Like a phone box, bus stop or coalhole, Sickboy’s temple logo has in recent years become a recurring image across the streets of London, and an almost subliminal facet of our city consciousness. Even if you think you’ve never walked past a wall or wheelie bin emblazoned with his bubble-like burst of red and yellow energy, the chances are you will have walked past several, and although the artist has been living in the capital for just three years, it might as well have been ten.

Assuming it’s the first question any interviewer throws at him, I was reluctant to ask Sickboy about the meaning behind his temple logo. But in the end I was glad to hear it from the horse’s mouth. “It’s a positive symbol,” he told me, “a beautiful, optimistic representation of a building.” While Sickboy doesn’t adhere to any particular faith, he counts gospel music, spirituality and the Church of Immaculate Conception in Mayfair as some of his creative resources. “Art is like a library”, he says, “it’s good to take inspiration from across the board, and there’s a warmth and honesty to religion that really appeals to me.”

After a quick look around Sickboy’s studio – where brilliant colours, slogans, block letters, hearts and other spirited symbols jump out from energetic canvasses – it occurs to me that this sense of optimism is prevalent in a lot of his work. There is something accessible about his art, something encouraging, humorous and hopeful. He creates the effect not of alienating the viewer but of including them, or inviting them in.

On this premise, Sickboy built a 3D fantasy factory for his sell-out 2008 Stay Free exhibition at the Tramshed, and – exploring themes of youth, dream-states and the world of Willy Wonka – gave everyone who walked through the door a key. With the installation then bequeathed to the one winning key holder, and subsequently shifted to the garden of a family in East Anglia, I imagine those kids are now the envy of the neighbours. A miniature factory in your back yard, complete with conveyor belts, custom-made windows, a veranda and an interior splashed with first-edition artwork? Let’s face it – that pisses all over your average tree house.

While Sickboy lists Haring, Warhol, Basquiat, Hundertwasser, Gaudi, Picasso, Caravaggio and Hieronymus Bosch as artistic inspirations, he also feels a strong connection to the movement known as Outsider art. Loosely defined as a form of creative expression that exists outside accepted cultural norms, or that remains free from institutions, this provides an insight in to Sickboy’s own creative stance; namely his preoccupation with fantasies and alternate realities, his refusal to suck up to galleries, and the significance of his anti-corporate caged heart installation that he dropped outside the Tate Modern.

Plans for the imminent future involve some travel, a few international group shows and, later this year, his third London show in as many years. While the exhibition will essentially be another solo venture, he hints at a collaborative element too, naming Eine, D*Face and Paul Insect as some of the artists he’ll be working with.

As far as ideas go, Sickboy strikes me as the kind of artist who never falls short. His creative energy comes across as illimitable. Oh, for a day inside his head. As someone who’s earliest memory was of denting a frying pan with a hammer then drawing his own reflection, he’s since worked hard, won hearts, demonstrated his talents and established a reputation as one of the decade’s most investable emergent young artists.

Despite these successes however, and an increasingly hefty price tag attached to his canvases, Sickboy is an unpretentious character – free from airs and graces, fun to be around – and I get the impression he doesn’t take himself too seriously.