how it was in this very small village.

Spencer Canon: 

So, since your infancy practically, you’ve been immersed in an environment where there’s no delineation between the practical and the artistic? Seems like that sets up everything else quite nicely.

Ornamental Conifer:

Maybe. When I got older, in England, I got into hip hop in the mid-nineties. British hip hop then was very different to the stuff here [in the US]. I mean, there was a lot of intelligent hip hop coming out of America too, but it was more gangster. Whereas the British guys were talking about waiting in the rain at a bus stop, and wanting a cup of tea, and how much they loved their ex-girlfriend and were sad they haven't seen them. That kind of thing. The storytelling and the witty wordplay, and have it kind of play with rhyme and everything. That really got me going in terms of what I wanted to create as a message because I was never capable of conveying an idea through an abstract concept. It always had to be in your face. You read it and then that's it. But now my motif via my work has changed. So now there's less phrases and it's more repetition of the same word. Typically that's kind of the direction.

So you're reading all these signs, and there's all these posters and billboards, and there's little notices stuck up, and if they all said the same word then maybe people actually start paying attention and learning that word. That's kind of what I do. Repeat it until people notice it and get it.

Spencer Canon: 

Looking at your work. What strikes me most is that your messages are imploring people to look at life differently, or to change their attitudes toward what they’re doing.

Ornamental Conifer:

You know, I was the weird kid riding around on a dirty old Triumph, cause that's what I had grown up around with my dad. But I didn't have any other friends on motorcycles. I didn't know anyone else that rode motorcycles at that point. But I was interested in the punk leather jackets, and I was interested in the club leather jackets, and all these things. I was starting to put these kind of love letter dialogues onto the backs of them. Things like, 'I'm lost without you,' and 'Till the very last breath,' and I was doing them with pink and like one that's saying ‘What makes you so fucking special?’ And lightning bolts and love hearts and stuff. And it was like trying to make sure that when people said, ‘Oh you ride a motorcycle, you're a biker.' Yeah, I'm definitely not a biker. I'm really skinny, don’t like violence, and I'm not that type of biker. I'm a guy that likes riding motorcycles. It's different.

My dad used to laugh at the people who would all drive to a field on their motorcycles and walk around and talk about motorcycles. He was like, 'We used to ride to the field, leave the bike at the hedge and party for a weekend and, you know, listen to music and make things and build stuff. We wouldn't even look at the motorcycles until we got back on them to ride home hungover.' [laughs]

Cause they're vehicles. They're fun vehicles.

Spencer Canon: 

And so those messages you were writing on the jackets and helmets. Was that like an antidote to the attitude you didn't like? Like a Trojan horse snuck into macho motorcycle culture?

Ornamental Conifer:

Maybe. But really I was just trying to set a precedent so that if they did meet me, they didn't expect someone strong and masculine. [laughs] 

Like you kind of know who's gonna turn up.