Welcome to “Get to Know” where we interview both established and emerging Artists from across the globe and take a moment to go deeper and learn about their thoughts, processes, experience and creative approach.
Today we feature Lotte Alexis Smith
Hey Lotte, thank you for jumping on. Where do you call home?
Probably Sydney’s Inner West so much of my life experiences happen around there
How did your journey as a creative start?
I didn’t actually want to study art when considering what to do after high school, I wanted to go travelling. I remember thinking that if i did go to uni I wanted to do a foundation diploma at AFTRS to learn about cinematography and animation. However my dad really pushed for me to suss out National Art School so I had an interview with them and got in. In hindsight going to NAS was a great choice because of the friends I made but also because it pushed me to try new things. I was certain I would be studying painting as my major but when it came time to choose I had become super keen on printmaking and got me looking at artists like Paula Rego and Kara Walker who I may have never found on my own. Its funny thinking about it now as I’m back studying 3D animation so its kind of come full circle and I’m interested to see once I’m confident with the technology where I can take my art.
How has you style changed or developed over time?
Its always been very illustrative but the way in which I compose my work has become a bit more complex. I have a love/hate relationship with architectural studies and building environments into my art so for a long time I would just have floating figures with nothing grounding them in a context. I can sort of pin point the change to when I made my first zine ‘Making Space/Taking Space’ where the premise of the zine was following the protagonist and how their interactions with the people and environment around them affected their sense of worth linking it to feelings of longing and belonging. City scapes as an integral part of my art was solidified while in my residency in Berlin as I became more interested in using my projects to reflect on connections between people and places and how they tie in with memory and identity. From a technical perspective my trip to Berlin was the first time I began obsessively cross hatching to build layering. I used to hate cross hatching but something switched in my brain and now I find it calms me down the repetitiveness of it.
How do you go from transforming an idea into a piece?
I usually start by roughly sketching out a bunch of potential compositions. I’ll also write down a few words that will help me zone in on the purpose or theme of the image. From there I’ll play around with composition a tiny bit more until it becomes apparent which of my sketches is the strongest. Then I’ll start translating it onto whatever medium I had in mind. In saying that it’s pretty common for me to have to change mediums for example a print to a painting because along the way I’ve realised it would read better.
Are there any common themes in your work?
In my mural art and illustration the images on a surface level are surreal and poppy, but on a deeper level there’s usually darker themes at play. Feelings of longing, paranoia, identity, and voyeurism keep popping up; I think they create a tension in the work, allowing viewers to be privy to intimate moments. Windows and mirrors pop up a lot as tools to make scenes more surreal. I think they also act as reminders that my art is an extension of myself and so it’s a way for me to reflect on my experiences but depicted in a way that can be read and interpreted by a whole bunch of different people.
Do you ever experience creative blocks?
Yep, all the time. I’m sure there’s a bunch of mindfulness exercises you can do to help train your brain to kick start it, but I am kind of cynical and inconsistent with that stuff so I’ve come up with a bunch of my own. Main one is having deadlines – knowing I have limited time to come up with something forces me to not get too in my head with the design and work more intuitively. The only downside is my mental well-being is always a bit shot from stress. Another thing I’ve started to do is keep rough sketches for projects that don’t make the cut. Sometimes ideas just need to sit on the back burner because a vision is only half there. If that’s the case I’ll put it to the side and when I revisit it them months sometimes even a year later I have a whole new bunch of experience to draw from to see it through properly.
What did it take to become a full time artist?
I’m not sure if I qualify as full time as I have another job as a child care worker. I did go one year in 2017 as a full time artist however I found my quality of work, life and mental health all deteriorated a bit. Everyone works differently but I need multiple outlets for my energy otherwise I go off the rails. When I’m working on art related projects I am usually working alone and I have a tendency to retreat and become very introspective as a lot of my concepts are based off memories and reworking them into surreal narratives. That’s one of the reasons I chose to maintain another line of work to pull me out of my own thoughts and keep me engaging with people and the outside world.
I also really enjoy working with kids and the two inform each other. What I learn from navigating kids behaviour and engaging with them in conversations and activities transfers into my art practice in how I run my workshops and underlying themes in my work and vice versa. Through hanging out and doing art with the kids I am able to build rapport with them plus I can use art as a way to engage them in conversations about significant world stuff but also important stuff happening in their immediate worlds eg family/school/friends.
Do you have any essential tech/apps/devices that you use day to day?
I’ve been relying fairly heavily on my new Ipad Pro for production art as part of my uni course but its also helped in whipping up potential mural designs quicker. However its rewired my brain and when I go back to drawing with paper and pencil I find if I stuff up something I will sometimes tap the page to try undo or pinch the page to try zoom in or out. Even worse when I was painting a mural recently, if I made a mistake I found myself twitching my eyes as my brain tried to undo it? As if when I opened them the mistake would be gone? It was so strange I think I was a little bit delirious from painting all day but it made me realise I’ve got to make an active effort to work evenly across different mediums otherwise I’ll get too reliant on the undo button!
Is there anyone you’d like to give a shout out to?
My family and friends they help me and support me on so many levels I honestly wouldn’t have been able to get to where I am without them
Where can people find you online?
Instagram: @lottealexis
Facebook: fb.com/lottealexis
Website: lottealexissmith.com