TODAY I feel privileged. Adam Klodzinski has invited me down to his underground studio in Pokesdown, where the urban artist permits few visitors.

“Even I don’t even usually come down here,” says Tony March, Adam’s friend, business partner and the building’s owner.

“This is his creative space and I leave him to it; he’ll paint down here for hours listening to banging drum ’n’ bass.”

Tony hits the lights, illuminating the damp-smelling basement. Sitting in the centre of the room is a life-sized model of the lion that Adam is spraying for Pride in Bournemouth – an exciting summer public art event.

“I was commissioned to paint it by the Metropolis Gallery in Westbourne,” says Adam, originally from Poland.

“It’s quite hard – the head is shaped more like a horse’s than a lion’s.”

Yet if Adam is finding this big cat canvas a challenge, he could have fooled me.

The intricate artwork on this lion is phenomenal, especially considering he sprayed it freehand with an airbrush. I can’t say I’m surprised.

Earlier this year I’d seen some of his work hanging at Metropolis Gallery and I was blown away by it; the level of detail was incredible and the shiny finish he achieved had me wondering what precious material he used as a canvas.

“MDF,” I was told. My jaw dropped.

An Aladdin’s cave of urban art, the basement studio is littered with spray-painted portraits of celebs. There’s Anthony Hopkins, Tupac, Bob Marley and gangster turned celebrity Dave Courtney, who commissioned Adam to paint the piece.

“When people see them they think they’re photographs,” says Tony. “They’re amazing.”

Gradually, Adam is becoming recognised in celebrity circles for his portraits; he’s done one for EastEnders star Preeya Kalidas and musicians Dizzee Rascal, Professor Green and Example.

Yet while his portraits pay the bills, Adam’s roots lie in street art.

“I first picked up a spray can when I was 15,” he says. “I sprayed adverts on shops and was paid in cans of paint; they were hard to get hold of if you were a young person growing up in Poland.”

Rather than pushing street artists underground, people in Adam’s hometown, Bydgoszcz, turned to them to help liven up depressing Soviet architecture.

His crew, still operating today, just painted an 11-storey apartment block in the town that has become a tourist attraction and a metaphor for Poland’s emergence from the misery of Soviet occupation.

“People come from other towns to take photos,” says Adam, who wears his trademark baggy jeans, baseball cap and hoodie.

Although local authorities in Britain have been more reluctant to embrace street art, Adam has recently secured a commission to paint a platform wall at Pokesdown railway station, which he hopes to start in May.

“It will probably be the first train station in England to be painted by a street artist,” he says excitedly. “Bournemouth is a young, tourist town. I think if the council gave me a few legal walls to paint people would go home and tell others about it.”

Adam moved from Poland to Bournemouth in 2006 when he was offered a job spraying cars, crash helmets and bikes at a custom car firm in New Milton. The artist then met Tony, who steered Adam in a more creative direction.

Adam calls his painting technique aerography and if you want to see him in action, his YouTube videos have received approximately 50,000 hits so far.

“I think he’s got the talent and drive to make it big,” Metropolis Gallery’s Vicki Angus says.

And after a morning with the artist, I’d have to agree.

l Adam has now finished the lion and it is on display at Metropolis in Westbourne.