Slaves’ Laurie Vincent swapped his loud guitar for an equally-loud paintbrush over the weekend, resulting in a pop-up exhibition of his paintings at the Amersham Arms pub in south east London. Before heading down there ourselves, Live4ever caught up with Vincent for a quick chat about it all.
Laurie Vincent performing with Slaves in London, Jan 2016 (Photo: Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever Media)
So how did this exhibition come about?
I paint a lot and so I just wanted to show people my art. I just thought the same thing we did with Slaves and go and do shows wherever we could and I found somewhere that would put my stuff up, and I just thought I’d organise it myself.
You’ve always painted then?
Yeah, on and off. I’ve always created stuff, and painting is something I got back into last year. I decided that I wanted to do something that was completely separate from music so I bought an easel and loads of paint and went at it. That’s when I sort of developed this style.
Did you give up for a while?
No, I wouldn’t say I gave up. You know, you don’t have to paint to be creative and I was doing other stuff. I think I focused on the band just because I wanted to get that going and I put art to the back of my mind. I made art for the band but not just for painting’s sake
You made art for band?
Yeah, I did a lot of the t-shirt designs. Also posters and album and single covers, that kind of stuff.
What are your influences in art then?
There’s people like Keith Haring, (Jean-Michel) Basquiat, Raymond Pettibon – the guy that did the Black Flag stuff – that sort of DIY aesthetic. Stuff like that. I like Andy Warhol’s attitude. At the moment I think Wes Lang is really cool, just how it’s all collage drawings. I’m quite inspired by that.
What are your hopes for this exhibition? Are you looking to do more after this?
Yeah definitely. I want to hopefully get to a gallery one day and actually take painting quite seriously. I just want people to come and see my paintings on the wall and form opinions about them. I think that’s all that any artist can hope for.
Would you say there are any messages in your art? There are a churches and even Tesco and Lidl bags in your paintings, for example.
There are, but I think art’s for everyone to take their own message away from. I don’t set out with a direct intention, but when I look back I say “ah, I know why I did that”. Yeah, there’s definitely deeper meaning in my paintings but I want people to just find out what the paintings make them feel.
Do you get the same satisfaction from painting as you do making music?
You get satisfaction from both but they’re not exactly the same. I think because obviously visual and hearing are such different senses it satisfies different part of the brain maybe.
Where do you get your inspiration for your paintings from?
It’s sort of the same as music – everyday life. The world that I notice and decide to capture. The (Tesco and Lidl) bags are just because they are so iconic. So I paint things I see and make images that I want to put on my wall basically.
Do you get second opinions from friends or family?
I think my girlfriend is my biggest sort of person, you know, she’s like my muse. She picks colours and helps me work that sort of stuff out. I show people my work but I don’t ask them if they think it’s good or not because art’s subjective. People always tend to like a few of them. I don’t think everyone loves all of them. I think my work uses a lot of everyday subject matter and some people like the one with a Tesco bag in because they like the shop, you know, it’s quite funny.
Aside from music, is painting the only other art you produce?
I tattoo as well, which is I guess is art, and I have a clothing brand which I design all the stuff for. And I’ve dabbled with photography, but drawing and painting have always been my favourite.
Would you ever do a drawing exhibition then?
Yeah, maybe. I’ve got some portrait chalk drawings but they’re not really where I’m at at the moment. One day I hope to maybe.
Do you do self-portraits or other people?
Yeah, I do both.
How about naming your paintings?
Sometimes I do if the name comes quickly, and then other times I don’t. I don’t think you have a reasonto name them until you do an exhibition, so if you haven’t got a name you’re kind of forcing it.
Finally, do you have a favourite painting of your own?
It’s usually the last one I did. So I finished one yesterday, which is in the exhibition, of a toy soldier and at the moment that’s my favourite.
The faint curdle of apprehension that one initially feels inside upon hearing a known somebody from one creative silo has leaped into another, and wants to show it to the world – 50 Cent the actor, Joaquin Phoenix the rapper, Morrissey the author – sometimes gut-instinct is a man’s best friend.
But if you haven’t already seen some of Laurie Vincent‘s paintings on the internet, a walk into the otherwise cold, bare room above the Amersham Arms rapidly dispels any ready-to-pounce notion there might be that he should stick to his day job; a cursory glance at the thirteen paintings covering the whitewashed walls and it feels as if you’ve stepped into a giant world of cartoons, a jumbled comic strip.
Flat, bold hues caught inside thick, black outlines. Alien bishops on horseback, mermaid terrorists to brains, bums and toothpaste. Plus Mike Tyson.
Like the music he makes, Vincent paints with uncomplicated but fiercely colourful strokes. Reds and yellows feature prominently, but it’s the pinks that do the most work. Where there are hints of violence in the subject matter, this colour does the mollifying. The largest of the paintings depicts one of those crouched plastic toy soldiers that all men of a certain age will remember playing with as a boy. Despite the belligerent ‘KILL KILL KILL’ on the canvas, the soldier is softened up by being completely pink.
Likewise, the most surreal painting of the lot has a mermaid clad in a pink balaclava and machine gun underneath a ‘BURN BABYLON!’ caption. Whatever aggression Vincent has to offer, he doesn’t really mean it.
If the vividness of his paint and curious figures take you away from reality, the monotony of regular reality is brought back through those Tesco and Lidl plastic bags, featuring in no fewer than three paintings between them. (One bag hangs off a cactus, looking about ready to spar with Mike Tyson.) An oblique reference to daily addiction even, smoking, is seen in the box of Swan Vesta matches.
Beneath the apparent simplicity of it all, there’s a lot to take in here. The paintings have a trunk of motifs that keep cropping up (stars, teeth, churches, to name some not already mentioned) that no doubt mean something to Vincent and leave the looker conjecturing.
And guesswork, as any good Sherlock goes to sleep thinking, is a lot of fun.
