Gary Cartlidge is a digital artist associated with the crypto art movement known as TrashArt, working under the recurring persona The Janitor.,Since discovering NFT platforms in 2018, he has produced self-aware digital art, building a body of work that entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Crypto Art.,
Before turning to art, he had a background in extreme sports.As a teenager he applied to show work at Walsall Art Gallery in England and was rejected, a setback that led him to set art aside for a conventional job. He later returned to university to study Visual Communications, a hybrid graphic design and illustration degree, and in 2018 began making digital art for sale on the platform KnownOrigin. He has lived on the Isle of Man since relocating from the United Kingdom.
His work has been shown as part of TrashArt, a movement within early crypto art built around quickly made digital pieces, including in a group exhibition at Avant Galerie Vossen.In 2021 his piece Don't take the pill received a Mention of Honor in the Best TrashArt category at the first edition of ZARWARDZ, held in the virtual world Cryptovoxels.
His 2019 work Break it, a self-aware distillation of crypto art's presence on Twitter spanning multiple art styles, is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Crypto Art.His work The Circuit at Work., from the same year, is part of the Thoreau Centre for the Blockchain Arts collection.In 2024 he was selected to represent 2019 in the MORROW Collective's exhibition “R(Evolutionaries)” at Art Dubai, a two-part show tracing a decade of crypto art history, alongside artists including Coldie and Osinachi.
Much of his later work extends the character of The Janitor, an alter ego through which he explores art-world rejection and the promise of the NFT space as an alternative gallery system, in works including The Janitors Closet.
