Fin DAC's main concern when he quit his day job to concentrate on painting massive murals in city streets across the globe was not so much failure as falling.

"I've figured out how to overcome my fear of heights." "I've removed the irrational part of that fear, but that doesn't mean my knees don't turn to jelly when I'm climbing over the edge of a 200-foot drop," the Irish-born artist said.

Fin DAC has become one of the world's most well-known street painters in the nine years after he left his job as a designer for digital advertising companies at the age of 45. He has painted massive murals in Paris, Berlin, Milan, Tokyo, Sydney, Los Angeles, and other major cities.

He's also one of the most sought-after living painters, with Idris Elba and Gemma Arterton among his clients, as well as singer Goldie.

His art will be included in his first solo show in the United Kingdom later this month. His earliest sculptures, more than two dozen new works, and a studio-produced replica of his enormous mural of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in Guadalajara will be on display in London.

His sole prior exhibition was at Venice Beach, California, in 2015.

Fin DAC was driven into a studio by the Covid epidemic. "Previously, I was stuck in a hamster wheel of traveling and attempting to cram as much work as possible into my schedule. I wasn't allowing myself enough time in the studio to progress with my work.

As a result, the majority of the labor for the play is done in novel ways."

Midaro, a collaboration with photographer Mick Rock, sold more than 200 prints in 20 minutes to customers from 36 countries. The money helps him support his public art, which he typically funds himself.

"I need to pay for planes, trains, hotels, paint, scaffolding, and lifts," she says.

For the last decade, street art has been on the increase, "primarily due to Banksy – the rest of us are riding on his coattails." Fin DAC has embraced the concept of art being accessible to everyone after leaving the realm of internet advertising, where "you're basically forcing shit down people's throats, brainwashing people into believing they want or need something."

"I'm not painting the wall to sell my work; I'm painting it to beautify the urban environment." There isn't much to sell."

He is well renowned for his pictures of Asian or Eurasian women with a mask over their eyes. "They have a distinct look about them: defiant, powerful."

They aren't sexualized or objectified, which is a departure from what we're accustomed to seeing in female portraiture.

"And the reason I started painting Asian women in particular was because, of all the ethnicities, they seemed to have the least positive depictions, especially in the west," says the artist.

Fin DAC was commissioned by the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, to paint Frida Kahlo on a 200-foot wall. "I said it makes no sense for me to do it unless I imbue her with the identity of my own work."

He is the only artist who has been granted permission by the Frida Kahlo Foundation to use a mask to modify her picture.

The artwork took him 11 days to complete and is his largest to date. "Once you get over your fear of scale, painting large murals is actually a lot easier."

No one is going to come close to the wall, so small errors you make on canvas are unlikely to be seen. From afar, they view it as a show."

Fin DAC is a self-taught musician. “I was only interested in two things in school in Cork: art and technical drawing.” Unfortunately, it was in a school without an art program."

Before becoming a digital designer, he worked as a technical draughtsman on engineering projects. But "something was pushing me" to pursue painting full-time.

"When I was younger, I talked myself out of being an artist because I didn't think that being able to paint a beautiful image would be enough to make you financially viable.

"The success of what I do has shown me that everything I told myself when I was younger was complete nonsense." I kept telling myself that I wasn't good enough.

Many of us are paralyzed by artistic dread."

Thanks to Harriet Sherwood at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.