Meet the Painter Who Makes Art Out of Rolex Watches
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People have been modifying (or “modding”) watches for at least 100 years.
Soldiers and pilots in the mid-20th Century adapted their watches with custom dials, the application of luminescent paint and reinforced cases, to improve functionality in combat.
In the 1970s enthusiasts began swapping bezels, hands and dials on diver’s watches like Rolex’s Submariner and Doxa’s Sub 300T.
By the early 2000s a whole modding culture appeared around Seiko’s affordable and modular designs, especially the SKX and Turtle series, two favourites for DIY modders.
Then came luxury modding, pioneered by Bamford Watch Department, whose blacked-out, DLC-coated Rolex Daytonas and Patek Philippe Nautiluses, often with high-contrast aqua blue or bright yellow accents, became a signature look.
These faced significant pushback from the original watchmakers, who not unreasonably argued that if they’d have wanted their watches to come with Day-Glo hands or a picture of Popeye on the dial, they’d have designed them like that in the first place.
That position had relaxed somewhat by the mid-2010s, when Bamford formed official partnerships with brands like Tag Heuer, Zenith and Bulgari, merging his poppy aesthetic with more traditionally serious Swiss names.
This coincided with a new appetite for brightly coloured faces, cartoon character collaborations and Marvel tie-ins across luxury watchmaking more broadly, the sharp end of which was arguably Rolex’s 2023 releases of its “celebration” dial Oyster Perpetual, a watch with a bubble-themed motif with turquoise, pink, yellow, coral and green circles, on a Tiffany blue backdrop, and its “puzzle” dial Day-Date, featuring a jigsaw-piece dial, emoji symbols in the date window and inspirational words like “love”, “hope” and “peace” in the day window.
Despite the newfound fun times at Rolex HQ, its attitude towards third-party personalisation has remained robust. A lawsuit heard by the Swiss Supreme Court last year against a redacted customiser widely reported to be Artisans de Genève ruled that the company was not allowed to advertise and sell modified watches, though personalisation on behalf of an owner was legally ok.
In other words: when someone buys a watch, they can modify it however they want, even while Rolex (and others) is at pains to suggest such activity voids all guarantees offered by the brand, including servicing and repairs.
(“A watch modified in this way can no longer be considered original,” Rolex asserted.)
This is something Chris Alexander, who goes by the name The Dial Artist, makes plain to his customers.
Alexander has elevated watch dial customisation to a fine art.
The former senior lecturer in design at Dundee College divides his time between personal commissions of one-of-a-kind hand-painted watch dials, and official projects in collaboration with brands including Spinnaker, L’Epée and Perrelet.
(For a time, he worked in partnership with the online watch accessories shop and customiser IFL Watches. Its line of paint-splattered “CasiOaks”, a version of Casio’s G-Shock Octagon series, nicknamed for its resemblance to Audemars Piguet’s eight-sided Royal Oak, proved a sell-out success.)
With the customisation market only heading one way, business for The Dial Artist is in rude health.
His Instagram offers regular updates of one-off designs for individual clients – A Santos de Cartier adorned with a Roman gladiator, a Tissot PRX with a Tetris game pattern – while on 8 March he’ll be appearing at British Watchmakers’ Day in London, where he’ll be painting live at the event.
He spoke to me about his signature style, how older customers compare to younger ones, and operating with a “zero per cent fail rate”.
Esquire: One of your recent designs I like most is the Omega Speedmaster with “galaxy effect” dial and poppy subdial hands. What can you tell us about that?
The Dial Artist: I’ve always liked the night sky. My dad was an astrophysicist, and he was always showing me things through telescopes. I was amazed how, when you look at a star through a telescope, it isn’t white. It goes through so many different colours, and then it just glitters. So, I try to get that colourful resemblance.
By contrast, there’s a Unimatic where you’ve painted an amazing view of the Summer Palace in Beijing.
The gentleman who commissioned that one is called Eddy. He lives in the USA but has heritage in China. He wanted something that had that family history. He sent me through a bunch of images that he liked, and we picked one. The end result is very close to a picture he sent through. He loved it, which is great. You do hope something is going to be well received at the end. I’m not very good with taking pictures [to show my work] as I go along.
Have you always been a watch guy?
