Lady Pink was five when she killed her first snake – with her bare feet. “That shows what a precocious and fearless kid I was,” says the 61-year-old. Even over the phone from upstate New York, the venerated graffiti artist is a force to be reckoned with, talking at a breakneck tempo punctuated by bursts of raucous laughter. There’s a sense that this energy might quickly combust too – she admits she “totally lost it” while preparing for her current solo show, Miss Subway NYC, at D’Stassi Art in London.
The exhibition sees her vividly recreate a New York City subway station. There are paintings in eye-popping colours depicting trains, train yards and playful portraits of the characters you typically see there: a busker in a cat costume, an elderly lady with a shopping cart and a chihuahua. With the help of her husband, fellow graffiti artist Smith, she has even meticulously reproduced layers of tags on the walls from her halcyon days, when she would risk arrest – and sometimes her life – to spray across the city at night. On the show’s opening night, more than 1,000 people showed up to pay their respects to the grande dame of graf.
