And for Essex gas engineer and part-time artist James Gibson it is a philosophy he has taken to heart. Gibson, 43, is the creator of “van art”: extraordinarily detailed creations made entirely from the grime on dirty white vehicles.

If his works initially attracted little more than raised eyebrows in his home town of Harwich, more recent murals have drawn praise from celebrities including boxer David Haye and music superstar Stormzy.

“I started doing the van art about a year ago after getting stuck in a traffic jam,” he says.

“Someone had drawn a smiley face on the back of a lorry and I thought, ‘Someone must have been in a good mood to have done that’. I decided I’d give it a go and did Ed Sheeran. I did a few others early on but as I’ve continued they’ve become more detailed.”

Although Gibson initially concentrated on creating portraits, including England striker Harry Kane, boxers David Haye and Anthony Joshua, Pennywise the clown from the Stephen King film It and rapper Stormzy, it was his haunting recreation of the Battle of the Somme that saw his work go viral.

The mural, etched on the back of a swimming pool company’s filthy Ford Transit for Remembrance Day last year, was shared on Facebook more than 70,000 times.

“I was pleased with that as it was really quite poignant and I felt like it had a sense of movement in the picture,” he says.

He now wants to use his talents to raise awareness of post traumatic stress disorder among the Armed Forces with his next picture planned to be an image of a soldier with his head in his hands.

Gibson creates his works using nothing more than his fingers, a sponge, cocktail sticks and folded up cardboard and admits that he has to work fast as a rain shower could see the whole endeavour washed away.

“I’ll typically spend two to three hours on each piece but as it gets colder the adrenaline kicks in because my hands get so cold and I’m always wary it could rain.”

He also admits that while oldest daughter Alicia, 21, acts as his on-the-spot critic, it was only when platinum-selling Stormzy retweeted an image of his portrait – drawn on the back of a citroen – that youngest daughter Mollie, 15, conceded that her dad might be on to something.

“Mollie’s friends were like, ‘Stormzy has retweeted your dad’,” he says.

“He’s her favourite artist. I think I was cool for once.” That endorsement was to be followed by a phone call from David Haye expressing his admiration for Gibson’s portrait of him.

“He said he saw the picture online as it went viral and said it was incredible,” says Gibson.

“I was so made up that he called me and touched that he liked it so much. I was not expecting it.” The self-proclaimed “Vanksy” insists, however, that he is not about to let his newfound fame go to his head and that he has no plans to retire from his day job just yet.

“My creations are disposable pieces of art. I know it’s there one minute then the next it could start raining and all be washed away,” he says.

“I am not making money out of them and I like that. If they make a person smile when they are stuck in a traffic jam then it’s all worth it to me.”

Follow Gibson’s artworks at his Facebook page JG van art or his Twitter account @van_ksy