Yes. My dad was a tinkerer. I remember boxes of watch parts lying around his office, and old pocket watches that never worked. He bought me my first serious watch when I was about eight. I grew up in South Africa, so it was a big family holiday all the way to the USA. We went on a cruise that went round Nassau. We ended up on one of the islands and my dad bought me a Seiko Kinetic – one of the mechanical recharging watches [they were powered by kinetic energy]. I recently tracked one of the same watches down after all these years, on eBay. It turns out it’s a ladies’ watch.
Your origin story involves a Seiko Turtle diver’s watch that you took apart, painted the dial and then put on Reddit. The business took off from there.
Yeah. It was a [picture of a] turtle on a Turtle. I try to complement the style or the history of the watch, and have fun that way.
At what point did this become a full-time job?
I was a full-time lecturer. I was a manager of an art school in Dundee. So, it was a hell of a juggle to try and do that [as well as the dial work]. I suppose this happens with other people who turn their side hustle into their actual businesses – there’s a period of time when it’s producing more income than your actual full-time job. I think the big push was when we had those contract talks with IFL, and they wanted me to come on board and help them establish what they were doing. That really escalated things.
What’s the commissioning process like for a private client?
They normally come to me saying, “I’ve seen something on your Instagram”. And then it’s trying to navigate around what the purpose of the commission is for them. Some people say, “Oh, my daughter or my son was born [on this day], it’s an anniversary”. And from that, you can kind of unpick a meaningful way to illustrate something. I try and navigate away from writing names on a dial, which is something a lot of people ask for. When a name is hand-painted, it doesn’t look so nice. That’s my personal opinion. Whereas, with the Speedmaster, you can find out exactly what the night sky looked like on the day they were born, and then you can depict those constellations. So rather than a cluster of colourful dots, they’ve got a meaning hidden in them. That’s the fun part. Having all the easter eggs.
Eye-catching dials are more popular than ever in the wider watch world. Has your customer changed over time?
The wackier stuff, the most radical designs, gets requested from people who are much older than you might think. The dials with Popeye or Mickey Mouse or any of those fun characters [tend to come] from customers who are 60-plus. Perhaps it’s the nostalgia element for them. The more serious stuff is more for the younger generation. Maybe they’re trying to obtain a bit of that status thing, of looking cool but not being over the top.
Or, as people get older, they stop worrying about looking cool?
Those collectors usually have a good breadth of a collection. They think “I’ve got a few watches now, so I can throw a fun one in the mix”. Or maybe it just comes down to a midlife crisis.
What sort of watches do they get customised?
They throw serious watches at it. It’s Speedmasters and Datejusts and Cartiers. Maybe they want to jazz up their core collection. And changing a strap isn’t doing it for them anymore.
How much does your own taste come into what you do? Do you ever say “I’m not painting that”?
Oh, one hundred percent. There’s been people who say, “I want to do this”. And I’m, like, “Well, I could do that. But I don’t think that’s going to work well on the dial”. And then more often than not people go, “You’re the artist. I trust you”. There are one or two people who go “Nope, this is exactly what I want”. And there have been one or two requests that are very politically based. I’m not going to do that. And one or two that flew too close to the wind, in terms of words that are unnecessarily rude. But most people are quite happy to take my lead.
Have you ever got into any legal bother? Either from a watch company, or a customer who thought you’d trashed their watch?
I’ve never signed any kind of waivers or anything. You do sometimes have people saying “Listen, if I get this done, will Omega or Rolex still service my watch?” And the answer is no. But there are plenty of high-quality independent watchmakers who will quite happily service your watch without worrying about what you’ve done to the dial. People are much more educated about horology than they were when I started this, seven years ago. There’s so much on YouTube, that people are fully aware of what can and cannot be done to a watch, in terms of servicing. Gone is that kind of scaremongering. People can take their watch to a trusted, independent watchmaker and have it done for a quarter of the price of what the big brands change.
What did you think of Rolex’s “celebration” and “puzzle” dials?
They were cool. I think more brands need to have fun, you know? Most of them are too stuffy. Even though most Rolex prices are unobtainable, at least they’re showing that they can have fun. So maybe that will dribble down to the more accessible brands. Certainly, what I’m seeing now is more and more [art based] collaborations, which is great.
Have you ever turned a watch down because it’s too valuable?
