Our artist of the month:  David Le Fleming

I grew up in a small New Zealand town called Ashhurst which is in the North Island district of the Manawatu. My dad was a taxi driver in nearby Palmerston North and my mum was an insurance agent/squash club manager. I have an older sister by the name of Josephine and a younger brother called Andrew. Interests as a youngster included model trains, skateboarding and collecting beer cans. We used to go away as a family with our caravan to various beaches and such like. Most other kids would be playing games or fishing or something whereas I was sure to be hanging out at the local dump hunting for beer cans. Then came the collecting bones phase. Parents started to get worried when I had amased a collection that included: 8 deer skulls with antlers, 1 mountain goat skull with twister horns, 6 sheep skulls, 2 hawk skulls, 4 possum skulls, shoe box full of mouse and rat skulls, horse skull, about ten cow skulls with bottom jaws also. My grandparents ran a dairy farm so the trophy piece came in the form of a full cow skeleton which I marked the spot of when it was buried and then I dug it back up two years latter at the age of ten. Collection is now gone but probably planted the seed of my now being a vegetarian.

INTERVIEW: David Le Fleming

So David, tell us a little bit about yourself, how did you get into the art Game?

Erm, lets see. I took up art as a subject in my second to last year of secondary school. I wasn’t that bad really and so it stuck. I was also interested in joinery at the time and had an apprenticeship lined up but, fortunately for me in retrospect, the business went bust and so I had to re-evaluate. At 17 I enrolled in a one year foundation art course in the Wairarapa district of New Zealand, tutored by Trevor Morris & Heather Busch (Why cats paint). At this point I had decided that art was my bag and wanted nothing more than to go on the dole and paint full time. Trevor had other ideas however and argued that design school in Wellington was where it was at. I sifted through my four years there with little enthusiasm. I was more interested in playing in a rock band and my part time job sculpting for a special effects company. I did however take a keen interest in typography which is what I ended up building my thesis around and is now a component of my art. I tried working a few jobs as a designer after graduation but found myself fighting the office environment. In 1999 I rented a communal art studio in downtown Wellington with a group of friends and from there started exhibiting as an artist.

What is the Cargo’s wall that you have just painted about?

I wanted to do a piece that was essentially positive in nature. It’s a logical stance for street artists to be critical and to pitch a superior stance over their subject. I myself went through a considerable chapter of being anti consumer culture, exploitation and being critical of the system etc. It is the good fight and there is still a fight to be had there, but for me now I’m more interested in portraying ideas that evoke positive sentiments. The main character in the piece I’ve done for Cargo is an elderly woman weaving a thread. A few people commented as I was working on the wall that she looks a bit like Germaine Greer the feminist. She was supposed to be just an anonymous lady but I quite like the idea and it’s actually quite fitting so lets just say that it’s perhaps Germaine Greer in twenty years time. So anyway, she’s weaving a thread with her eyes closed. The figurines on either side are touching her arms as if they’re some sort of spirit guides. I thought about having the thread becoming something, but then that would make it advertorial. It’s a stronger message I feel left as it is as it encourages the viewer to think.

Where and what was the first mural that you painted ?

My first wall I believe was in 95 which was a reproduction of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus onto a couples bedroom wall with their faces interchanged with the floating two on the left. It was quite an abomination as I recall. About the same time I painted the entire inside of my Cortina which kinda counts as a wall. Door panels, dash board and inside roof.

What artists do you admire and who has inspired you in your creative work?

I really like Mark Ryden’s stuff, he’s amazing. I’m probably more directly influenced by artists that I know and have shared studios with. I have a running dialogue with a friend of mine by the name of Reuben Sutherland about linework. He’s of the contour line persuasion whereas I’m more for standardised line breadths. We can talk for hours on the subject. We worked on a wall together earlier this year along with Arran Bolders called ‘cluster fits’ and our linear approach kinda merged. (http://www.spip.co.nz/gp_clusterfits.html) Another friend of mine, Maori chap by the name of Paul Vincent is a master line worker. Not an outliner like me but more for working the softness or harshness of a line edge. Quite a phenomenon in his own right.

