World enews: Artist squiggles black-and-white over his entire mansion

He said that plenty of other street and graffiti artists had also influenced him along the way, “as well as cartoons and video games that I played as a kid.

“None of it’s ever sketched or anything like that because I find that when I add a sketch or pencil out something, it just kills the flow of the organic nature of a doodle,” he said

Cox, who frequently showcases his work in time-lapse videos spread across walls and canvases, refers to his doodling as a “virus.”

“When I was young, maybe about 16 years old, I realized that doodling was just kind of taking over my life. … I started drawing on my parents’ furniture and everything around me. I wanted my doodles to take over everything,” he said. “So I just became obsessed with it in the best way possible. And it’s been like a happy obsession ever since really.”

Mo Abbas / NBC News

Sam Cox, doodle house — The mansion is covered entirely in cartoon-like doodles.Mo Abbas / NBC News

Success, however, took its toll in 2020, when Cox said he was hospitalized for six weeks owing to stress brought on by the administrative side of his work.

“I went through a wave of hallucinations and delusions from thinking that I was speaking to God to being hired to doodle all over Donald Trump’s wall,” Cox wrote on his Facebook page shortly afterward.

He has since recovered, and now has the support of his Ukrainian-born wife, Alena, 32, who is also an artist. They married last year.

They collaborate on some projects, with Alena introducing color to Cox’s hitherto monochrome creations.

“Mrs. Doodle likes to color in my doodles so we sometimes work together on canvases or big pieces of work,” Cox said.

“In the future we’ve got plans for maybe projects on the scale of this,” he said, gesturing at the mansion. “We could work together and create a colorful creation, or something new or something different, so watch this space.”

Mo Abbas

Mo Abbas is a London-based multimedia producer for NBC News.

Kelly Cobiella is a correspondent based in London. She previously worked at CBS News and ABC News in London, following several years with CBS in New York, Dallas and Miami.