TDA: No, I haven’t. I’ve just made sure that what we’re doing is what [the customer] wants to do. Some people have suggested certain watches, and I’ve said: “Well, have you got anything else in your collection?” If it’s an AP with a waffle dial [eg: one with a grid-like texture, like a Royal Oak], for example, the texture of the dial is going to really mess up the design that we’re going for. So, it’s more a case of trying to steer people in a way that’s going to give them the right result. Rather than trying to do something on a watch just for the sake of doing it.
What are the best dials to work with, then?
Enamel-based dials have a glass finish, so those work really well. It’s a lovely surface to paint on. There are obviously lots of painted dials. If you look at Rolex Explorers, or the new, white-dialled Speedmaster. They are painted, but they have this enamelled finish to them, this high-gloss finish, so they're great to work on. Anything textured, like an AP waffle dial or a PRX waffle dial, or even a guilloché dial – they’re really challenging. Just because of how they catch paint, and they can bleed out everywhere. But, I mean, it’s a healthy challenge! You can work with the dial and paint the little squares different colours, like I have done. Or you can try and fight against it and end up with a complete mess!
Am I right in thinking that the “CasiOaks” you did led to an official collaboration with Casio?
We never were official. Maybe with IFL they tried to kind of make it look official. Casio knew we were doing them, though. And certainly, in the UK, they didn’t have a problem with it. We were buying direct from them, and they were happy to deliver us those watches, which was great. Other people were not so keen to work with us. Tissot and Citizen weren’t keen to work with us at all. And we’ve seen legal battles with some of the high-end brands – with Rolex, and so forth. In the luxury world, it’s still regarded a dark art. Altering a watch, and painting it. Certainly, from my point of view, it’s very much a customer’s watch. I’m just providing a service. Rather than painting a watch and then selling it on my website.
Those Citizens look really good, painted.
There’s so many great watches out there that allow for such beautiful things to be done to them. But it’s understandable. Everybody wants to protect their trademark.
How does the official collaboration process work with brands?
To be honest, everybody is unsure about how it works, because it’s quite new to watch brands. It’s happening more and more, and it varies from brand to brand. Spinnaker has done a couple of collaborations in the past, so they have a wee bit more experience. Other brands are keen just to figure out what’s going to be the best way forward.
How do you divide your time between brand stuff and private commissions? Or does it just work itself out?
It does just kind of work out. Like, with Spinnaker, we had initial talks in November. Then I completed the dials in March, and then that was released in September. So, they can have a really long lead time. And then you have somebody like L’Epée, who I spoke to in November, and then [The L’Epée 1839 x The Dial Artist Grenade, their collaborative clock] was released in January, so that was a very quick turnaround. Between four and six weeks is a healthy lead time for private commissions. Sometimes I complete them well within that, and other times it’s very up to the wire.
Do you employ anyone?
It’s just me. When I was with IFL, I did have somebody working with me, to paint certain elements. But I was producing up 100 watches a week. That’s quite a high volume. I moved away from that and now I’m just doing everything myself. It’s exhausting at some points. You know, producing 250-plus styles for Spinnaker. Doing 50 Grenades [for L’Epée]. They have 28 parts per grenade that have to be individually painted. But it’s part and parcel of the industry.
Are you happiest working at the more reasonably priced end of the watch market?
I charge for the design. It’s not relative to the cost of the watch. That means I have had people say to me, “Well, it’s only a £100 watch. Why is [the dial art] so much?” But I do have an awful lot of people who still want something special and are quite happy to pay the price of a commission that far exceeds the price of the actual watch. Maybe the watch has a sentimental aspect to it, or it was gifted to them by somebody of significance in their life. They’re not really interested in the monetary value. It’s more the sentimental value of the end result.
Would you say you have a signature style?
Those little tiny dots – that’s probably my signature piece. There’s also slashes of big, bold, abstract colours. But I can also do fine art, whether it’s landscapes or portraits, as well. I try and illustrate those as realistically as I can, rather than as cartoons, like some other people do.
You’re a fan of the American street artist Tristan Eaton. What do you like about him?
I’ve been a fan of the graphic art scene for a long time. Shepard Fairey is a big influence, and Tristan Eaton as well. Many years ago, I made designer vinyl toys. One of the many side hustles of the creative arts! I’ve got one of Tristan’s artworks in my house. I like how he creatively expresses so many different themes in one image. Some of his work is unbelievable. His inspiration of reinterpreting things in different lights. There’s a beauty in that, and that’s what I love. I love to try and do that in my own way. Whether it’s a constellation in a night sky, or whatever it might be. Just trying to create something unique without it being obvious.
