About art
Meet the Artist: Lawrie Hutcheon
Lawrie Hutcheon takes the spotlight in our poster campaign for Affordable Art Fair Battersea Spring (6 - 10 March) with his dreamy lenticular artwork, Cumuloform 1. We caught up with Lawrie to learn more about his fascinating process, inspirations, and what he's most excited for at the fair!
Katie Bone
Wednesday 10 January, 2024
In our most recent campaign for Affordable Art Fair Battersea Spring in March, we spotlight a vibrant lenticular piece by Lawrie Hutcheon. Represented by TAG Fine Arts, Lawrie’s artworks captivate the visual senses through vivid colour, challenging our perspectives on the world and prompting us to question our surroundings.
“I find playing with colour combinations exceptionally challenging, rewarding, and slightly addictive.”
Lawrie Hutcheon, represented by TAG Fine Arts.
Can you start by telling us about your practice – where did it all begin?
My interest in art became apparent at school, where instead of playing football and rugby in my free time, I’d be in the art room focusing on painting and ceramics, whilst at home I developed an interest in photography and started exploring abstract and experimental techniques. It was only after university that my interest in ceramics blossomed and it became my main creative medium for the next 25 years.
In 2016 when I shifted my attention from ceramics to two-dimensional work, I began exploring algorithms as a creative tool, a technique that fascinated me; how concise instructions can generate images capable of evoking human emotions, just like DNA in that a tiny piece of information can yield something so amazing and complex.
Soon I was creating over 20,000 images per day, examining each image for a split second. This was visually overwhelming and mentally exhausting, but I’m convinced it developed a certain part of my brain, much like exercise does for a muscle. During this period I realised that years of working with subdued ceramic palettes had desensitised me to colours. Recognising this, I began educating myself in colour, coincidentally inspired by a lenticular postcard on my wall, leading me to explore lenticulars for colour relationships.
“Colour is a powerful catalyst for memory, emotions and thoughts. If people take away a memory of a feeling, either of that moment they saw my work or of a moment that it has helped them remember, I’m happy.”
Lawrie Hutcheon
Do you remember the first lenticular you made?
I remember thinking that I would have plenty of time if I gave myself three days for an open studio weekend, but how wrong I was. It eventually took five months. I committed to delivering a piece for a charity event in Hampshire, but when the day came to deliver it, it wasn’t finished and the truck left for Hampshire without it. I worked through the night and finally my persistence paid off, my first piece came off the press perfectly and it was then just a mad rush to get it there for the opening.
Lenticular artworks are difficult to make, as they involve bringing together tiny, nearly invisible half-millimetre-wide lenses, which, if looked at closely, are almost imperceptible to the naked eye. The challenge lies in aligning each lens precisely with the ink behind it, requiring an accuracy of about a 20th of a millimetre. Calibrating everything to compensate for temperature and humidity changes throughout the day was the problem.
The process was lengthy and complex, but I was determined to master it because I felt it was an exciting and innovative way to explore colour relationships. I find playing with colour combinations challenging, rewarding, and at times addictive. It’s like playing three-dimensional chess – you have to consider how the relationship between one colour and another colour changes as you walk around the piece.
And the colours in your work are so vivid! Do you have an approach to how you select colour?
I’m inspired by the world around me – I rarely look at something without it provoking a feeling or thought. The fact that we exist on this tiny rock is a miracle! My palettes can be inspired by the natural world, aspects of nature such as the sky, landscape and fauna, or sometimes the man-made environment such as advertising hoardings, consumer packaging or digital media. As a teen, I would experiment with my photography by distorting images by placing a variety of objects between the film and the object.
After 30 years of living and working in London, in 2020 I took on a 2nd studio in Redcar which is on the North Yorkshire coast; the studio directly overlooks a glorious 10 mile stretch of sandy beach. When I work late I can often see both an amazing sunset and sunrise over the sea on the same day. They can be dreamy hazes of gentle graduations or vivid, punchy, wild skies and crimson tipped clouds and orange lit wave crests. Undoubtedly, I think these scenes have influenced both my practice and my colour palettes. Even the temperature, weather or environment can turn my mind to colour. Recently in a cold snowy snap, I found myself wistfully thinking of umbers, coral oranges, and hues to warm me up. In summer I often think of turquoise, aquamarines and red berry colours.
Is there a particular feeling you want people to take away from your work?
I have always loved the feeling of seeing something I don’t understand. It’s a momentary shift out of my reality and puts me in a special place for a few moments. It’s a rare experience that I enjoy and somewhat crave, though in the last 3 years, it’s only happened twice. Once with my daughter in a children’s playground when I was convinced I saw the moon hovering five feet above the grass. The other whilst waiting for a train at the station, when a signpost appeared to have a false structure that my brain couldn’t comprehend. When I see people looking at my work I hope that they too perhaps get a momentary nudge out of their reality – it gives me joy to think they might.
People can take many things from my work, but I know many can find it calming, stimulating, or sense-provoking. Colour is a powerful catalyst for memory, emotions and thoughts. If people take away a memory of a feeling, either of that moment they saw my work or of a moment that it has helped them remember, I’m happy.
“I’ve been a visitor to the Affordable Art Fair before I was a full-time artist and always loved them, so to be featured is truly amazing.”
Lawrie Hutcheon
Would you say you have an ideal working environment that helps you with your creative process?
Currently, I would say it’s pretty damn good, but in the ideal world I could travel more often to the middle of nowhere. Isolated from technology with just a pen and paper to think, dream and capture my thoughts free from everyday distractions. With affordable studio rents and a welcoming local community, Redcar is beginning to attract more and more creative people to the town, the development of a local creative network is something that I look forward to.
And lastly, we’re thrilled to have your artwork as the star of our campaign poster for our Battersea Spring fair! What are you most excited about for the fair?
You’re thrilled! Imagine how I feel. I’ve been a visitor to the Affordable Art Fair before I was a full-time artist and always loved them, so to be featured is truly amazing. In the last year I have been working on new bodies of work, and the potential to show them at the fair with a heightened focus on my work will be fantastic.
The tagline for our campaign is ‘art is in the air’ – which we feel brings out a lovely message of art being all around us! Does this resonate with you?
This resonates more than you can imagine, both literally and metaphorically. I flew hang gliders for ten years in the UK and Europe. I was drawn to hang gliding because of a recurring dream as a child that I could fly, all I had to do was to run as fast as I could, hold my arms out wide and form my hands into a secret special shape and I would soar as high or far as I desired. Hang gliding taught me to study weather and clouds and I’ve cloud spotted ever since, it’s partly why the Cumuloform series was started.
In terms of art being all around us, I see it every day, everywhere I go. It could be a colour, an abstracted form or the shape of a building from a certain angle. If “art is in the air”, to me, it implies that it’s everywhere and for the taking, you just need to open yourself to it, be amazed, and reach out for it.
Discover more from Lawrie Hutcheon at TAG Fine Arts stand at Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Spring from 6 – 10 March, alongside over 100 other leading exhibiting galleries still to be announced, and 1,000s of stunning affordable artworks.