Artful intuition: British painter Robi Walters on keeping it real

Understanding the context in which an artwork is made is essential to understanding it. Or so it is widely maintained. Peeling away the layers of history and contemplating the motivation behind a creative act is arguably fundamental to grasping its significance, although whether that means you like it or not is a quite different question. You may love an artwork but not know or have researched its roots – the question is, does a lack of knowledge diminish our appreciation or make it somehow less valid?

Forty-four-year-old British artist, Robi Walters, is the perfect person to help unpack this question. His bright, vibrant artworks are upbeat and mood enhancing. His large signature tableaux are mixed-media works composed of layers of carefully cut 'petals', made of paint-sprayed recycled card and broken vinyls. The effect is an explosive 3D collage of colour, like fireworks or bursts of colourful lotus flowers. Hung on any wall, these pieces radiate positivity – in a word, they're attractive. But at the heart of Robi's work is a whole lot of context and it's this that makes his large scale pieces - as well as his little naïve colourful portraits - all the more alluring.

Look closer at his lotus flowers: they are the result of hours of meticulous, almost obsessive work. Each petal is made of discarded card, each one is sprayed in a colour that complements the next and placed in a pattern that follows Robi's own intuition as well as sacred geometry. "A lot of my work is related to being returned to somewhere safe," explains the softly spoken artist who has just opened his own gallery and event space in the quiet cul-de-sac Ingestre Place, a stone's throw from London's bustling Regent Street. Robi makes no bones about his troubled childhood; he was fostered as a child and was frequently in and out of children's homes. His mother, whom he is now close to, was not able to cope, and his artworks reflect his ongoing pursuit to reclaim or reconfigure the things that we discard. "It was traumatic. Moving around [as a child]. There was a lot to take in. It had a double locking effect for me. None of it makes sense without hearing the whole story, but in short, I became an adult too quickly. It sealed in me a childlike quality that has never left."

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Reading this, some may say that Robi is veering towards art therapy territory, but the colour collages have been purely created to emit positivity; the motivation behind them may be loaded but the message is quite simple: "Energy can't be destroyed it can be transformed", explains the artist. "I like to use recycled card because it has an energy that something new doesn't have. I don’t know what it is, but I find it attractive." His large canvases have found their way into many well-known homes. In 2012, Robi created a piece for Usain Bolt which features a silhouette of the Olympian (also composed of contrasting petals) in his celebratory 'lightning bolt' pose ; other fans include Sir Paul McCartney, Mary J Blige and Russell Simmons.

Walters is prolific when it comes to producing art, a working practice that was encouraged by his friend, the Turner Prize-winning painter Chris Ofili. "Chris told me to draw every day. I didn't really want to at first!" he laughs. "I wanted to do large pieces of art to be seen at shows and so on, but he was interested in the practise of creating. I trusted him so I tried it. I started off with these tiny drawings and then before I knew it they were getting bigger and bigger. They were scrolls and I would work on a section at a time - 12 foot by 12 foot drawings."

Walters works on a new painting every day and has done since 2011, the year he separated from his partner and children. Each one is named after a news headline from that specific day. Once again the link between mental health and creativity makes this body of work highly personal, but the headlines give them anchorage, making them inclusive rather than introspective. "I visited a man called Ralph Taylor (Global Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art at Bonhams) and I asked, 'What is the difference between a good artist and a great artist?' and he said that either the art is undeniably good, or it's shocking and it stays in your mind or it's relative to our time." I thought about how I could apply this to my own practice. So I decided to title my work with a news headline from that day." Walters presented these 'every day works' from 2011 at an exhibition at London's Hospital Club in 2016; the show was aptly titled 365: Every Day Counts. "I guarantee you will read one of the headlines and you will remember that day – everything from the Tsunami to the Royal Wedding. There are so many things, even the more insignificant ones. You'll read something and instantly have an emotional attachment or trigger." It's a simple premise but one that also worked, if you think about it, for Damien Hirst and his formaldehyde shark. Read the title – "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" - and suddenly the awareness of ones own reality/mortality comes crashing in, albeit with a dose of Hirstian dark wit.

If you have the chance to visit Walters' new gallery, you'll see his smaller scale portraits too - arguably the most deceptively complex of all his output. Cartoonish and composed of neon/bright primary colours, these childlike compositions are brimming with personality and verve.

"They are inspired by African barber [shop] paintings. which are quite simple, naïve and timeless." Many of the sitters are friends, old and new. "This one's of my mentor Mark Anderson, he's a very special person in my life," says the artist pointing to a bright pink and yellow portrait. "This is Jimmy who is the manager of Foot Patrol round the corner," he adds.

"I think we see each other through the filters of our past experiences. I don't think we can see what we don't understand or what we don't project, so I have chosen to paint colour, to express what I feel as opposed to what I see." There's something hugely compelling about these bright little portraits – perhaps, as the artist maintains, they project the characters we want to see: quirky Londoners with unique traits. They may be real or just a fantasy storyboard.

The question still remains as to whether we need to know the context of creativity to appreciate art on a deeper level. As expected, Walters offers a thought-provoking but ambiguous answer:

"None of my art really makes sense unless you know my story but I never want to force myself on anyone and don't need people to necessarily understand me. I always say, start your journey from where you are: the here and now."