Rider’s Lens: Jody Barton’s Illustrations

Hi, I’m Jody Barton, an artist or illustrator or something from South East England. I’ve been around for ages, just cycling about and doing drawings of anything and everything, making them into books and zines. I have lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, for a long while now, and I still relish the cycling civility and general peaceableness of the place every day. Mostly, my work is literally drawings, and mostly my subject matter is something I call the “politics of personal experience.” I also try, sometimes successfully, to be funny in my work, and I’m going to keep trying. I’m just a very obsessed, double-lucky person who’s managed to keep going with art as my job.

My weekly routine is pretty regularised. I’m a hometown kinda person. I don’t really travel outside the wider Copenhagen area. I like to be at home to pick up my kid from school, and I’m not big on aeroplanes. I go to my studio in town most days to draw and to communicate with anyone who might be interested in using my work for something. I’m fairly uncompromising about what I do and who I work for—I try not to sell my soul for a few potatoes. I worked for Omnium Cargo for a long time, doing graphics and illustrations, and I still have the big old cargo bike. I ride that everywhere to carry my work kit, put on shows, go to the post office, and pick up the groceries. It makes for a great campout vehicle and kid carrier, too.

• 
• 

Going back in time, when I was at school, I was in trouble a lot and couldn’t concentrate on lessons. I was into wearing odd clothes and looking weird, and I got bullied, beaten and followed a fair bit. I think it made me determined to be awkward and stubborn. I spent a lot of time in the art room between meetings with the headmaster and school guidance folks. I wasn’t bad, more just sullen. Anyway, I got obsessed with ideas and feelings and drawings then, and it never stopped. I went to London to study at art school after a period of trying to be a musician. And since then, I’ve been mostly doing art for my job. I spent my first cheque from doing an album cover on a racing bike. Bikes and art are one and the same in my mind.

I realised fairly recently that a lot of my favourite projects are kind of bike-related, and I think the absolute favourite of these bike/art things is the artwork for the 2016 Europe Cycle Messenger Champs. It was the perfect combination of a killer organisation team, and I had vast enthusiasm for it. The messenger community in Copenhagen has formed the backbone of my social life ever since, and I still enjoy a nice messenger championship hangout. We also go bikepacking, of course. It’s keeping me young! Alley cats also provide a ready canvas for a slice of art. The projects I like best are where someone just says “go for it” and they actually mean it—they often say it and don’t. I can make a huge amount of work on a project, usually way more than is needed. You know, I get asked to make a T-shirt, and there’s enough for a book. If I’m happy, then I’m making.

I’m inspired constantly. I think social media is a mental health chaos pit, but it also lets us see an incredible amount of really crazy-good artwork and really challenges your ability to take on new ideas. It can be a distraction, and sometimes you just have to read a whole Karl Marx essay to recover. I really get a lot out of reading novels, and I could recommend quite a few if we meet.

Ever since I was a tiny kid, I’ve been obsessed with bikes. I remember pressing my face to the window of the local Raleigh shop in town every day after work and debating the merits of the various Grifters, Bombers, Burners, and Choppers on display. I grew up in a pretty peaceful suburban situation that backed onto a seemingly endless farmland. We would do all the normal suburban kid stuff on bikes, and it was a blast. When I moved to London, I was obsessed with riding between buses and emulating the most dangerous of the bike messengers—chasing them and joining the alleycats on Fridays. Everything in Copenhagen seems mega tame as a result! Bikes to me are about the silence, the speed, the rush of blood, the danger, the racing along, the weaving between trees and all the social stuff too. The best.

To me, the bike is also a symbol of self-reliance. I never want to have a bike I can’t mend myself. I want to own all the tools to do so, and I am also militant about certain technological limits. No electronic shifters and no more than 10 gears on the back. Ten fingers, 10 toes, 10 gears—fight me. It’s got to be mechanical. And tubeless. Don’t get me started. Full retrogrouch.

My life is very regular. I spend time with my family, I ride my bike along muddy paths and through woodlands, I draw in my studio, and I drink tea with my friends. Maybe an alley cat, maybe a campout; we have Sweden right over the water, which is officially bikepacking heaven. I’d like to do some long tours in southern Europe now that my kid is older. Maybe even take the kid! They are extremely athletic, but currently, it’s all about football. I’m not going to push it.

• 
• 

My work is very unprofitable. Maybe you’d look at all the fun things I’ve done and imagine me well-padded. Actually, being an artist with any principles or an allergy to bullshit is quite costly. I’m living on a shoestring, and I’m okay with it. As for my creative ambitions, I’d love to do just… more. I like what I do. I would like to travel more in Europe to make wall paintings or do socially uplifting projects that support the removal of cars from cities. People who live in well-managed cities really don’t need motor vehicles in their leisure lives, and electric cars are not the answer. In Copenhagen, you can see the possibility, and it isn’t complicated. The answer is a rigorous provision of uninterrupted segregated bike lanes that you’d be happy to let a seven-year-old ride on alone.

I recently made a bikepacking board game, Dirty Filthy Bikepacking, and it was the most amazing opening into a very new and daunting world. I used Kickstarter to raise initial investment, and the sheer pressure of being in charge of writing, gameplay, design, artwork, a million drawings, and the absurd complexity and expense of international shipping has been very challenging. But also a learning experience. I have newfound admiration for anyone making things and getting them somewhere without losing vast amounts of money in the process.

• 
• 

Now I have this bikepacking game that is kind of my entire focus. There are so many phone calls and emails to write, so many details. I’m trying to organise USA distribution right now, as well as other places like Australia. It’s very exciting. Spreadsheets are all too pervasive. Soon, I want to get back to just drawing mad shit every day.

Jody’s Illustration Gear

I use a combination of scanned marker pen and straight-up Wacom tablet Photoshop drawings. I’ve been using the Wacom for so long now, and I have it set up just so. I often can’t tell the difference between scanned ink and the digital lines now, when I look back at old projects. I don’t really do field work much at the moment, but I do have this thing I do where I draw on balloons at the skatepark and use them as a printing press.

You can explore more of Jody’s work at JodyBarton.co.uk and on Instagram.

Further Reading

Make sure to dig into these related articles for more info…