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Smug One’s Urban Murals Decorate Walls Around the Earth

Australia-born street-artist Smug One utilizes structures and walls across the world as canvases for his vivid portraits. Whether it’s his own relatives, friends, or pop culture characters, Smug subverts that the natural texture and lighting of mural art with his or her pieces. The artist moved to the UK and settled in Scotland a couple of years back.

On his roots on murals: “I originally started out by ice hockey and hanging out around the roads in the night with a bunch of mates just being children and writing our names on walls and listening to hip-hop,” he said, in an interview with London Street-Art Design Magazine. “Graffiti was very much a part of the culture, so everything came together.”

The artist says his moniker doesn’t have a particular origin narrative he can talk about. His first tag at the age of 10 was “smart,” but afterward, the “smug” seemed to fit much better.