A Windown in my Brain

Images by Lauri Hopkins
Interview by Ursula Lake

Make catches up with multidisciplinary artist Lauri Hopkins to find out more about her and how she creates her striking, bright artwork.

Q. Tell us a little bit about yourself (how you started, any formal training, any artists in the family etc?

A. I always had a propensity to draw and make and cared a lot about colour. None of this felt optional to me, so I had no real starting point, it was more of a cluster of traits and behaviors. I did study Fine Art at The University of Chichester in my mid-twenties, but I think I was already pretty set on art as a career by then. My first memory of thinking “that’s what I could do when I grow up” was watching a Jean Muir documentary on television as a small child. I grew up on a council estate and it blew my mind that there was a world where someone having a sensitivity to things like colour and texture was taken seriously and had real value. That definitely opened some sort of window in my brain.

Q. How would you describe your work?

A. I suppose it’s a record of what I’ve seen, felt, liked, listened to, remembered. The result of a mostly subconscious act that I happen to have decided at some point to give shape to as fairly minimal, collaged shapes.

Q. You describe your work as multidisciplinary, was it always that way or has it evolved to this place more recently?

A. The work straddles collage, painting, assemblage, low-relief sculpture and often includes print, house paint, found materials like packaging and antique books. I’ve been working this way for around 15 years so it’s definitely not a recent thing. It seems to sustain my curiosity still. I like the ambiguity of the works. At a distance they often read like paintings, the materials have been used quite formally; books stripped of titles and embossed motifs that say more about the books I’ve used than the mood I’m trying to explore.

Q. Who or what motivates you to go to start work?

A, I like it. And it’s how I pay my bills. I think it’s a mostly carrot and occasional stick thing. I work quite intensively sometimes, then slow down for a week or two to do life tasks and art-adjacent things that need to get done. I miss the intensive art making during these breaks so by the time I return to it I’m very motivated.

Q. We love your bold sense of colour and the graphic nature of your work. Does this style spill into the way you dress or your home?

A. Thank you. My workspace is actually rather white and plain. The works are the only strong colour usually. That’s partly because I don’t want to be too led by the space, and partly because I rent. My clothes are a lot more like my work though. The same palette and colour combinations.

Q. Is social media important to your work or the way you communicate it to the world or is it more of a necessary evil?!

A. I’m grateful to it as it means I can mostly circumnavigate the gallery model. This can be disjointed and disrupt my workflow. Oddly I find my phone does this less. I see so many incredible images on my phone, see what my friends are making, get very slowly used to being ‘seen’, obviously it’s evil but it’s not all evil.

Q. Can you name a piece of art you would love to own?

A. Maybe an Alexander Calder sheet metal sculpture, Blondie is a fun 70’s one. There are absolutely loads of works by Prunella Clough I’d love to own. Louise Bourgeois’ fabric works really influenced me, so they need to stay public, right?

Q, Despite it being an integral part of the work of artists like Picasso, Matisse and Braque, do you feel that collage is a more underrated art form?

A. Yeah, it probably does get a bad rap. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of collage that leaves me cold too. But that could be said of any medium; I think when it’s successful it’s just as strong as any other medium. I find it very warm, intimate and graphic. I guess those artists you mentioned were able to use their clout as male painters to assert a new way of seeing collage. I think Sonia Delaunay did the same thing with a small quilt but maybe wasn’t taken as seriously. I think if you know what you’re doing and where you’re coming from that’s what matters and will be felt and understood by enough others. I never worry about any kind of hierarchy when it comes to materials.

Q. The theme of this issue is Bright, does this theme resonate to you and your work and if so, how?

A. In this moment, the word Bright makes me think of the feeling I get when I resolve a punchy work and I’m full of ‘happy hormones’ from looking at it.

Q. What’s next for Lauri Hopkins?

A. I’d like to play around with some large fabric works; to play around with scale and try a completely new method of piecing components together. I’m not sure I have enough space for that yet but I’m working on it.

You can see more of Lauri’s work HERE