Another of the most recent additions to the Rugged Art family, when I first saw TurfOne’s pieces I knew I had to get him involved but didn’t know how to capture his illustrators skill on a woven rug. In the end I asked him to focus on a character. The design he has done is a crazy rug, and it is also deep – heavy symbolism at play! I have since seen the character develop in his work, and become known as the midget. Watch out Illuminati business assholes – we got your number and we gonna take out your eye...

In a nutshell:
Turf One is a Parisian born, Montreal-based artist.
He started doing graffiti in Paris in the late eighties.
In the early nineties, he specialized in characters.
He likes to create characters interacting with old decaying architectures
and to use any kind of junk that he can find to paint on.
His aesthetic borrows from the Flemish Primitives, German grotesque, religious art, Russian iconography and folk art as well as urban street art.
Over the years he has made a living as a freelance illustrator and comics artist workin for clients such as the Universal Music group, Radikal Magazine, the Canada Council for the Arts, various clothing companies and print publications.
He has had gallery shows in Paris, Montreal, New York, San-Francisco and Vancouver...

This is how Paul 107 describes him:
Turf was born Jean Labourdette.
His mom calls him Jean.
His real friends call him Jean.
He picked up the name Turf as an adolescent.
Like many children that where born in the 60's and 70's Jean had a brief [ed.note 10 years is not so brief] affair with graffiti and that is where the name Turf is from.
He was a creative teen and soon found the graffiti world somewhat limiting.
He moved on to making comic strips, drawing on paper, and painting canvas.
He also fell in and out of love with Mobb Deep during this period.
Jean stopped painting canvas a few years ago.
He now paints found objects like rusty metal and street signs and old wood.
Sometimes the things he paints are torn off of abandoned and not so
abandoned buildings.
Sometimes he paints them while they are still attached to the buildings.
I in the past have called Turf's painting of abandoned space his solo "urban renewal" project but I take it back 15 years later Turf is still doing graffiti.
Paul 107

\\ www.turfizm.com