Video: Jake Carlshausen et al., 2021, Christopher Hummel | Graff My Train, 09:36, DADAA.
Hullo there! My name is Christopher Hummel and I've got autism. I love to go on imaginary holidays around the world and paint pictures of trains with graffiti on them.
I paint trains because I love everything about them — absolutely everything. Trains make me feel relaxed, especially the Transperth A-series. I only paint trains with graffiti because I like graffiti, I think it looks pretty.
I have been painting for more than ten years. I taught myself to paint and now I have painted over three-hundred paintings of graffitied trains. I paint because I find it therapeutic. It suits me.
- Christopher Hummel
Christopher Hummel (aka. ‘Graff My Train’) is a self-taught young emerging artist with autism from Perth, Western Australia. He is a extraordinarily prolific artist, completing dozens of acrylic on canvas works every year, all with exceptional skill, dedication and attention to detail.
Needless to say, Christopher loves graffitied trains. He sees beauty in them where others often do not, and so he has chosen to make them the focus of his creative arts practice. His work is deeply embedded in an aesthetic appreciation and nostalgic sentimentality for graffitied trains. Each of his confident, energetic brushstrokes in his wild, unfussy renderings are made in honour of this muse. It is l’art pour l’art; it exists for its own sake, completely enraptured by their neglected worldly beauty.
Although Christopher’s artistic intent is simply to pay homage to graffitied trains in his work, the outcome is undeniably political. Graffiti is often vilified in the Western cultural hegemony as vandalism, a destructive affront to private property. Christopher on the other hand chooses to treat graffiti as something worth honouring: an act of public mark-making and artistic expression. In doing so, Christopher translates graffiti into the more traditional and culturally acceptable artform of his chosen medium: acrylic on canvas – an artform none deny praise when executed masterfully. Only the context is lost in Christopher’s translation, while the subject matter remains essentially the same, underlining a cultural bias in Western art standards and calling the legitimacy of graffiti as art into question.
Since his first exhibition in 2017, Christopher has established himself in the Australian arts community, as well as local graffiti scenes with his iconic, award-winning artwork. In 2020, Christopher was selected to present his art at AGWA for the Arts for Autism Exhibition, where his skills garnered him a Merit Award. Christopher went on to win the Contemporary Art Award at the As We Are Art Awards later that year. The following year, Christopher was the annual artist in residence for the AWESOME International Arts Festival, with whom he premiered his work to the world at the State Theatre of WA. Soon after, Christopher was invited to showcase his talents again as a finalist in the prestigious Joondalup Invitation Art Prize alongside his contemporaries. For every work Christopher has exhibited, he has sold dozens more to collectors, friends and fans alike, and will undoubtedly sell and exhibit countless more throughout his burgeoning career. These are just some of his ever-expanding achievements and accolades.
Today, Christopher continues to spend most of his waking hours painting, paying tribute to the trains, graffiti art and graffiti artists he loves so much. He plans to paint, exhibit and sell many more works in the years to come and has bigger plans to someday see the graffitied trains of the world for himself.
Christopher currently attends DADAA several days a week where he is assisted in his artistic pursuits by a team of arts mentors.
Support Christopher's journey by purchasing art and merchandise from his official web store or by following him on Instagram — @graffmytrain
If you would like to commission Christopher, request to purchase any of his original artwork that isn't listed on his web store, or just generally get in touch, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Photo: Jake Carlshausen, 2021, Portrait of Christopher Hummel aboard a Transperth A-series, DADAA.