ARRON CRASCALL
ORIGINAL WORKS
Raw. Energic. Unapologetically Expressive.
A collection of original works where street art, popular culture and raw emotion collide.
ART TELLS A DIFFERENT STORY
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LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON’S LENS
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EVERY PIECE HAS A STORY
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LOOK AGAIN
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SEE SOMETHING DIFFERENT
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THE ALLUN LEWIS COLLECTION
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ART TELLS A DIFFERENT STORY ❋ LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON’S LENS ❋ EVERY PIECE HAS A STORY ❋ LOOK AGAIN ❋ SEE SOMETHING DIFFERENT ❋ THE ALLUN LEWIS COLLECTION ❋
FeaturedTHE ONE THAT
GOT AWAY.
ALMOST.
ROMEO, ROMEO · 2023
There are pieces you admire. And then there are pieces that stay with you long after you've walked away.
Romeo Romeo was one of those.
I saw it hanging in a gallery and immediately connected with it. Then, a few weeks later, it appeared to have sold.
I thought I'd missed my chance.
Until a completely unexpected meeting with Arron revealed that the story wasn't quite over.
Sometimes you find the art.
Sometimes the art finds its way back to you.
Sometimes the story behind a piece becomes almost as important as the artwork itself.
I saw Romeo Romeo, loved it — and then thought somebody else had bought it.
I was wrong.
SOMETIMES THE ART FINDS YOU.
It started at an art car boot sale in Brighton.
I met Arron Crascall and, although I knew who he was, I had absolutely no idea he was an artist.
We got talking, I discovered his work and ended up buying a piece.
It was completely unplanned — which, looking back, seems rather appropriate.
Some time later, I walked into a gallery and there it was.
Romeo Romeo.
Huge, colourful, chaotic and impossible to ignore.
It was one of those pieces that stopped me. I didn't need to understand why. I just knew that if circumstances were right, I'd love to own it.
A few weeks later, I looked again.
It appeared to have sold.
And that was that.
Or so I thought.
Then, completely by chance, I bumped into Arron again.
We got talking and somehow Romeo Romeo came up in conversation. I mentioned that I'd seen it, loved it, and assumed somebody else had beaten me to it.
They hadn't.
It was still available.
The piece I'd already accepted had got away suddenly hadn't got away at all.
This time, I wasn't going to make the same mistake.
I bought it.
And I've always loved the strange symmetry of what happened.
A work called Romeo Romeo.
Something I fell for.
Something I thought I'd lost.
And something that, completely unexpectedly, found its way back into my life.
Some pieces you search for.
Others seem to find you.
Romeo Romeo was one of those.
LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON'S LENS
Perhaps that's why the story of Romeo Romeo matters to me.
I've never wanted this collection to be defined simply by names, editions, values or what somebody else thinks I should own.
For me, collecting is much more personal than that.
It's about that moment when something makes you stop.
Sometimes it's the image. Sometimes it's the artist. Sometimes it's what the work makes you feel. And sometimes it's the completely unexpected story of how it eventually found its way onto your wall.
Because over time, these works become markers.
They remind you of places you've been, people you've met, conversations you've had and moments in your life that might otherwise have disappeared.
And perhaps that's what The Allun Lewis Collection is really about.
Not simply collecting art.
Collecting stories.
Collecting moments.
Collecting pieces of a life.
ORIGINALS
Sometimes the story behind a piece becomes almost as important as the artwork itself.
I saw Romeo Romeo, loved it — and then thought somebody else had bought it.
I was wrong.
SOMETIMES THE ART FINDS YOU.
It started at an art car boot sale in Brighton.
I met Arron Crascall and, although I knew who he was, I had absolutely no idea he was an artist.
We got talking, I discovered his work and ended up buying a piece.
It was completely unplanned — which, looking back, seems rather appropriate.
Some time later, I walked into a gallery and there it was.
Romeo Romeo.
Huge, colourful, chaotic and impossible to ignore.
It was one of those pieces that stopped me. I didn't need to understand why. I just knew that if circumstances were right, I'd love to own it.
A few weeks later, I looked again.
It appeared to have sold.
And that was that.
Or so I thought.
Then, completely by chance, I bumped into Arron again.
