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Barclay Crawford

Life experience, however grim or outrageous, often leads to great art. And in our marketing-obsessed world, an artist's life story can be just as important to  his success as his talent.
Up-and-coming British pop artist Tricky Gee has plenty of both. 
Gee was 28 when he was arrested with  3kg of pure cocaine concealed inside a plaster cast on his leg at Trinidad's Piarco International Airport  on December 23, 2001. 
His intended destination for the drugs was Hong Kong, where he had since 1995 financed a high-flying lifestyle from the import and distribution of Colombia's most famous export. He drove a Porsche, rented a flash flat in Happy Valley and - to complete the drug-dealing clich? - even sported a gold tooth.
A proper East London 'wide boy' - one who lives by his wits - Gee had left Britain straight after school to see the world, travelling through India, South America and Thailand before turning up in Hong Kong just as the dance music scene was exploding in the lead-up to the handover. 
'I was in Thailand selling a little bit of Ecstasy and some friends told me Hong Kong could really use a guy like me there, so that's why I came,' he said during a recent return visit here. 'I loved the city and I could make good money here. I got sucked in and stayed.' 
He said memories from  that time  were 'a bit blurred', but dealing drugs was a dysfunctional existence, and quite boring. But if the dealing was uninspired, bringing the drugs across the world and into Hong Kong was  a complete rush. And cocaine concealed beneath plaster on a fake broken leg was a favoured method.
'You would call the airport up with a story about how you'd just had an accident and broken your leg,' he said. 'They'd meet you at the entrance with a wheelchair, take you straight through customs, and then put you on the plane.
'Then when you were leaving the plane, they'd again meet you and wheel you off and straight through customs. It was like you had a cloak of invisibility over you or something.'
Until that day in December 2001, when it all ended.
'People always ask me if I wish I wasn't caught, if I regret wasting five years in jail,' he said.
'But I don't regret that time at all. Going to jail got me out of that world forever, and I'll never, ever, go back. I promised myself when I walked from prison that I never wanted to hear the sound of that key turn again.'
Life in a Trinidad jail was not pretty: more than a dozen men to a cell, with gruel for meals.
But Gee said being in jail in a  developing country  was perhaps not as bad as it has been made out to be. 
Yes, the first thing he did was fashion a toothbrush into a knife for protection, but having some money helped to buy luxuries  that could be traded for security. Money also helped him avoid a  longer stretch.
'If I'd have got caught in Hong Kong, I would have faced a far stiffer sentence,' he said. 
While there were some bad moments, there were none  worse than the day he was told he had his first visitor - his father. 'It all hit home just what I'd put my family through when I saw my father standing there. What it meant for him to see what I'd become ... it was terrible.'  
For the final 18 months of his sentence he was transferred to prison in England, which was where he properly realised he had a talent for art.
Gee said he always had an interest in art, spurred first when as a 14-year-old he walked inside  British painter Francis Bacon's  house to sell Bacon's boyfriend some marijuana. 
He also always made art galleries his priority stops while travelling the world. There was a training school within the prison, where Tricky  spent every moment he could.
'I can't stress how important it is to have a prison system which stresses to you the importance of rehabilitation. Prison really did save me, because it gave me opportunities. I feel strongly about it, as it saved me from what I'd become.'
When he finished his sentence, he applied for art school and was accepted into one of Britain's finest, the Wimbledon College of Art.  
Gee graduated with a  bachelor's degree in fine art, printmaking and digital media  this year. Where once he lacked any real focus, Gee's life is now all about art. His work has a distinct pop-art feel, and many pieces touch on his time in Hong Kong, including one rather tellingly called Welcome to Wonderland.
They all tend to address social, political and cultural topics, exploring actions and their consequences. 
He has already sold a few paintings to collectors and  created a big installation  that featured items bought from a joss-paper shop in Hong Kong. While there is no doubting a strong cocaine motif to some of his work, Gee does not want to glorify his past or go into too many details about it.   There are still things he believes are best left unsaid.
'There is no doubt my life experience is interesting to people. Everyone likes a bit of naughtiness,' he said. 'But there are details I don't wish to repeat. It's why I would never write a book. They want names, places, methods. Anyway, if you look closely enough, it's all in my work.'




How prison turned drug dealer into promising pop artist