Thomas Graven was born in 1995 in Fréjus but currently works and lives in Hong Kong. Living in the South of France, born from Dutch parents, Graven would regularly visit museums and art galleries in France and in the Netherlands. The artist was educated in London and the Netherlands where he studied computational arts.

In 2007, Graven learns about Murakami, Nara and Rokkaku in a gallery in Amsterdam and slowly becomes influenced by Kawaii Art and Asian culture over the years. By 2020, the artist would start painting more regularly and his career begins to take shape. At the same time he would be communicating every day with his long distance girlfriend through a Chinese online application called weChat where he would become mesmerized and heavily inspired by its cute animated stickers used to express emotion.

Painting with acrylic on canvas, Graven unleashes his inner child by reminiscing about his past. His frogs, happy and mindless, engaging in basic human activity, creating an innocent profile of the artists childhood.

The artist worked as an art consultant for many years providing an optimal environment to amalgamate his artistic and technological skills. Graven has the rare ability to imbue real human character in his amphibious subjects, evoking an esoteric feeling that they are in fact the artist himself. He is an emerging artist with a promising trajectory.

Education

2018 Master of Computational Arts, Goldmisths University, London UK

2017 Bachelor of Computer Science, University of Utrecht, Utrecht NL