Mr Penfold — Colour, Rhythm, and the Courage to Do Your Own Thing
Some artists chase realism. Mr Penfold (Tim Ford) chases rhythm: shape, line, balance, and colour tuned until they hum. The nickname stuck from school; the drawing never stopped. He started writing at 11–12, moved into characters by 15, then rode that early, nameless moment before “street art” was a label—logos, stencils, playful figures—until his taste and hand matured into the bold abstraction he’s known for now.
From tags to abstraction
Penfold’s path mirrors a generation: graffiti first, then the wider field. He’s candid about the distinction. Graffiti, to him, is a lifestyle—trains, racking paint, living the code. “Street art,” as a label, feels commercialised. He’d rather call it what it is: art, murals—no taxonomy required. What matters is whether the work sings on the wall.
That shift from letters to shapes wasn’t a brand exercise; it was a reckoning. He realised he was painting what was expected of “Mr Penfold” rather than what he wanted. The correction was simple and brave: stop performing, start exploring. The result is the language you see now—clean geometry, playful tension, confident colour.
Process: spontaneity with a spine
Penfold’s method is deceptively loose. He’ll sketch for two minutes, pick a palette, then go. No elaborate pre-vis. No death by planning. It’s the jazz of composition—lay a form, counter-punch with another, keep the rhythm moving. That spontaneity is how the style evolves: by letting the painting talk back.
He’s learned the hard, practical bits too. Walls fade; landlords paint over; buildings come down. So the studio work matters—paintings and prints made with materials that last, work that will look as good in forty years as it does today. Legacy isn’t a statue; it’s an archive that doesn’t turn to dust.
What the work is for
He’s not trying to sermonise. No manifesto hidden in the shapes. The aim is generous: make something bright, balanced, and beautiful—eye-candy with craft. If you love it, great. If you hate it, that’s still a reaction, which means the work did its job. The real win is attention: getting people to notice their own streets again. A fresh mural turns a familiar walk into a new place.
Places, people, and the pink-nose story
Penfold’s travelled for paint—jobs that range from the surreal (flown to China to decorate hoardings) to the slightly daft (ten hours in a stairwell breathing a fog of solvent). There’s a grimly funny image of him waking in the night, shivering, sweating pigment—an accidental reminder that murals are physical labour as much as aesthetics.
Reactions shift with context. In some places the work lands immediately; in others (he mentions China) people didn’t know what to do with it. Kids usually get it. That’s consistent everywhere: colour is a universal language.
New Brighton: not your tired seaside cliché
He arrived half-expecting faded arcades and pie-and-chips. Found forward motion instead: good food, current fashion, a project with ambition. That matters for young locals. If your town shows you culture on your doorstep, the automatic plan to escape at 18 gets complicated. You might stick around and build.
The now and the next
Penfold keeps it modest: enough projects to pay the rent, keep moving, keep painting. America is calling again—walls to find, maybe a show in Atlanta. There’s also a furniture idea brewing: coffee tables and objects that carry his language into daily use. It fits him: functional surfaces that still carry rhythm and colour.
Philosophy in plain English
Labels are secondary. Call it art, call it a mural. The name doesn’t change the feeling in front of the wall.
Do it because you want to. Expectation is a trap.
Make it last. Use materials worthy of the work.
Spontaneity is a teacher. Start, respond, adjust, repeat.
Reaction matters more than consensus. Love or hate is better than indifference.
Legacy: leave work that lives
Murals fade. That’s the bargain of public art. So he invests in canvases and prints with archival intent—pieces that will still hold colour decades on. That’s the legacy he wants: the work itself, durable and recognisable.
Dream room, dream company
Given a time machine, he’d want to jam in a studio with the greats—Matisse, Miró—just to trade energy, to stand in the birth of a scene. Not a formal collab; a conversation in paint. That tells you where he’s aiming: not at trends, but at a lineage of shape and colour that feels timeless.
Advice for younger artists
Go for it. Make mistakes—lots of them—and learn fast. Study widely, but don’t bite. Build your own visual language and keep pushing it. The only way through is work.
