One of the legendary LucasFilms poster artists, Mark Raats! I found him on Instagram not that long ago when I commented on one of his posts, to which he replied and called me "boet" (brother in Afrikaans). This was totally unexpected. I had no idea he was also South African! Turns out (to my surprise) that he has been following my art for awhile. Mark has been living in Australia for some time as a result of being involved with George Lucas (creator of Star Wars) as one of the 3 lead poster artists.
We got chatting in private messages, sharing admiration for each others craft and spoke about meeting up at whichever next shared convention. Later, I got a message from him that he would be travelling to South Africa for his mothers birthday and wanted to meet up. I chose the Aurum restaurant at the Leonardo Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg and we met up.
We connected a lot over art and our life journeys and man, he had some incredible stories to share about his experiences over the years in the industry as such a high profile, leading-edge artist.
He shared some valuable career advice with me too, giving himself and Drew Struzan (the god father of LucasFilms poster art) as examples. I’ve learnt a lot from him and plan on learning much more. His art inspires me hugely and definitely keeps me on my path of pushing further. I will often look at his masterpieces and just think to myself “how?!”. He is a serious master of his art abilities and I am very grateful to get to know him as a friend as well.