Interview: Lindsay Dawn

We are here with Lindsay Dawn. So struck by your work.

Thank you.

There's a lot of depth here. And I have heard that there are a lot of people looking for your work. Tell me, I don't even really care so much about why they're interested in your work. I really care about why you are so passionate about creating your work. So what gave you the inspiration and more the motivation to keep this going?

Truthfully, I don’t know if this is cliché or not, but I don’t think I could live if I didn’t create. But you know, I’m inspired by a lot of things, a lot of people, experiences, so it’s hard not to create when daily through life I’m inspired by things happening. So walking down the street and something inspires me, I can’t let it sit in my brain too long so I have to put it on canvas.

Beautiful. You find the inspiration, it pulls you to actually have to move it from this superfluous feeling into actual material where it actually exists.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I have to pull it from something—as small as the color of someone’s tie—and it can resonate with me. I’ll have to bring that from a subconscious or I guess imaginative state into a physical state, otherwise, it just sits inside of me and it just festers.

Well, it sounds like all you're doing is getting inspired and going to create.

Exactly, yes.

So you must have a lot of pieces then.

I do. A lot of pieces coming too.

Well, tell us about this piece and where did this start in in end?

So this piece is actually an inspiration I pulled from my mother. She passed away recently, so not even to make it about the death of a person but it was more just finding things within the memories I have of my mom and recognizing them within myself and putting them onto a canvas. So it was more of me pulling things—from what do I feel like of my mom resonates with me and where do I recognize that within myself—and to put it on a canvas. So yeah, that’s what this piece was, it was a journey through a memory.

Well, let's talk about some of these elements, because you have a really great balance between sort of visceral elements and typographical elements. This seems like the resonance of a letter.

Yeah. So actually in the majority of my pieces I include envelopes. I don’t tell people what’s inside the envelope so it’s really just like the collector’s choice, if they choose to look inside they can.

I imagine that they probably wouldn't.

I know a lot of you are probably thinking about it like, “What’s inside that envelope?”

That is a very tantalizing little piece for somebody who purchase your work, but in order to keep the livelihood in some way is not touching it.

Yeah. Some of them are left open so they’re a little bit more easy to access but some of them I keep close, so most people aren’t going to try to open that.

Alright, well maybe you can get like a little black light, maybe they've tried it that way.

I should do that. No, the envelopes actually came from—so I love writing, that’s my biggest thing—I used to write my mom letters since I’ve moved to America. And so that’s where that all started was with I would write letters and put them in the envelopes, and sometimes I would send them, sometimes I would not, but it just became a way of me kind of removing things from my subconscious and being able to put them in a place where it was almost like letting go of something. So it’s definitely been a process that’s helped me find things. It’s fun, to be honest with you. It really is. It makes my work fun. I’m like, “What do I want to put in this envelope?” And usually it has something that directly relates to the painting in the envelope, so it’s definitely fun.

It's a really great cycle, I think, of how you pull things that kind of get you emotionally and then ways in which you release those through different elements—different ways in which you're actually creating on the canvas. And you're leaving a lot of elements for a tease, little elements that have a lot of historical context and just pieces that are just straight from what's in front of you, what's inside of you. That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. Awesome.

Is there anything else that you want to share about your work and just you?

I don’t know. I have a big show coming up end of August. So that’s an exciting thing. It’s been interesting to create a large body of work in a period of time.