I was interviewed by Katrina Burroughs and Nicky Rampley-Clarke for their London Design Festival 2025 special feature in The Times, which came out yesterday — Friday 12th September — in print and online. We spoke about my route into graffiti at 15, how and why I set up RareKind (first a gallery, then a creative agency), as well as my practice today as an artist and the new sculptural furniture I’ve been making in Park Royal. It was a generous and thoughtful conversation that captured both my story and the wider creative energy of the area. Really pleased to see it published in print and online.
The interview –
LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL
David Samuel: ‘Graffiti saved my life’
The artist and designer’s journey led him away from London’s gang culture towards the ‘graff’ scene, resulting in the launch of his own furniture collection.
“Graffiti saved my life,” says David Samuel, the London-based artist, designer and entrepreneur whose abstract work blurs the lines between graffiti and fine art. “I’ve been scribbling since I could hold a pencil and saw my first piece of graffiti when I was five years old, on Edgware Road. It was big and colourful, and really stuck with me.”
The artist — in a paint-splattered T-shirt and wide-brimmed cap that sits just above intense eyes — explains that he started doing graffiti aged 15 to escape the “deep trouble” he found himself in with the gangs around Kilburn, northwest London. “I was trying to find myself,” he says, “so I thought, f*** it, I’m going to start tagging away from the street.” His first port of call? A train carriage on the Underground. “I was doing something creative, getting a name for myself and nobody was getting hurt — just the cost to Transport for London, of course.”
Samuel used the “graff” scene to escape from gang culture, but street art came with its own set of risks, such as climbing bridges, crossing railway tracks and scaling rooftops. He says: “There were plenty of near-misses, and it was scary and stupid, but not nearly as horrifying as what was going on in Kilburn.”
It was when he painted a canvas of his young son, one at the time, that there was another shift in his trajectory. “A friend saw the piece and told me that I was an artist — I hadn’t thought of myself as that before.”
At the turn of the millennium, Samuel left the capital and followed his graffiti partner to Brighton, where he started selling spray paint from his living room to fellow graffiti artists in London, all the while continuing to paint, paint, paint and put on shows to get his work out into the world.
With no formal education, he enrolled on an art course and secured a loan from the King’s Trust (then the Prince’s Trust) to open RareKind, the first graffiti gallery in the UK, together with a record shop next door. “At that point, graffiti had been in the country for 20 years,” Samuel explains, “so people had grown up with it. Banksy had got people to look at the streets in a different way.”
Who were Samuel’s clients? “Young professionals who loved the culture but never knew that they could be part of it.”
A return to London saw him open and close another gallery before founding a creative studio, also called RareKind, which produces bespoke artworks and installations, including film posters for Universal Pictures (The Fate of the Furious, Jurassic World) and murals for the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch (now One Hundred Shoreditch). The latter is what made him fall in love with interiors. “It was a chance to paint indoors and to think about what interior art could look like,” he says. “I’ve been chasing interiors ever since.”
During Covid, Samuel began experimenting with 3D models of his artworks, which is when a friend suggested that one of the sculptures could be used as a stool. Encouraged, he made a few more that sold, so he learnt CAD [computer-aided design] to create 2D drawings and 3D models of his sketches, and sought the expertise of fellow creatives in the studios at Park Royal Design District.
He credits them as a collaborator on The Beings, a set of sculptural furniture being showcased at London Design Festival. The collection includes stools and tables that are inspired by his abstract murals and explore the themes of connection, movement and everyday ritual. “I want to create artwork that people can live with,” he explains. “It’s another way to express myself — I have to keep making things to keep telling my story.” Sustainability is key, as each piece is made from FSC-certified birch ply, recycled materials and low-impact water-based paints produced locally.
Does he miss the thrill of tagging trains? “I’d love to be an active tagger but I took what the culture showed me I was capable of, and used that to help me grow as an artist,” he says. “Graffiti is great, but what I love most is when people find out who they are because of it — it helps them become them.”
The Beings is free (no ticket required), North Acton Square, Park Royal Design District, September 13–14
David Samuel LDF Times Interview Paper
David Samuel LDF Times Interview Digital