How artists cross the invisible line between being overlooked and being undeniable

The aardvark is not a celebrity species. It does not make headlines. It lives in the margins, working the night shift, shaping ecosystems while the world sleeps. Most people could live their entire lives without ever thinking about one. Turning it into wallpaper felt like correcting an imbalance. Not through force, but through repetition. The same creature appearing again and again until it stopped being strange. Until it became familiar. Until it belonged.

This is the real foundation of a thriving artist. The world does not reward you for creating something once. It rewards you for staying. For continuing. For placing your signal into the environment so consistently that it becomes part of the landscape. Most artists disappear too early. Not because they lack talent, but because they lack endurance. They create something meaningful, release it into the void, and when nothing immediately happens, they assume it failed. But nothing in nature works like that. Patterns only emerge through accumulation.

My Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet wallpapers are an extension of that realisation. Each pattern takes a creature most people have never heard of and gives it presence. Animals that exist beyond the narrow spotlight of human attention. By repeating them, they stop being invisible. They stop being anomalies. They begin to exist in the shared visual language of everyday life.

Wallpaper has always been treated as background. Something passive. Something decorative. But background is where belief quietly forms. It seeps into people without resistance. It reshapes familiarity. It makes the strange feel normal. And once something feels normal, people stop fearing it. They start caring about it… That’s my hope.

Who are your favorite people to be around?

Through my podcast, Fork in the Road, I have found my people. Artists scattered across the planet, each walking their own narrow path between starving and thriving. The podcast became more than conversation. It became proof that isolation is often an illusion. Your people exist. They are just outside your immediate field of view. Technology, when used intentionally, becomes a bridge rather than a trap. It allows artists to find resonance instead of competing for scraps inside crowded systems that were never designed for their wellbeing.

If you are surrounded by people who do not understand what you are building, it does not mean you are alone. It means you are early. Starting a podcast is not about chasing an audience. It is about sending out a signal. Over time, the right people recognise it. They recognise themselves in it.

The aardvark wallpaper taught me that thriving is not a sudden event. It is a pattern that forms slowly. Each piece of art is another repetition. Another quiet declaration that you are still here. Still building. Still paying attention to what matters.

Persistence is how rare animals survive. Persistence is how ecosystems recover. Persistence is how artists cross the invisible line between being overlooked and being undeniable.

Buy – Aardvark Wallpaper Print $256AUD