For many artists, inspiration comes from experiences they had when they were
young children. For DALEK, these experiences were nothing short of
traumatic. “When I was in second grade, these workers were building a deck
on the back of our house. There were lots of wooden stakes being used as
markers with very sharp points. I saw the workers throwing lots of wood out
of the back of their truck. Being a kid, I tried to imitate them. But I
was a dumb kid and I threw one of the wooden stakes straight up in the air.
It came down and planted its self right in my skull. It did a good job of
sitting in there for a few seconds. It bled a lot and was a very messy
scene. My mom was pretty stressed.”

This painful experience could have something to do with the amount of
decapitations and puncture wounds often present in DALEK’s Space Monkey
pieces. These creatures have become a calling card for the artist, and
continue to evolve in scope. “The Space Monkeys are human representations
for me. They are self-portraits in a lot of ways, and also portraits of
humanity. They are floating in nothingness. I didn’t want it to be a
cartoon strip, like a Space Monkey in a house, then a Space Monkey in a car,
so I avoided all of that. I didn’t want to develop scenery like a house and
trees. Once you put Space Monkeys in that kind of context it looses any
kind of fine art quality to me.”



Somewhere between head injuries and Space Monkeys, DALEK found time to
become a respected graffiti artist and work extensively in the skateboard
industry. As for his future with the Space Monkeys, nothing is certain.
“That’s kind of the beauty of it. I don’t have a clue. They always
transform rapidly from me drawing the same thing repeatedly. They switch up
in undetermined ways. Where it goes depends on a lot of things, but as long
as people are interested in seeing them I’ll be able to pursue them, grow
them out and work with them. Obviously, I would love to be 90 years old and
cranking out some form of the Space Monkeys.”

www.dalekart.com