Growing up a poor white trash kid from Alabama, Grant Cobb was always "that boy that can draw." It wasn't exactly a term of endearment in Birmingham. If noticed at all, it was ranked socially somewhere between the autistic savant that had a knack for card tricks and anyone with a recently installed suspension lift on a 4wd. After what seemed an endless adolescence, and the realization that his art scholarship didn't really pay for much, he used an enlistment in the Marines as an escape.
Even though he had given up on the idea of art as a profession, he hadn't given up on art. Grant still found time, amidst the running, screaming and random trips to the pit for pushups and crunches in the sand, to draw and sometimes sneak away to do a painting somewhere it didn't belong, usually with a boot brush, shoe polish and CLP (gun oil). The first time he got caught, what he thought would land him in the brig, actually led to the painting murals in different buildings and offices on three different military bases over the next five years. Of all people, the drill Instructor that caught him painting had given him new hope that essentially reset his course.
Two years before the end of his enlistment, having picked up rank fast, Cobb found himself with a lot of spare time, and an opportunity to learn a trade that he had always been fascinated by. At 21 years old he new exactly was he was meant to do! So every night and every weekend was spent at his second job in a tattoo shop in Virginia. There he apprenticed to learn a craft that's allowed the freedom to travel, study and work with an often motley, yet diverse and uniquely talented group of artist and illustrators. Grant's now been tattooing for the last 13 years and still learning.
With no formal education, just an inherent ability to draw, an affection for literature and the need to create and understand, the local library and the overbearing influence of mass-media has rooted it's way into that void. Combine that with the good fortune of working with some of the best tattooer/ artists in the business have helped him find a unique style of painting that continues to evolve.
Find out more about Grant Cobb at: knowngallery.com/grantcobb
Subscribe