Ralphy Taylor is a renowned Western Australian metal artist who has created the exquisite art piece known as ‘Coffee Cup Man’, modelled on C. Y. O’Connnor.

It is a featured Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour artwork that is situated in front of eBikers opposite Cicerello’s.

As a child, Ralphy would wag school and catch a train to Cicerello’s old wooden building in the 1960s/1970s, near where he loved to swim.

Ralphy, who was a concreter in the building industry all his life, was the son of a well-known champion speedway bike rider.

At 57 years of age, after an accident at work and then having two strokes, as he himself puts it, the right side of his brain, which is the artistic side, ‘went nuts’ and expressed itself in art, and more so in metal art; a rare condition he calls ‘a stroke of good luck.’

He has completed over 100 pieces of art and has become known world-wide, even though he has never entered an art competition. Ralphy has a unique and different style that uses flat steel, mostly cut, dollied and shaped by many different size hammers and by welding.