A unique collaboration between two major British creative voices, donated directly by the artists for a Bonhams charity sale and combining street-art imagery, poetry, reggae culture and deeply personal shared references.
Bibliographic Details
Author: Dotmaster (British street and multimedia artist) x Lemn Sissay OBE (British poet, playwright and broadcaster).
Title: Natural Mystic.
Date: 2025.
Medium: Acrylic and spray paint on canvas.
Signature: Signed, dated and titled on the reverse.
Inscription: Reverse additionally inscribed "Natural Mystic", "Lemn Sissay's Conversation" and with further studio markings.
Size: Approximately 60 × 45 cm (23 3/5 × 17 7/10 inches).
Provenance: Donated directly by the artists to the charity In Place of War; offered as Lot 117AR in Bonhams' Sound & Cinema sale, London, 24 November–3 December 2025, estimate £1,000–£1,500.
Condition
Fine. In gallery condition. The canvas appears clean, bright and well preserved, with no defects apparent. The reverse retains the artists' original signatures, date, title and working inscriptions. Please examine the gallery images carefully or request a more detailed condition report.
Description
A wonderfully engaging one-off collaboration between Dotmaster and Lemn Sissay, created in 2025 and bringing together contemporary British street art, poetry, music and personal cultural memory. The work adopts the graphic language of an old-school reggae sound-system poster, centred upon a seated monochrome figure and emblazoned with the words "listen carefully now / You will hear".
The title, Natural Mystic, and the wording incorporated into the composition directly reference Bob Marley, whose music emerged during conversations between the two artists. Dotmaster later explained that he and Sissay spoke about family, music and nationality, discovering a mutual affection for Marley and a shared sense of language and rhythm. The resulting image deliberately evokes the visual culture of Hackney reggae sound systems, with bold typography, stencil imagery and saturated red, yellow and green fields.
The reverse of the canvas provides unusually strong documentary evidence for the work. It is signed, dated and titled by the artists, with additional inscriptions including "Natural Mystic" and "Lemn Sissay's Conversation", preserving the collaborative context in which the piece was created.
Dotmaster emerged from London's alternative and new-media art scene in the early 1990s and is recognised for his sharply executed stencils, halftone imagery and irreverent fusion of street culture, consumer iconography and British humour. His work has appeared internationally and he featured in the celebrated street-art documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop.
Lemn Sissay is one of Britain's best-known contemporary poets and broadcasters. His writing has repeatedly explored identity, belonging, resilience and the experience of growing up in care. He was official poet for the 2012 London Olympics, Chancellor of the University of Manchester from 2015 to 2022, and was appointed OBE for services to literature and charity.
The work has particularly attractive provenance. It was donated directly by Dotmaster and Lemn Sissay to In Place of War, a global organisation using creativity in areas affected by conflict, and was subsequently offered by Bonhams in its 2025 Sound & Cinema sale. All proceeds from that lot were designated for the charity.
Notes
A compelling meeting of street art, poetry and reggae culture, with direct artist provenance and a fully documented Bonhams exhibition history. The combination of Dotmaster's instantly recognisable visual vocabulary with Lemn Sissay's literary presence makes this an especially distinctive piece of contemporary British cultural history.