the eastern beat

Marcus Goldson is a painter and illustrator who set up camp in Budapest in the early 90’s and has been living and working in Hungary ever since. Locals and visitors to Budapest may be familiar with his visual diaries of life in the city displayed in some well known (and not so well known) bars and cafés around town and you may have come across his illustrations in magazines like Forbes Hungary, Time Out Budapest or ADAC Reisemagazin. 

Marcus works with his wife, Ildiko, from their studio in Budapest. She brings a keen eye and a sense of business focus to the partnership, and will be in touch with you when answering your enquiries, processing your orders and dealing with any requests for trade, commission, cooperation or press related issues.

Where do you come from and what brought you to Budapest?

I come from Kenya originally, but I moved to England when I was thirteen. I studied sculpture and art history in the UK. After that, as I had to pay off my debt to the university, I took jobs in London, trying to stay in the art world, but doing odd jobs mostly and that's how I met my Hungarian wife. We came to Budapest in 1993 and we’ve been living here since then. I really enjoyed living here from the beginning. It was something new, something exotic. 

What was it that you found interesting when you moved here?

I had no intention of coming to this part of the world, it was a big adventure to be honest. I didn't know how long I’d be here, if I'd stay here. I made it all new, obviously people do the same things everywhere and everything that I needed was here.  It was just the grandness of it, the grand buildings - it’s like a theater backdrop and people acting out their everyday lives in front of them. That's why I try and put a lot of the buildings into my pictures. It was exotic and for me it was like fresh information for painting, which I had never really tried before. I avoided painting landmarks like the Chain Bridge, I'm more attracted to everyday life and I think it’s more honest. It was important for me at the time to show it. There’s a lot more living history now that I’m interested in. Budapest is almost like a town, but with the structure of a city.

I like the culture, all aspects of it. Most people I think are fairly honest, if they aren't feeling great they would say they are not feeling great and I kind of like that. I enjoy the sort of dry humor of people here and part of that is in my work anyway and that's also me, I can be cynical and sarcastic and Hungarians have quite a bit of that actually. 

Was it the city that inspired you to start illustrating?

I think I wanted to carry on with sculpture, but maybe I just wasn't that imaginative at the time and it was easier to travel around the city with a sketchbook. I turned to watercolor and I started with a daily record illustrating the people I saw and I found interesting or funny. It was much easier to express myself this way rather than working with sculptural pieces. A lot of my sculpture was semi-abstract, going into abstraction, but I pulled back from that and started drawing. 

What was the feedback of people here?

Generally good, I think a lot of my pictures simply remind them of what they’ve already seen, it’s a reaffirmation of what goes on around them, types of people, characters, that’s essentially it.

Do you sketch on the move?

I draw wherever I can, I stop and draw and then complete from memory. I generally draw in the sketchbook and I embellish it. Mostly people, places, sometimes I just write down a word and I remember the place. Generally I use drawing from observation, if i had details like a coffee table or a bottle of coke and it’s a big picture, I would put a bottle of Coke in front of me and draw it. If it’s something seriously complicated, then occasionally I might use a computer to help, but generally I don't like that because I like to keep it as fresh as possible. I rely on my instincts for what is right and what is wrong rather than a computer screen telling me this is what it looks like.