Giant Personality

Mike Giant opens up about his new book, his Zen lifestyle and his ever-evolving artwork

In Buddhism they say “the path is the goal.” That path is pursuing enlightenment by living consciously in everyday life. If ever an artist embodied that pursuit, it’s Mike Giant.

Giant, who expresses his artistic vision in numerous mediums from tattoos and graphic design to large-scale graffiti works, has built his life around his art, meditation, and conscious living. He’s an outspoken advocate for various causes close to his heart like bicycle riding over cars and the benefits of medicinal cannabis. Having just published the biggest of his numerous art books to date called Eternal; Giant has reached an exciting new height in his art career. The book is a “cross section” of his “graffiti, tattoos, photography, commercial illustration, (and) mixed media work” over the about the last twenty years. Now Giant has relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco with his clothing company Rebel8 and is embarking on new art work inspired by a new city. He is experimenting with creating music for the first time, continues to deepen into his meditation practice and is totally open to a new chapter in his creative life.

Giant has been praised for his clean and confident line work, which one can see across the multiple mediums in which he works. He credits his style with having been developed from encouragement of his parents, who gave him magic markers when he was a child to draw with: “I use sharpie markers for just about everything that I do on paper. It’s kind of a kid’s tool, it’s not really a professional art tool, but it’s always worked, so I stuck with it.” From working with a tool that one cannot erase, he developed a style that is not only visible in his ink drawings, but also in his tattoos and graffiti work. Giant finds balance and fulfillment in creating within these multiple mediums: “There’s something about being so constricted to work on a tattoo and then go out on a street and paint as big as I can. I need that balance.”

Much in the same way that Giant finds the Zen approach to using spray paint, inking a drawing or inking a tattoo, Giant has found a way to integrate his meditation practice into his art practice, “I sit on meditation cushions a certain way when I do the formal (meditation) practice and just about a year or two ago I started using the same cushions to sit when I draw, so my body knows that I mean business when it’s in that pose.”

Additionally, Giant is openly an advocate for medicinal cannabis legalization, which can be seen in some of his artwork: “I’m a cannabis user. I’m really open about that too. I think it’s great. I think it’s the best medicine. I can’t take regular pharmaceutical drugs now because it wrecks my stomach, so cannabis is the only medicine that I can really use now. I think it’s really preposterous that a plant is illegal. I don’t like tomatoes. If it was up to me I would make tomatoes illegal, even though people love tomatoes, but that’s ridiculous for me to think that I have the power to just decide. It’s the same.”

Giant has explored the use of cannabis and its effect upon his art practice: “I lived in Amsterdam for a while and was able to experiment between indicas and sativas and really have a good personal understanding of how those effect my life in general. I’m glad that American now is finally catching up.”

In the end, when Giant reflects on how he incorporates all of his life experiences into his multifaceted artwork, he muses “It’s the only way I know how to do it. “

www.mikegiant.com