What is your favourite colour and why?

Black. Has to be black. White a close second. Having a palet that works for me is dependant on it being offset with a certain amount of neutral filling, especially if you’re using bright colours. I use black lines to punctuate my characters and define what I call a linear footing. My gallery work tends to look best hung on black walls also. I read somewhere that scientists have proved that there’s such a thing as black light, not just black being the absence of light. Black actually omits it’s own glow or something. Crazy eh?

Your painting at Cargo is compositionally central.is this intentional ?

Indeed, yes, but only because I measured it. I usually have what you might call a compositional drift at play in my work. For instance, if I try to pin point the centre of a page or a wall, it will always be slightly to the right. I’ve got the wonky eye syndrome. It’s an integral part of what I do tho and so I try to encourage it, even in the details. Like when I’m doing the eyes on a portrait, they’ll be couched in one direction, which can sometimes create the illusion that they’ve been twisted or something.

What do you think of street art going into galleries?

I don’t necessarily have a problem with it if it’s done in the right context. Artists need to be wary of the transparency of motivations when it comes to exhibiting street art. Putting a guilted frame around some freestyle can work isn’t keeping it real by any means. I think it’s ok to reference street art, like in some of my driving scenarios I’ll mimick street signage and sometimes graphiti to set a stage. I guess the key is to treat the gallery space like one would the street and not conform to it’s clinical cleanliness. Let the paint spill over onto the walls and urinate in the corner if that’s what you’d do in the street.

How does your work differ from working in a gallery to working on the street?

I approach each treatment quite differently. The time difference is considerable. The wall at Cargo for example took me four days to complete whereas my average car bonnet painting would take between two and three months, working on a few different pieces at any one time. A wall painting for me is mostly foresight and planning, the painting part is simply working thru the motions. My gallery set pieces are more tentatively worked out. I need time to familiarise myself with my subjects and so I’ll often redraw the profiles several times before even starting on the final artwork. The paints are different also, acrylic for wall art, out of consideration for other artists and the environment, and oil based paints when painting onto steel.

Pro’s and cons of stencil art ?

The thing that bugs me about most stencil art is that the approach is often similar and everything ends up looking like a Banksy. Ie. simplifying and cutting out the shaded areas. Stencils are perhaps derived from techniques such as screen printing and there are loads of ways of manipulating them. Paper stencils are brilliant for transferring graphical elements and typography that requires a certain tightness. I like the effects artists such as Jonathan Darby get from layering colours up through typographic stencils, they’re a lot more interesting than simply spraying a single colour and filling in the tags. A usefull tip for artists using paper stencils: Once you’ve cut out your image, allow time to paint the stencil all over with an oil based enamel. This seals the paper and stops it from going soggy and distorting when using acrylic paints.

Where do you think the London art scene is headed?

Phff, dunno. The thing with the London art scene is that it actually has a substantial audience that’s interested in what’s going on. Pang! Some places don’t and the art suffers for it. Art hubs like London are always going to attract artists from around the country and abroad because of what it has to offer, that being a broad spectrum of genres included in the art pie. It’s completely saturated right now, but then that can only be a good thing if it encourages artists to be more competitive. You’re always going find artists who compromise their work by making it more sellable and employing cheap visual puns to get a bite. But then audiences such as that in London have seen it all before and have the maturity to distinguish between the foot stomping jump up and downers and the hard grafters who’ve opted for the legacy.

Your work is very figurative, would you ever create a self portrait piece?

I’ve done a couple in the past ‘the lone nutter’ is me posing in my long johns. Not that anyone would probably recognise me with it being simplified like that. (http://www.spip.co.nz/ted_lonenutter.html) Also the guy wearing a hooded jacket in ‘ain’t yo momma Audrey’ is me. (http://www.spip.co.nz/ted_audrey.html) I tend not to do self portraits much though as I’ve often got far more interesting reference at my disposal. It’s enough having to look in the mirror every morning.