We got talking and somehow Romeo Romeo came up in conversation. I mentioned that I'd seen it, loved it, and assumed somebody else had beaten me to it.
They hadn't.
It was still available.
The piece I'd already accepted had got away suddenly hadn't got away at all.
This time, I wasn't going to make the same mistake.
I bought it.
And I've always loved the strange symmetry of what happened.
A work called Romeo Romeo.
Something I fell for.
Something I thought I'd lost.
And something that, completely unexpectedly, found its way back into my life.
Some pieces you search for.
Others seem to find you.
Romeo Romeo was one of those.
LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON'S LENS
Perhaps that's why the story of Romeo Romeo matters to me.
I've never wanted this collection to be defined simply by names, editions, values or what somebody else thinks I should own.
For me, collecting is much more personal than that.
It's about that moment when something makes you stop.
Sometimes it's the image. Sometimes it's the artist. Sometimes it's what the work makes you feel. And sometimes it's the completely unexpected story of how it eventually found its way onto your wall.
Because over time, these works become markers.
They remind you of places you've been, people you've met, conversations you've had and moments in your life that might otherwise have disappeared.
And perhaps that's what The Allun Lewis Collection is really about.
Not simply collecting art.
Collecting stories.
Collecting moments.
Collecting pieces of a life.
THE PIECE THAT STARTED IT ALL
ALEXANDER
Sometimes you see something completely differently from the person standing beside you. Perhaps that's the point.
Our introduction to Arron Crascall's art happened completely by accident.
Maria and I had gone to the Brighton Art Car Boot Fair and, as we always tend to do, started with a recce — walking around, talking to artists and seeing what caught our attention.
Then I saw this.
There was no artist standing with it. No explanation. Just the work.
And it immediately caught my eye.
Not far away I spotted Arron Crascall. I knew Arron as the funny guy from the videos, so I remember saying to Maria:
“Look, Arron's here. He must be filming one of his videos.”
We carried on walking.
It was only when we came back around that I realised the person I'd recognised wasn't there to make a video at all.
He was the artist.
And the piece we'd stopped to look at was his.
That was the beginning of my relationship with Arron's work.
But what made me want to own Alexander wasn't simply the coincidence of discovering who had created it.
It was what I saw in it.
LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON'S LENS
Alexander the Great has been frozen in our imagination for more than two thousand years.
Young. Powerful. Beautiful. Conquering.
He created one of the largest empires of the ancient world — and yet he never lived to see 33.
And that's what I see when I look at this piece.
Arron has rendered Alexander in this extraordinary black gloss. His face is recognisable and seemingly permanent, yet the surface appears to be melting away in front of you.
For me, that changes everything.
I don't see a portrait celebrating eternal youth.
I see the illusion of it.
The young face remains fixed in history, while the person behind it has long since disappeared.
The gloss runs.
The image dissolves.
Time wins.
And perhaps there's a lesson in that for all of us.
We spend so much of our lives behaving as though there will always be more time. Another year. Another opportunity. Another moment to do the things we've been putting off.
But youth isn't permanent.
Neither is success.
Neither are we.
Alexander conquered almost everything that stood before him, but there was one thing even Alexander the Great couldn't conquer.
Time.
That's what this piece says to me.
Whether that's what Arron intended almost doesn't matter.
Because that's the extraordinary thing about art.
The artist creates the work.
We bring our own life to it.
And somewhere between the two, it becomes something entirely personal.
ALEXANDER
Arron Crascall · Original Work
For me, a portrait not of eternal youth — but of just how quickly it disappears.
A DIFFERENT CHAPTER
TRUST IT, MATE.
There are times when you watch an artist's work change and you sense that something behind the work has changed too.
I remember seeing Arron creating this piece on Instagram.
Immediately, I thought it was brilliant.
But there was something different about it.
Much of Arron's earlier work had felt confrontational — layers of words, thoughts and emotions fighting for space amongst the colour. There was humour and energy, but there could also be darkness.
This felt like something else.
SERENITY.
PEACE.
COOL.
TRUST IT, MATE.
Amongst all the chaos, suddenly there seemed to be calm.
And knowing something of the journey Arron has publicly shared — his struggles with alcohol, recovery and later his baptism — I couldn't help seeing this work as the beginning of another chapter.
