I magine a new tennis ball sailing through the air. This ball is meant to tell its story of flying through the air and how it feels. The trajectory is such that the ball is meant to sail over a nearby fence and land into a lush green pasture, a pasture where the sun shines and flowers grow and all there is safe and secure, but suddenly something unexpected happens… And instead of the ball sailing cleanly over the fence as planned, the ball hits the top of the fence and bounces here and there and down and into a nearby wall, then through a broken window and down a flight of grimy stairs and then out through the door of the house and onto the crowded road where it lands in a puddle of dirty oily water. Now the ball is different, instead of being all nice and clean it is a bit torn with bits of broken glass sticking in it, but wait…something else has happened. 
The oil in the water has created a rainbow, a rainbow that has imposed its beautiful colors onto the ball and now the ball is not only different in character but in colour as well. Now the ball has a story to tell which is very different from the one it was intended to tell. Instead of a pleasant pasture with sunshine and flowers the ball now can tell of a different journey. Applying the same principal to the life of a young man born in Birmingham in 1991, in the middle of jungle music genre, you have the story of Curtis Donovan, a child born in the once industrial town of Birmingham England to Jamaican grandparents. As a child Curtis’s natural inclination was to do things with his hands. He made and created things like drawings on paper. And as he grew, so did his ambitions and the scale of the things he made. He managed to graduate from simple drawings on paper to drawings on the sides of buildings. Being a dutiful and respectful son, he wanted to live up to his parents’ expectations, so he finished school, then enrolled at art college with the expectation of becoming an interior designer. This would lead him to university where he studied interior architecture and design. The plan was that he would become an interior designer as well as work with theatre, and other forms of interactive arts. This approach assured his family that he would have an education that would provide him with a profession from which he could make a living. 
Yet all the while he kept his passion for visual art alive by continuing to paint. Having grown up in the peak of analogue technology he was influenced by the raw gritty, handmade multi-cultural elements of society that he reflected and included in his work. By the time he’d finished University, as fate would have it, the opportunities on offer for him to pursue his original plan were minimal, and did not resonate with him, so like the tennis ball thrown across the fence, Curtis found himself deviating from the original plan. But deviation was not a problem because as he moved forward to consider other avenues, he kept listening to his inner voice telling him to follow his passion. And as a result, he turned confidently and wholehearted to the thing that his soul beckoned him to do. He moved to London and began his life as a professional artist. One of the things he did was to deepen his relationship with his past and his long-time love of graffiti, magazine covers, hip hop music and street politics that had influenced him while growing up in the U. K’s second city. As he reflected on all of these influences and combined them with his formal artistic training that included classical as well as contemporary art forms, he began to express himself in a unique way that reflected what he was and what he saw in a way that resonated with others around him. The result was the emergence of a special way of looking at the world that defined him with an art style all his own. A style that reflected all of his interests and influences from graffiti, global culture, multiculturalism, mysticism, underground music as well as street politics. His use of vibrant colour and subject imbues his painting with an articulated urban energy and excitement that literally shouts “I AM HERE.” As Because it is so reflective of so many of his experiences and influences Curtis’s work is Art With Attitude (s). He is currently in the sights of a number of known galleries in London who are talking about exhibitions of Curtis’s work. And as always Curtis is ever on the lookout for new ways to express his creativity. One of the projects in the planning stage is called CRASH. It utilizes his skills as a performance space designer as well as his visual talents with those of live dance, music and spoken word in a staged presentation. Those interested in seeing or buying his work or of working with Curtis can make contact via his agent in London at: [email protected]
