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Spraygraphic Interview with Artist Lou Brooks
By Spraygraphic | June 25, 2008
Spraygraphic Interview with Lou Brooks
SG: Please tell us about yourself?
Lou: I grew up in the ‘50s in Levittown PA, which was the laboratory at the time for planned Utopian suburban living. What they mostly learned from it, I think, is that there is no such place. After my one semester at art school, they said it would be better if I didn’t come back, so I didn’t. I was more interested in getting a car and getting laid. It seems now it would have been simpler without the car, but in Utopia, this is what I was told was needed.
By dumb luck, I landed a night shift job as a general-purpose artist at a Philadelphia newspaper. The thing I remember most about the job is that I got to touch up and censor stripper photos for the Trocadero Burlesque Theater ads. After the newspaper, I just went on from there to magazines, design studios, etc. A few years later, when I began to sell my comics to Playboy, New York was calling, so I moved there.
I got there way back in the ‘’70s, just when the city’s sordid-and-dangerous meter had finally gone into the red zone. The place had an attitude of: “if-you’re-looking-for-sympathy-you’ll-find-it-in-the-dictionary-between-shit-and-syphilis.” As soon as I got there, Son of Sam was running around loose, somebody bombed the Cuban Embassy up the street from our loft, John Lennon got shot soon after that, and so on… but cocaine was just becoming the new safe non-addictive drug and AIDS wasn’t even an idea yet, so a lot of people were screwing like rabbits. I haven’t been back there for a while, but it’s become its own little Orlando there, hasn’t it? That’s what I hear, anyway.
SG: Where do you currently live and work?
Lou: These days, I live and work a few hours north of San Francisco in a secret little cave up in the hills. I’ve been here for a dozen years now, so my New York friends have finally stopped wondering about it. All I hear now are cows, horses and squirrels. Come to think of it, there was once a guy dressed in a squirrel suit looking in our NY apartment window. Small world, huh?
SG: What mediums do you work with?
Lou: It depends on what I’m working on. Except for my acrylic paintings on canvas, all of my work is inked onto watercolor paper, and then I take it into Photoshop. It’s the same principles as when I started. We used to call it production art. Everything was ink and overlays and masks and paste, same as the comics. So, I feel at home with inking, then mechanically adding the rest one way or the other.
SG: Describe your working process when creating a new work.
Lou: I leave very little to chance. I don’t know exactly why this is. Something my parents did to me, I guess. My preliminary sketches are meticulous. And then I tend to pick away at the final painting or illustration as long as I am allowed to. My wife says that it’s like watching somebody who can’t stop polishing a car.
SG: What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?
Lou: Sometimes, doing something else is the best way to get past the block. At least, for me. That can be anything from reading to stacking a couple of cords of firewood. But there’s a thin line between that and procrastination, and they often go hand in hand. Also, getting pissed off about it can be a great help at times. Especially the writing. But it depends on what I’m doing. Commercial illustration is the easiest to soldier on through, because the deadline’s been decided for you. And I have bills to pay. With my paintings, I’m never blocked, because I’m pretty new at it, and there are just too many ideas I need to get at.
As far as my writing, which is becoming more and more a part of my daily process, that’s where the block occurs the most. Writing is about the loneliest creative job from hell you could ask for. No one can help you. Sometimes you hate yourself and sometimes you wake up with it already pouring out of you. There’s no telling. Actually, a bigger problem for me is balancing the three things in my week without cheating on any of them. Really difficult.
SG: Where are you currently finding your inspiration?
Lou: My inspiration seems to come more from places other than art. Even though there are wonderful exceptions, I find a lot of new art strikes a pose about our popular culture, but really says nothing about it. To me, it’s copying the artists that copied the artists that copied the artists that copied the pop culture. It seems manufactured, rather than created. A jarring visual epiphany for me more often comes from the real thing, but reality’s getting harder to find. Like Crumb said, “the longer the buying and selling goes on, the more hollow and bankrupt the culture becomes.” Or something like that.
SG: Do you have a favorite character you like to draw? Why or Why not?
Lou: No, not really a specific character.
SG: Can you please tell us a little about your flash movie section, Lou-ville ?
