MR DOODLE
b. 1994, United KingdomMr Doodle (Sam Cox, born 1994, Kent) is a British artist known for dense, all-over black-and-white ‘graffiti spaghetti’ doodles that spread across canvases, rooms, buildings, objects, and his own hand-drawn clothing. Combining street art, illustration, performance, and branding, he has quickly built an international following and has collaborated with global companies including Fendi, Converse, Puma, Samsung, and MTV. In 2022, he completed a fully doodled home in Kent known as the ‘Doodle House’ and large-scale mural commissions have followed.
Recent projects include the 2025–2026 solo exhibition Doodle Frenzy at Villazan Gallery, Madrid, and a 2026 Comic Relief collaboration for Red Nose Day that invited audiences into his studio and introduced new charity-focused works.
Early years and Mr Doodle persona
Sam Cox was born in Kent, England, in 1994, and showed an early obsession with drawing, covering schoolbooks, bedroom walls, furniture, and later local restaurants and schools with his doodles. He studied Illustration at the University of the West of England in Bristol, graduating in 2015.
While at Bristol, Cox began to appear in public wearing clothes he had covered with his own doodles, a performative gesture that led to the nickname ‘Mr Doodle’, which became his professional pseudonym. He has since developed an ongoing fictional universe around this alter ego, elaborated in a 2016 short film made with Modus Film Productions that presents Mr Doodle as an ‘obsessive-compulsive drawer’ exiled from Doodleland by an Anti-Doodle Squad. This narrative continues in later projects, including his space-themed exhibitions and animations featuring Mr Doodle, Mrs Doodle, and the villainous Dr Scribble.
Drawing style and ‘graffiti spaghetti’
Mr Doodle’s artworks are characterised by tightly packed, improvisatory fields of black lines on predominantly white grounds, filled with letters, symbols, faces, and recurring cartoon-like characters. These compositions can extend from canvases and works on paper to furniture, clothing, cars, and entire rooms, producing immersive environments he describes as a ‘growing drawing virus’.
The artist often refers to his approach as ‘graffiti spaghetti’, a phrase that captures both the speed and visual density of his mark-making. He has stated that his aim is to develop a “universal doodle language” capable of appealing to viewers regardless of age or background.
Key exhibitions and Projects
Mr Doodle’s first major solo exhibition, Attention Seeker (2016, Hoxton Gallery, London), saw the gallery’s walls, floors, fixtures, and furniture transformed into a monochrome ‘Doodle Land’ installation created in situ over the course of a week. The show established his signature practice of inhabiting and performing within fully doodled environments.
In 2018 he presented Doodle World (2018, ARA Art Center, Seoul), his first exhibition in Korea, which included large-scale installations and works produced in collaboration with Samsung devices. The exhibition featured immersive wall drawings and digital displays, including a screen wall composed of multiple Galaxy Note phones.
Subsequent solo exhibitions have included:
- Mr Doodle Invades Sotheby’s (2019, Sotheby’s Hong Kong), presenting canvases and objects alongside live doodling performances.
- Doodle Tokyo (2019, Daikanyama Hillside Forum, Tokyo), where the artist expanded his doodle universe across gallery architecture and large canvases.
- Mr Doodle in Love (2022, chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai), focusing on romantic and fantastical imagery around the personas of Mr and Mrs Doodle.
- Mr Doodle in Space (2023–2024, Pearl Lam Galleries, Pedder Building and K11 MUSEA, Hong Kong), an immersive narrative exhibition that followed Mr and Mrs Doodle and Dr Scribble through a series of space-themed DoodleWorld environments, accompanied by live doodling events in Hong Kong.
- Mr Doodle! Museum Mayhem (2024, The Holburne Museum, Bath), his first UK museum exhibition, which extended his drawings from sketchbooks into canvases, sculptures, and site-specific doodles covering the museum’s interiors and grounds.
- sketch and doodle (2024, Sketch, London, with Pearl Lam Galleries), a takeover of the restaurant’s reception spaces and “Pod” bathrooms using motifs drawn from his sketchbooks.
- Doodle Frenzy (2025–2026, Villazan Gallery, Madrid), a major solo exhibition introducing a more expressive, layered spray-paint aesthetic across canvases and graphic works..
Group exhibitions include Sense of Space: A Sensory Experience of Mindful Art (2018, Broadgate, London) and The Ethereal Aether (2021, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg), which featured his work alongside international contemporary artists. In 2026, the artist participated in a public talk entitled ‘DoodleLand: Mr Doodle in conversation with Verity Babbs’ at the National Gallery in London, exploring his practice within the context of a major UK museum.
Art history riffs and recurring characters
Mr Doodle frequently adapts motifs from art history, re-imagining canonical images through his doodle language. Works such as The Garden of Doodley Delights (2019), referencing Hieronymus Bosch, Mr Doodle Screaming (2019) after Edvard Munch, and Mona Doodle (2019) after Leonardo da Vinci translate well-known compositions into dense networks of cartoon forms.