What can go wrong when you paint a dial?
So much. The less well-known element of what I do is that you have a zero per cent fail rate. Nowadays, you cannot go to a retailer and ask for a new dial. You used to be able to. So, it’s very much a case of you have to be confident, you have to be prepared, and you have to have that understanding of what you’re about to do to a dial. And that comes through experience. I think I’ve painted 4,000 dials – maybe more – and there have been complete and utter failures within that. There was one instance where I had to buy a whole new watch because I totally screwed something up. But you have to accept those things and see them as a learning curve.
As you're working, is there a point of no return?
As soon as the paintbrush touches a dial, you can’t go back. A [more traditional artist] can paint a canvas, and if you make a mistake, you can whitewash it and start all over again. You can paint over and edit. With a watch dial you don’t have that chance, because every stroke adds the layer. It could be microns thick of paint. I mean, I try and keep them as thin as possible, because there’s some watch hands that are unbelievably close to the dial. You can’t apply the paint like you would do with a canvas, in thick strokes. You have to build the colour up. It means you have to be prepared. And that comes down to understanding how the material you use and the dial you work with interact with each other. In the early days, I went through lots of dials, just practicing and practicing and practicing.
I know you keep some of your techniques secret. But the starting point is synthetic paints and enamels, is that right?
Yes, it is mostly cold enamels, not fired enamels. Those are completely different story. The failure rate in fired enamels is unbelievable. And you know, they cost. I’ve heard of people charging six figures for hand-painted enamel dials. Most of them are between four and five figures.
You’re working in such a specific medium. Do you get to the point where you think “Oh God, not another watch dial”?
I did get to the point of thinking, “Oh God, not another ‘CasiOak’”. But that was almost like production-level. It was an unhealthy amount. But no, I love what I do. I’m very blessed. There are some dark days where you think “I’m rubbish at this”. But I think every creative person has a dark day. And then other days, when you send something off to a client and they come back with such amazing feedback, you go “Well, that worth the effort”.
Is there something you’d like to do that you haven’t had chance to yet?
I’d like to collaborate with another artist on a dial. I think that’d be fun. I kind of teased seconde/seconde/, saying we need to do something. We’re good friends, but he’s very much, like, “It has to be the right thing to do”. And we haven’t found that yet. I’d love to do something like that, where it’s him or another artist, bringing their style, so it’s a dance.
Would you ever expand the business? Take on more people?
It depends on what you’re wanting to achieve. It’s relatively achievable to get a bunch of people to do the same thing on a dial and then to saturate the market with the same stuff all the time. I felt that was going on with IFL, which is the same thing over and over and over again. And it wasn’t fun anymore. I think it takes away from why you’re doing it. I’m doing it because I like working with individual people. And if I’m working on a photorealistic or a high-intensity image [and I have to do it more than once] I always find that the second time around it’s not as good as the first time, because you mentally cut corners, in a sense. So no, I’m quite happy. I mean, I’m a very antisocial person. But most creative people are very socially awkward. I’m quite happy sitting in my little studio by myself and getting a knock on the door from my wife, saying “The kids are asking when you’re going to come in”.
What watch do you wear?
I’ve got the Speedmaster white dial.
That’s a blank canvas crying out to be painted on!
I am very keen to paint this one. But I’m just waiting for the aftermarket to have parts available. Because, as anyone’s who’s worked with a Speedmaster will know, the chronograph hands shatter. It’s virtually impossible to remove that without breaking it. They have specialist tools at Omega to lift it off. I mean, I’ve successfully done it many times. But I’d rather have a spare hand.
Has Omega done that to stop people tinkering with it?
No. I think the chronograph hand has to be so tight on because it snaps back [when you reset the stopwatch function]. The hole in the hand and the associated pinion must be a tight fit. Once it’s on, it’s on. I’ve spoken to many watchmakers, and official watchmakers for Omega, who say “Yeah, that’s an automatic replacement part. We don’t even try to be careful with them”. If you look at the used market, you’ll see how many chrono hands are available for Speedmasters. It’s huge.
Do you wear your own work?
I sometimes wear prototypes I’m working on. But I don’t often wear my own work, no. It’s probably like being a musician, who doesn’t listen to their own music. It’s just one of those weird things.
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