Lou: Creating movies is all about your own art moving and talking. And there’s music and sound and time, which can be chopped and twisted anyway you like. It’s an addiction I can’t always keep away from. But it’s a huge commitment of time at the expense of other pursuits.
SG: Can you tell us a little about Lucky Dog Racing?
Lou: I grew up just up the road from a big old dirty racetrack and wanted to be A.J. Foyt , just like some boys grew up a few blocks from Yankee Stadium and wanted to be Mickey Mantle. It was loud and blinding and more dramatic than anything else I could find then. It really got its hooks in me, but I could never figure out how to actually do it myself until I left New York and moved to the South Jersey shore. As a participant on the track, I found it had an awesome simplicity to it. The rest of the world just became bullshit out there. And unlike art, you knew when you won.
SG: Where has your work been seen?
Lou: Jeezus, I’ve been doing it such a long time, it’s easier to say where it hasn’t been, as far as print and broadcast go. I was just on the cover of Time Magazine about two months ago. Between Time and Newsweek , that makes about a dozen or so times that’s happened. It’s astounding how just about everybody sees a Time cover. Each time I do one, I still picture the Queen of England sitting on the royal can staring at my art.
SG: Where will it be seen next?
Lou: Right now I’m beginning illustration work on a book for Workman Publishing . I’m putting together a greeting card line with a card company. I’m in a gallery show right now at The Robert Berman Gallery in LA. The response to that so far has been pretty exciting, so I’m looking forward to wherever that all leads.
SG: What is your dream art assignment?
Lou: My dream is that there IS no assignment! That’s always been my bitch with illustration. Just by definition of the word, you’re always illustrating someone else’s larger idea. It’s a problem for me. I want to offer more than that. I myself desire to be the idea. That dictates a lot of self-generated projects. I’m midstream finally on changing a lot of this around so that I am the whole idea.
SG: What is your favorite color?
Lou: I would say it’s a combination of two colors: warm red and warm yellow. Even though you didn’t ask, my least favorite color is brown, although I realize that, thanks to earthworms, our entire planet is made of brown.
SG: Who is your favorite artist? And Why?
Lou: God, there are so many. It’s always changing, but all of what I have liked is usually from “way down there.” L.B. Cole. He was a comic book artist from the ‘40s and ‘50s. Looking at his covers is like being on a drug. Al (Stiff Figure) Feldstein (Mad), Bill Ward (Torchy), Will Elder (Mad). Lot’s of the strip artists from back then, too. Bob Kane (Batman), for example, Martin Branner (Winnie Winkle), Phil Davis (Mandrake the Magician). People have forgotten that so many of them drew AND wrote their comic strip! Crumb, of course. Vintage pulp artists like Norman Saunders . Lots of blood sweat and other fluids. Then, there are the animators with balls, like Avery and Clampett. Somebody stop me!
SG: What book/magazine are you reading this week?
Lou: I just today finished “I Married a Dead Man” by Cornell Woolrich . Great stuff. The only two magazines that I care about and subscribe to are Filmfax and Paris Review .
SG: Ever do a self-portrait? Where is it now?
Lou: I’ve done a portrait of myself from an 8th grade school yearbook photo. It was the only school photo my parents wouldn’t pay for. This would have been around 1958, and I was going through this Elvis Presley/Charles Starkweather phase. I’m not sure, but I may still be in it, although I don’t shoplift now. But back then shoplifting was a major hobby of mine. My teens included a few nights in jail. I think everybody should spend one night in jail when they’re young.
SG: Where is your favorite place to hang out?
Lou: After twenty years in New York that solidly consisted of only being home two or three nights a week, my favorite place these days is my studio.
SG: Any final words of advice?
Lou: Yes, some inspiring words for all artists everywhere who wish to succeed… First, try to come up with a way of working that is fast and productive. Second, try not to waste precious time trying to exceed what’s “just good enough.” Believe me, the public won’t know the difference, and wouldn’t care a frog’s fart, even if they did. Third, have rich parents.
Additional Links:
The Lou Brooks blog
Lou Brooks Illustration portfolio
Topics: Artist Interviews, Toys and Comics |
