Matt Barker: Congratulations on winning the Cut & Paste competition.

Foxx Fischer: Thank you. I’m always trying to enter competitions and stuff to keep me busy. This one was long overdue – the deadline had already passed – but they contacted me the day before. Weirdly I’d just been to a charity shop and seen this necklace behind the counter and I’d bought it for £1.50. It said “bliss” on it and three or four hours later this woman called me and invited me to come along for a test run, which was on the theme of bliss. It was so cool. I thought of something really quickly and went up and did it.

MB: What did you have to do for the competition?

FF: Each time they give you a theme the week before and you’ve got 15 minutes to design something in front of everyone else on that theme. It’s all sponsored so they have you using Wacom pads. Normally I like to draw on paper – it’s strange trying to get used to the whole digital stuff.

MB: It’s literally against the clock, turn up, do some illustration.

FF: They filtered us down, chose eight of us to actually compete in the competition and then we just went and did it. It was so quick, so fast. It’s kind of the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.

MB: It sounds insane. You had to go through rounds with a new piece for each round.

FF: The judges chose the top two people from each round to go through to the next one. The adrenaline was crazy.

MB: That level of adrenaline could really be a hindrance to doing good work, especially when you throw in the time constraint.

FF: Definitely. The fact that people were watching what I was doing was tough. The way that they advertise it meant that the audience is made up by people in my industry so it’s really, really daunting. But you’ve got to be in it to win it. We’ll see about the final in New York in June. I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth and see what happens. One of the guys I beat to get though works for Mother, one of the best agencies and he said he might be able to get me some work experience.

MB: You should have his job really, as you beat him.

FF: Yeah, maybe. I’m more prepared for this one, because I think, frankly, my entries for the competition so far have been rubbish, absolutely terrible. With any luck I’m going to try and get through to the second round. If you win, you get a massive digital drawing screen, you draw directly onto the screen. It’s a nice bit of kit, but what I’m interested in is what you get if you get to the semi final. You get an Apple workstation.

MB: It sounds great. So with Salute, do you employ people, or collaborate?

FF: Well, if there’s money involved then we’ll split it. It’s me mainly and then there have been a few people in the past, like Alice Balfour who is a sculpture student. We did a bunch of paste ups and some things for a music festival. It’s an open group. If people want to come and do stuff then that’s good.