We continue interviews with artists in Fecal Face's 10 Year Anniversary Show opening September 10th @The Luggage Store with an after party @Mezzanine following right after w/ bands and DJs... Ian Francis is a London based artist who shows at Lazarides Gallery with the now infamous Banksy. We've been following Ian's work for years and have always been a fan. It's an honor to have him included in our 10 Yr. show.

In the year 2000 I was in university studying illustration. I was terrible at illustration - I basically just wanted to do my own work, had no interest in following a brief, and I struggle with deadlines that are shorter than a couple of months - but I had no idea at the time that there were galleries who would show the kind of work that I wanted to do. Luckily the course I was on had a pretty broad interpretation of what illustration was. I think actually for the most part I was either getting drunk or sitting around with my friends drinking coffee, procrastinating and having pretentious conversations about artwork without really doing much.

Over the last 10 years my work has changed quite a bit, particularly in the way I actually make pieces. Back in university I was doing mixed media work with a lot more collage, messing around with photocopiers and gluing things on to boards. The first few years after I graduated I was scanning bits of drawings and paintings I'd done into the computer and layering things together in Photoshop. For the last four or five years I've switched to doing mixed media work straight on canvas, primarily painting in acrylic or oil. Although the process has changed quite a lot, I think I'd have been happy back then with where my work has ended up conceptually and stylistically. I think having worked in various different ways helps what I do now.

I've got no idea, I always like idly speculating about The Future, but I can't remember what I thought back then.