Developing your creativity and visual art skills is not only rewarding but a great way to earn a crust. Kevin combines trade skills as he paints dramatic, large- scale works, perfect for decorating and spicing up any business or home.

Kevin Brown runs a successful joinery and fit-out business for cafes and clubs.

Kevin Brown combines two unlikely trades: building, construction and shop fitouts - with art. SkillsOne catches up with Kevin to find out just what it means to run a business like his.

About Kevin:

After his apprenticeship, Kevin found himself seduced by the glamour of nightclubs and worked for some time in various jobs in clubs and bars in Sydney. He supplemented his income by work doing some construction work for his boss during the days, and soon found himself specialising in construction, building and fitting for clubs, bars, cafes and restaurants.

Kevin has always enjoyed working with his hands, but particularly enjoys his current speciality in hospitality because of the diversity it offers him. His job requires quick thinking and a knack for problem solving, and he enjoys needing to think outside the square and approach problems creatively.

His painting developed from a passion into a viable source of income. He has had great success making large-scale works, having sold $70,000 worth of art in recent years.

He paints in two stages with an acrylic undercoat and a bitumen overcoat. There are building objects like gyprock, hessian used in his paintings. He relies mainly on colour, which he applies with a cabinet-maker's trowel. Even though he is a 'big boofy builder', Kevin gets in touch with the 'flow' of a painting, dances around and splashes the paint about. Previous brief- Kevin's father once said to his young son 'Get an apprenticeship first, then do whatever you want'. It was advice that his young son would heed, and immediately after finishing school, Kevin found himself studying an apprenticeship in Cabinet Making in Queensland.

Kevin's website can be found here .