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Mik Artistik is a Leeds-based artist, musician, comedian, writer and performance poet. He graduated from Bradford College and, despite these other outlets, describes painting as his original passion.

In 1983 Mik began his ‘Brown Paper Bag’ series, where he would approach strangers, including, once, Paul Weller, if he could draw their portrait in bio on a paper bag. He would then sell the paper bag to the sitter. Mik Artistik has exhibited extensively throughout his career, including Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield. He has had a recent show of large oil paintings at the Playhouse, Bradford, and in 2003 exhibited a self portrait, Self Portrait with CD at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Mik Artistik’s oil on canvases draw widely on childhood experiences, and often have a surreal, stream of conscious quality. They seem deliberately naive, and the artist’s autobiographical approach has been likened to artists including Billy Childish and Vic Reeves.