User:MarkKarter/sandbox

Dixie Some call him Bedfordshire’s answer to Banksy- a guerrilla graffiti artist who strikes quickly, silently and dazzlingly on buildings in the towns and villages across the county.

Using a stencil and spray technique Dixie can produce a six foot tall art work in. under fifteen minutes before vanishing like mist into the Bedfordshire countryside on his trademark scooter.

He is most famous for the badger headed vicar that appeared on the wall of St John’s Church Moggerhanger in 2011 and the weasel in a boiler suit that adorns the changing room block at Ampthill Town Football Club.

The concrete panel of the changing block that housed the artwork vanished overnight in April 2011- Police believed it was stolen to order bythieves working for an art collector in London.

Bedfordshire Central Council immediately took action to preserve the badger headed vicar on the church wall. The grade 2 listed church was upgraded to grade and the artwork was protected behind a 3inch thick Perspex cover.

Part of the graveyard was turned into a viewing area (the burials were removed to a nearby cemetery) and CCTV cameras were erected to monitor the Dixie night and day. Dixie’s identity remains a mystery, despite being spotted numerous times on security cameras parking his scooter, getting to work and then making good his escape, hidden at all times by his hoodie and baseball cap.

Dixie’s work has been praised well beyond the county borders. Waldemar Janusek, the Times Art Critic said ‘Dixie is a breath of fresh air in the putridly stale atmosphere of the home counties art scene.’ Experts are entranced by the way Dixie uses the mundane buildings that dot this geographically uninspiring county to reinvigorate the entire landscape, challenging us to re-evaluate the day to day world we take for granted.

His use of animal imagery to expose man’s essentially bestial nature, cloaked by the repressive social mores of life in commuter belt Britain, has been widely remarked upon.

Dixie himself has rarely spoken about the inner meaning behind his work. In a statement he released on YouTube he said “Its all about the animals and that, blindin’ mate.”