Living Infinity
When I painted this triptych of album covers for the up and coming jazzy hip hop group Living Infinity, my focus was on bringing the core concepts of their music to life.
I met several times with the lead of the group, Carl, to understand the meaning of the music and to discuss how I could create its visual counterpart.
The two EPs and album tell the story of the group’s journey, their questions about their purpose in life and their pursuit of their passion for music. The feel of each song varies between optimistic and driven by opportunity, and frustrated by the struggle they face to succeed in the big city.
Central to this was an unadulterated love of music. To convey this, Carl already had an idea to use a picture of himself as a baby, completely enthralled listening to music, clamping oversized headphones tightly over his ears. I therefore took this as the central image and we worked out how to layer in further themes around it.
The second theme was about the journey that the group members were making through life and their continued growth. Since there were 2 EPs and an album, we decided to use the same central subject (the baby) for all 3 covers, yet evolving between each of them. We chose an ink sketch for the first cover, followed by two versions of the same oil portrait – one half-finished, then one fully completed.
The final concept to capture was about the combined opportunity and hardship experienced when trying to succeed in large metropolitan cities such as London. To highlight this, we decided to set the baby on a rooftop with a hypothetical ‘World’ cityscape in the background, which also provided a strong compositional juxtaposition with the baby.
Last of all, we decided upon a style to fit the music – expressive and high contrast. To really ensure that I brought out the feel of the music as much as possible, I also listened to the music while painting to put me in the right mood.
