✱ Finlay Gašpar is an artist, illustrator and designer based in Manchester, UK.
His work is created from an exploration in the play between reality and imagination. He says, "they both separately inspire the liveliness of my creative practice, I want to create a place with its own inner life whilst familiarising that very thing."
"My way of creating came from locking myself in my bedroom at 17 to improve on my drawing and building my own world. Then at 19, I started to capture the expressions of sound (lyrical abstraction and cartoonism), which led to a 4 year exploration in automatism and biomorphic forms. Now, I depict people, animals, objects, and environments with that same energy, aiming to capture the rhythm of life and the imperfection in play that connects us all."
For commercial enquiries please contact → finlaygaspar.studio@gmail.com
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Clients
→ JNBY → Limbo Days → The Slumdogs
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Culture & Influence
My creative outlook has always been shaped by curiosity and discovery. Growing up, summers were spent between San Martino di Castrozza in the Italian Dolomites, and Rosnov in the Czech countryside. Both these places sparked a lifelong fascination with nature, animals, adventure and atmosphere.
Back home in England, I spent lots of time as a child at my grandparents recreating newspaper comic strips. My grandad was an incredibly talented painter, writer and craftsperson. He was offered to be an apprentice comic artist for the Sheffield Star after finishing school, but chose to be a trader as his friends were and he needed quick money. He encouraged me to be creative from an early age.
During my college years studying Art & Design, I was drawn to urban exploration and graffiti, where I learnt the blend of rhythm and expression. Painting walls early in my career led me to discover lots about my practice - a fascination with the textures of urban walls, and the value of owning imperfections.
That same sense of searching runs through other parts of my life now - where I go vinyl digging, chasing rare records and unexpected sounds, and attending fashion shows across Europe. Music, fashion, art, and the streets constantly intersect in my practice. They all speak to finding beauty in what’s real, personal, and in motion.
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BA(Hons) Illustration with Animation @ Manchester School of Art 2021