Not necessarily an ending.
More a release.
I followed the piece as Arron created it, but later saw it appear elsewhere online and assumed somebody had bought it.
Another one I'd missed.
So I put it out of my mind.
Then, some time later, I finally visited Arron's studio.
And there it was.
Still hanging on the wall.
Alongside it was Mary, its companion piece.
I genuinely couldn't believe it was still available.
I tried very hard to contain my enthusiasm.
Probably not particularly successfully.
And eventually, it came home with me.
Today it hangs on my wall, and the more I look at it, the more I think the words are what make the piece extraordinary.
Look past the explosion of pinks, blues, reds and greens. Look past the portrait, the drips and the graffiti.
There are these little messages emerging from the noise.
Serenity.
Peace.
Cool.
And, perhaps my favourite:
Trust it, mate.
Four simple sentiments surrounded by absolute chaos.
There is something rather wonderful about that.
Because life doesn't suddenly become neat when you find peace.
The noise doesn't necessarily disappear. The past isn't erased. Everything that came before remains part of the picture.
You simply learn to see it differently.
LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON'S LENS
And that's what this piece has come to mean to me.
I don't look at it and see perfection.
I see progression.
I see somebody moving from one chapter of their life into another without pretending the earlier chapters never happened.
All of those marks are still there.
The darkness is still there.
The chaos is still there.
But now, amongst it all, there is something else.
Peace.
Perhaps that's one of the most powerful things about art.
It can capture a person at a particular moment without needing to explain everything that came before or everything that's going to happen next.
And years from now, when I look at this piece, I suspect those four little messages will still say everything they need to say.
SERENITY.
PEACE.
COOL.
TRUST IT, MATE.
Sometimes the destination isn't about escaping the chaos.
It's about finding peace within it.
LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON'S LENS
WHAT DID HE SEE?
WHAT DO I SEE?
MARY · ARRON CRASCALL
This is one of those works that perhaps explains the entire philosophy behind my collection.
Because when I look at it, I don't necessarily see what the artist saw.
I see something else.
Mary forms one half of a pair, its companion piece depicting Christ. Maria and I discovered them together in Arron's studio, and almost immediately we knew exactly where they belonged.
Together. On our wall.
But the more I've lived with Mary, the more fascinating it has become.
At the centre is a young woman.
Mary.
A woman whom Scripture describes as “blessed among women.”
Yet look beyond the portrait and into the apparent chaos surrounding her.
Amongst Arron's layers of paint, graffiti, thoughts and fragments of language are words that, to me, seem almost uncannily connected to her story.
LOVE ME.
Think about what Mary was being asked to do.
Imagine returning to the man you are betrothed to and telling him something almost impossible to comprehend.
That an angel had appeared to you.
That you were going to have a child.
And that the child was from God.
Would he believe you?
Would anyone?
Suddenly, amongst all that colour and noise, those two simple words feel very different.
Love me.
Then there is another:
BE READY.
Few phrases could be more appropriate.
Mary's life was about to change beyond recognition. She couldn't possibly have understood everything that lay ahead of her — the birth, the flight into Egypt, the extraordinary life of her son and ultimately the pain she would witness.
And elsewhere amongst the layers:
WANTS ME DEAD.
Again, I have no reason to believe Arron placed those particular words there intending them as biblical references.
And that's precisely why I find the piece so extraordinary.
Because Christ's story contains that too.
Herod's fear. The threat to the infant Jesus. A family forced to flee.
The words were Arron's.
But the story I found amongst them was Mary's.
THE SPACE BETWEEN ARTIST AND VIEWER
And perhaps that's where art becomes truly interesting.
An artist can create something with one thought, one emotion or one moment in mind.
Then somebody else stands in front of it carrying an entirely different lifetime of experiences, beliefs and memories.
And they see something the artist never intended them to see.
Neither interpretation necessarily has to be wrong.
They simply belong to two different lenses.
For me, this isn't simply an image of Mary surrounded by graffiti.
I see innocence surrounded by uncertainty.
Faith surrounded by fear.
A young woman being asked to trust something she couldn't possibly understand, knowing that those closest to her might not understand it either.
And somehow, hidden amongst the apparent randomness of Arron's words, I find fragments of a story that is more than two thousand years old.