You choose really interesting materials to work on such as car parts and fridge doors, what attracts you to these materials and what would be the most far out material that you would like to work on in the future?

I choose to work on pre-existing materials because it allows me to stage a reaction to the object as well as project an idea. Objects that have exisited for specific purposes have their own story to tell and make available contexts that are hard to attain otherwise. Appropriation is the correct term to use I think. With my work I try not to only appropriate the material with all it’s imperfections, but also to appropriate the inherent purpose of the object. Painting driving scenarios onto car bonnets for example. This provides for a more comprehensive context. Also I like the aesthetic of aged metal, theres something there that appeals to me greatly.

Most far out material? I’d quite like to paint an old bus or a great big aeroplane some day. You might say ‘why not go for a space ship or a jet fighter?’ if it’s a choice of any object in the world. For me it’s important to work with objects that have a human connection, used in day to day life, not the extremities. And so your average passenger aeroplane from the 60’s perhaps would be the ultimate canvas for me.

If you could eat any cake in the world right now which would it be?

Um, it’s a close call between my mums carrot cake and my late nans rolled wine biscuit fudge cake.??

Tell us a little bit about your work habits, for example how do you get started?  How does the magic happen?

Well, getting good reference to work with is important. I’ve had to learn how to coax people through photo shoots in order to get the expressions I’m looking for. Keeping them busy seems to be the best ploy, setting silly tasks in a quick fire fashion. Check your rear vision mirror, right now we’re doing 90mph on the motorway, wrench up that imaginary handbreak and plow down that gravel road. You’re in a traffic jam and really need to pee etc etc. Usually I’ll have acquired an object to work with before hand but sometimes things don’t gel that well and I’ll have to keep looking for materials to use. I’ll work out which combination of reference works best and do an initial mock up of my composition on the computer, working the templates by hand afterwards using pentel pens and pencils. The linework is key so I’ll manipulate it until I’m happy on paper, whiting out and redrawing where necessary. Then I’ll transfer a rough slap dash plotting of my character(s) using an old school animation technique of flipping the paper and following the lines. This works best for me as it allows for the linework to be manipulated again which I’ve already become partially familiar with. Also, when positioning imagery onto 3D objects it allows you to bend shapes around awkward corners as it works with your line of vision. Once I’ve plotted the main components I’ll then look to applying background treatments and enamel work. This tends to get messy so it’s best to get it down first and allow it time to dry. Then I’ll do a slightly more detailed transfer of the character(s) using the same paper flipping technique. From here I break it down and work the individual shapes, sanding some areas back and layering others up with oil and egg shell combinations. Things generally get progressively tighter towards completion. I’ll constantly redress the lines, splitting them in two, sometimes four times. I like to think of colours in space as being governed by principles such as the doppler effect. Objects can be brought forward and pushed back depending on the softness of the lines and by under painting using complimentary or non-complimentary colours.

Who are the up and coming artists in London at the moment in your opinion?

Gee, that’s a tough one. Signal Gallery has a fantastic crew and the Maverik Showroom has some brilliant graphiti artists onboard. I’m friends with a lot of artists in London and elsewhere for that matter, and to highlight some would alienate the rest so I might be lame and opt out of answering that one. Suffice to say that I don’t think the likes of Damien Hurst are that amazing and the big fish aren’t always the most interesting specimens in the pond.

Did you enjoy your experience of painting at Cargo? Be honest now!!!

Yeah, of course! Loved it, and I felt the love. Great coffee too! It can be quite isolating working from my studio in West Hampstead. Working from a location like Cargo where you’re photographed every half an hour was a novel experience compared to the usual being looked apon as a weirdo oddity.

Went to Queen Elizabeth College in P

Thanks David