A CREATIVE artist has had his incredible work recognised by a famous actor.
James Cook, 25, form Braintree, is a typewriter artist, that draws portraits and landscape pictures using numbers, letters, and other punctuation.
He explained how he first got into typewriter art.
James said: “I went to Braintree Sixth Form, and studied A Level Art, and as part of that course, I came across this unusual old article about an artist Paul Smith, that used to create drawings on typewriters.
“My jaw dropped looking at his work, and that is where I learnt from.
“He did this for more than 70 years, and it was great reference materials, it was like instructional copy.
“I zoomed in to see how he pieced together the drawings, and then it’s just about practice.”
James has now been using typewriters to create pieces of work for years and has created more than 200 pictures.
Some take a week to type, however his longest work was about a month, with more than 100,000 estimated individually typed letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
James’ work began to get noticed, and he found himself being invited onto a talk show in the U.S.
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He said: “I was contacted by an American TV producer One to go on NBC’s Kelly Clarkson show.
“I created a picture of Blake Shelton as a child, as he used to do beauty pageants, and then Kelly guessed the portrait as a bit of fun on the show.
“It was through that conversation with the producer, they said they only just had Tom Hanks on.
“I had already created a picture of Tom, which was done simply because he collects typewriters, I know he loves them and, if someone sends a fan letter, he writes back using a typewriter.
“I sent a picture of him to his production company, and it was only eight months later that I got something back.
“By then I forgot about it and was overjoyed to see it come back with a nice little message and signature from Tom Hanks.”
James held an exhibition at his London studio earlier this month and plans to have another one in the summer in Maldon.
To see James’ work, visit jamescookartwork.co.uk.
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