LOVE ME.
BE READY.
WANTS ME DEAD.
Did Arron see Mary's story when he wrote them?
Perhaps not.
But I do.
And that is exactly why I collect art.
TWO WORKS. ONE WALL. TWO STORIES.
When Maria and I saw Mary alongside its companion Christ piece in Arron's studio, there wasn't much discussion about where they would go.
We already knew.
They belonged together.
Today they hang together in our home and have become two of the most treasured works in our collection.
Not simply because of who painted them.
Not simply because of what they depict.
But because every time I look at them, I find something else.
And perhaps I'll see something completely different in another ten years.
The artist creates the image.
Life changes what we see in it.
BEYOND THE ORIGINALS
THE OTHER SIDE OF AN ICON
CHURCHILL
WINSTON CHURCHILL · SIGNED LIMITED EDITION · 2/20
This is the second of the two Churchill works we bought at an art show connected with one of Arron Crascall's launches.
And although the two pieces clearly belong together, I love the fact that they say completely different things.
The first almost shouts at you.
WHAT A GUY.
It's funny, irreverent and unmistakably Arron.
This one doesn't need the words.
Instead, Churchill appears in stark black and white, surrounded by little more than a dripping golden halo, flashes of green and red, and two roughly painted hearts.
And somehow, that simplicity changes everything.
THE MAN BEHIND THE HISTORY
Churchill is one of those figures we think we already know.
The wartime leader. The speeches. The photographs. The cigar. The unmistakable silhouette.
A man who has become almost inseparable from the history surrounding him.
But history is rarely as simple as the icons it creates.
People are complicated. Legacies are complicated. And perhaps that's what I enjoy about seeing a figure like Churchill treated through the completely different language of contemporary street art.
There is no grand historical setting here.
No Union Jack.
No wartime imagery.
No famous quotation.
Just a face, a halo and two hearts.
It takes someone we associate with enormous events and reduces everything back down to the individual.
And I rather like that.
TWO PIECES. ONE CHARACTER.
When we bought the pair, I don't think we ever really considered them as individual works.
They belonged together.
One gives you the personality:
WHAT A GUY.
The other gives you the icon.
And displayed together, they become Arron's wonderfully unconventional portrait of one of the most recognisable figures in British history.
One makes me smile.
The other makes me look a little longer.
Signed by the artist and numbered 2/20, it remains part of the pair within The Allun Lewis Collection.
Arron Crascall
Churchill
Signed Limited Edition
No. 2 of 20
And I'd finish the page with one strong line:
Same man. Same artist. A completely different lens.
BEAUTY IN THE CHAOS
AIR MAX BALLET
ARRON CRASCALL · 2022 · SIGNED LIMITED EDITION · 20/76
This piece entered the collection at the same art show where we discovered our two signed Churchill works.
But Air Max Ballet couldn't be more different.
Against a sea of pink, turquoise, black and white, a ballerina appears almost suspended in the middle of the chaos.
And that's what initially drew me to it.
TWO WORLDS COLLIDE
Ballet is about discipline.
Precision. Control. Repetition. Years spent perfecting movements until something incredibly difficult appears completely effortless.
Arron's world is almost the opposite.
Paint runs.
Colours collide.
Lines cross one another.
Nothing appears restrained.
And yet, somehow, putting those two worlds together works.
The ballerina doesn't disappear amongst the disorder. She seems to rise out of it.
There's something beautiful about that.
Because life rarely gives us the perfect background.
It's messy. Noisy. Unpredictable. Sometimes completely chaotic.
Yet amongst all of that, there can still be movement.
There can still be expression.
There can still be beauty.
LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON'S LENS
And that's probably what I see in Air Max Ballet today.
Not simply a dancer.
I see somebody maintaining their form while everything around them appears to be moving in a hundred different directions.
Perhaps Arron saw something completely different when he created it.
That's the point.
The artist creates the work.
We bring our own lives to it.
Purchased alongside our Churchill editions, Air Max Ballet became another of those pieces we weren't necessarily looking for when we arrived at the show — but knew we wanted once we'd seen it.
Signed by the artist and numbered 20/76, it now forms part of the Beyond the Originals section of The Allun Lewis Collection.