In parallel, Cox has developed a set of recurring figures that populate ‘DoodleWorld’, including playful creatures, hybrid objects, and alter egos such as Mrs Doodle and Dr Scribble. Many works, including the print series Pop Heart (2021), incorporate hearts, flowers, and affectionate characters, reflecting a more explicitly romantic narrative around the Mr and Mrs Doodle personas.
Mrs Doodle, Dr Scribble, and Collaborations
Alena, the artist’s wife, appears as ‘Mrs Doodle’ and collaborates on works by adding colour to some of his black-and-white compositions, echoing a colouring-book process. Cox also performs as ‘Dr Scribble’, an ‘evil twin’ persona whose darker imagery and inversions of black and white extend the narrative of DoodleWorld.
Mr Doodle’s brand collaborations have included capsule collections and projects with Fendi, Puma, Converse, Samsung, MTV and others, often involving live doodling on products, spaces, or large-scale structures. For Fendi he created the rooftop performance Doodling FENDI ROMA (2019, Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, Rome), covering the fashion house’s rooftop setting with his characteristic drawings. Earlier commissions include a giant doodled sculpture for the 2017 MTV Europe Music Awards and permanent or temporary murals in public spaces such as Wembley Park in London.
Public Commissions and Murals
Working extensively in public spaces, Mr Doodle has produced outdoor murals and interventions in cities including London, Bristol, New York, Brussels, Dubai, and Mexico City. His 2018 project at Wembley Park in London transformed twelve large concrete blocks into an outdoor installation of interlocking doodle characters referencing the area’s music and sports history.
He has also undertaken projects for the Mexico City Metro and other transit or commercial sites, extending his “graffiti spaghetti” aesthetic into urban infrastructure. In 2022 he completed the ‘Doodle House”’ in Kent, a fully doodled home whose exterior and interior surfaces are covered with his drawings and widely documented in video tours and media coverage. In 2024 he created a large mural for London Mural Festival on the Regent’s Park Road bridge in Camden and a 203-metre-long mural in Ashford, Kent, produced in a single day.
Art market and NFTs
Mr Doodle’s work has attracted strong demand in the auction market, particularly in East Asia. In 2020 his large painting Spring (2019) realised JPY 109.25 million (around US $1.02 million) at Tokyo Chuo Auction, more than 12 times its presale estimate and a record for the artist at the time. Works such as Pink Kitty (2019) and Blue Kitty (2019) have also significantly outperformed estimates at Sotheby’s online sales. Subsequent auctions in Hong Kong and other centres have continued to see strong demand for his large canvases and works on paper, confirming his position in the contemporary pop-and-street-art market.
In 2021 Mr Doodle partnered with Pearl Lam Galleries and the NFT platform SuperRare to debut The Living Doodle (2021), a stop-motion animation in which characters from DoodleWorld attempt to escape from a canvas into the digital realm. The single-edition NFT was auctioned on SuperRare alongside a physical canvas, with the winning bidder receiving both the token and the painting.
Artists such as Mr Doodle and KAWS, whose work combines accessible, universal imagery with strong visual branding, have become particularly visible in Asian auction rooms and among younger collectors.
Website and Instagram
Mr Doodle maintains an active online presence, sharing new works, performances, and projects via his website and social media. His official site, mrdoodle.com, and Instagram account @mrdoodle showcase ongoing drawings, collaborations, and large-scale doodle environments.
Mr Doodle FAQs
What is Mr Doodle’s real name?
Mr Doodle is the pseudonym of British artist Sam Cox (born 1994, Kent, UK), who is known for his dense black-and-white doodle compositions across canvases, rooms, and public spaces.
Why is Mr Doodle famous?
Mr Doodle gained attention through videos and live performances in which he rapidly covers entire rooms, objects, and buildings with his ‘graffiti spaghetti’ doodles, then consolidated his profile through solo shows in London and Asia and high-profile brand collaborations.
What does ‘graffiti spaghetti’ mean?
‘Graffiti spaghetti is Mr Doodle’s term for his improvisatory, all-over style of drawing, where thick black lines twist and loop to form tightly packed characters, symbols, and patterns that can expand endlessly across surfaces.
What is DoodleWorld?
DoodleWorld is the fictional universe that underpins Mr Doodle’s practice, populated by recurring characters, playful creatures, and alter egos such as Mrs Doodle and Dr Scribble, and used to connect his canvases, murals, and animations into a single narrative world.
Where can I see Mr Doodle’s murals and installations?
Mr Doodle has created large-scale doodle environments in galleries and public spaces in cities including London, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Mexico City, as well as outdoor projects such as the Wembley Park installation in London and commissions for brands like Fendi and Samsung.
How has Mr Doodle performed at auction?
Since 2019 Mr Doodle’s works have achieved strong results, especially in East Asia; his painting Spring (2019) sold at Tokyo Chuo Auction in 2020 for about US $1.02 million, more than 12 times its estimate, and other works such as Pink Kitty and Blue Kitty (both 2019) have exceeded expectations at Sotheby’s.
Has Mr Doodle created NFTs?
Yes, in 2021 Mr Doodle released The Living Doodle (2021) with Pearl Lam Galleries on the SuperRare platform, a stop-motion NFT showing DoodleWorld characters trying to escape a canvas, sold together with a physical painting to the winning bidder.
Ocula | 2026
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