With a career spanning over 25 years, Perth artist Stormie Mills has diligently carved out a nook for himself amongst street art’s elite. With his emotive characters, and distinctive illustrative style he has managed to captivate audiences around the globe, while working alongside other prolific names such as Banksy. We spoke to him ahead of his spooky new show about his artistic evolution and how it feels to have ‘made it’.

According to Mills, ‘death forgives’—a sentiment that alludes to a life lived mostly on the road, and  on the edge of the law. After travelling to many places as a child, a 17-year-old Mills took a solo trip to New York where he met a bunch of subway painters—a catalyst for creating his passion for public art.  Although his works have been shown in galleries for a number of years now, Mills’ roots are firmly set in the streets.

“It’s where I started and it informs all the other work I do,” he explains. “I think the streets are quite dynamic places to paint, and dynamic in how transient those works can be…it seems less risky, almost like I know there’s a finite life to this work, therefore mistakes are less important.”

Although he considered it a normal part of his life, constantly moving and having to make new friends led to a sense of isolation for Mills, and inadvertently to a keen interest in the human condition—particularly the experience of loneliness. Art became his respite from the feeling.

“Everybody goes through periods of their life where they feel disconnected from everything, so in a sense when I am examining these things in paintings I am also trying to reach a level of comfort with these emotions.”

Over the years Mills’ works have been displayed in both public and private contexts, and have even taken sculptural form. For Mills, the experience of his works displayed in galleries, and those on traditional walls, is different according to the particular piece itself.

“If the works are like the ones I want to do which are sort of, on the periphery of people’s vision then I think there is an element of surprise and curiosity about them. I’ve never really been or felt like I’ve been a kind of conquistador of an artist that feels it’s necessary to put my work in a bold space because I feel that would be too confrontational for what I am trying to do. The context of my work is about the landscape and where that character fits within that landscape. I think seeing works in a gallery is a very different experience.”

Drawn from a combination of life observation, conversational snippets, and pictorial references, his paintings have become a way to not only express and understand the ‘evil that men do’, but also depict the sense of hope that one can find in a bad situation. Mills’ peculiar characters, and consistent use of dark colour palettes, have set his work apart from other urban artists.

“I like the simplicity of my palette, it feels “film noir” to me, as if the image is a still somewhere in the middle of a silent movie and you could create your own narrative as you view the work.”

Another element that creates grittiness in his paintings is dirt, which he mixes into a lot of his pieces, to create a similar texture to that of a wall.

“When I did my first solo show in 1999 I was really struggling with the canvas… so I spent time messing up the surface before I was able to work on it, I wanted what a wall felt like and that sense of ease that I’d had from painting walls since 1984. I started to use old gluggy paint in preparation to work and then I started putting dirt into the paint… now I collect the dirt from the studio floor, mix it with paint and use it. It wears out the brushes etc. and has that essence of where I started.”

Asked about his fame and recognition as one of the world’s best, Mills humbly explains it as something he doubts on a regular basis.

“For better or for worse I operate on a personal philosophy of ‘I am my own best competitor’ and so in the process of doing that, I am constantly challenging whatever it was I did last, in the hope that whatever I do next will be better again.”

Even with his international success, last year, one of Mills’ works was accidentally painted over in his hometown, upsetting the artist and the local council who take pride in collaborating with local urban artists.

“It didn’t really bother me a whole lot that the work itself was gone. What bothered me was that it was removed at the bequest of the Western Australian police force who thought it would be a good idea to use the wall as a sting to catch other kids doing graffiti and subsequently prosecute them.”

“I have painted a new one since – and that work was about the death of freedom and about the whole scenario itself but that subsequently was collapsed by developer’s ineptitude but I will paint it again…”

In the meantime, Mills has occupied himself by producing works for his latest exhibition, entitled Things That Go Bump in the Night. Initially motivated by the horror comics that he read in his local deli as a child, these new works are inspired by Halloween, exploring themes such as iconography, costumes, monsters and commonality. They serve to motivate viewers to re-examine their habit of judging others based on appearance, and feature Mills’ favoured dark palette, along with some ghoulish new characters.

“There’s a lot of different tangents, I guess I went down in part due to the gaps in painting these works. There’s been some great pieces I think, opportunities for wandering down a path with a process, or a different technique that I might not have done otherwise.”

“I’m considering more backgrounds in works and [am] less fixated on perfect tonal shades… being looser perhaps, looking to make more mistakes in the process. The subject matter I think has grown and incrementally developed.”

With years of work under his belt, Mills continues to create work that is both thought-provoking and challenging, a feat he attributes to his passion for art and fortunate position in being allowed to do what he loves full-time. As for future plans, the artist has a number of projects in the works, including a movie and two projects in Tasmania later in the year. After that, he may “just throw a dart at a map…and go looking for that remote spot in the middle of nowhere and paint something.”

Things That Go Bump in the Night is showing now at Perth’s There Is gallery until November 8th 2015.

Words by Radhika Chopra