Arron Crascall
Air Max Ballet
2022
Giclée print on archival smooth fine-art paper
Approx. 69.9 × 50.2 cm
Signed Limited Edition
No. 20 of 76
WHAT A GUY
WINSTON CHURCHILL · SIGNED LIMITED EDITION · 5/20
Part of a pair of signed works we purchased at an art show held around one of Arron Crascall's launches, this piece is Arron's wonderfully irreverent take on one of Britain's most recognisable figures.
Winston Churchill appears in stark black and white, but rather than treating the subject with the seriousness normally associated with historical portraiture, Arron does exactly the opposite.
A dripping golden halo, a roughly sprayed heart and three wonderfully uncomplicated words:
WHAT A GUY.
And perhaps that's all that needs to be said.
It's playful, unmistakably Arron and one of those pieces that makes you smile every time you walk past it.
Signed by the artist and numbered 5/20, it forms one half of a two-piece set within The Allun Lewis Collection.
Arron Crascall
What A Guy
Signed Limited Edition
No. 5 of 20
For a little tagline beneath it, I'd use:
History. Humour. And three words that say it all.
THE WOMAN BEHIND THE ICON
AIR MAX MARILYN
ARRON CRASCALL · 2022 · SIGNED LIMITED EDITION · 19/38
There are some faces that no longer seem to belong to one moment in history.
Marilyn Monroe is one of them.
More than sixty years after her death, the image remains instantly recognisable — the hair, the dress, the pose, the smile.
But what I like about Arron's Air Max Marilyn is that he takes one of the most reproduced images in popular culture and drops it into a completely different world.
The elegance remains.
Everything around it changes.
FROM HOLLYWOOD TO STREET CULTURE
The Marilyn we know is normally presented through the polished lens of Hollywood.
Here, that polish has been disrupted.
Pink and red explode across the background. Paint drips down the image. Hearts, marks and fragments of graffiti surround her.
And then Arron makes one final intervention.
He puts trainers on Marilyn Monroe.
It's such a simple idea, but it completely changes the image.
Suddenly, something belonging to the 1950s feels as though it could have been created yesterday.
High culture meets street culture.
Hollywood meets contemporary art.
An icon from one generation is reinterpreted through the language of another.
LIFE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON'S LENS
And that's what makes this piece interesting to me.
We tend to remember people through a handful of frozen moments.
One photograph.
One performance.
One story.
One version of who we think they were.
Marilyn became one of the most photographed women in history, yet behind those photographs existed a person infinitely more complicated than the image the world consumed.
Perhaps that's why this piece works so well within the philosophy behind our collection.
Because Arron isn't simply reproducing Marilyn.
He's changing the lens.
The famous pose remains, but everything surrounding it belongs to another time, another culture and another artist.
And suddenly you're looking again at an image you thought you already knew.
AN ICON REIMAGINED
Like Air Max Ballet, this piece demonstrates something I particularly enjoy about Arron's work.
He isn't particularly interested in treating cultural icons with reverence.
He plays with them.
He disrupts them.
He brings them into his own world.
And somehow, underneath all the paint, graffiti and humour, the original icon remains completely intact.
That's quite an achievement.
Air Max Marilyn now sits within the Beyond the Originals section of The Allun Lewis Collection — another work collected along the way that reminds me why contemporary art can be so much fun.
Because sometimes you don't need to reinvent the icon.
You simply need to look at her through a different lens.
Arron Crascall
Air Max Marilyn
2022
Giclée print on archival smooth fine-art paper
Approx. 69.9 × 50.2 cm
Signed Limited Edition
No. 19 of 38
THE COLLECTION CONTINUES
My collection of Magnus Gjoen’s work has grown over a number of years — through pieces discovered, works acquired directly from Magnus, and others whose stories have gradually become intertwined with my own.
It isn’t intended to be a complete representation of his work. It is simply a collection of the pieces that made me stop, look and feel something.
Beauty and destruction. Love and mortality. History and modernity.
Different works. Different stories. One extraordinary lens.
PRIVATE ENQUIRIES
The works shown form part of my privately held collection.
While they were acquired primarily because I wanted to live with them, enquiries regarding the potential availability of individual pieces are welcomed.
THE ALLUN LEWIS COLLECTION
Life Through Another Person’s Lens