portraits by Harris nukem.

Andy Warhol said pop art was not about the thing, so much as it is about how it is seen… or something like that.

We couldn’t agree more. Pop art at large is often a matter of seeing something that you’ve seen a thousand times but that thing being given new meanings, new themes, new contexts; about experiencing the thing that you know so well in a way that is somehow separated from its rooted versions, and thus receiving a new commentary on that thing. London-based pop artist Charlotte Rose is getting quite good at taking the things you know so well and providing them with new contexts. In one of her latest series, she applies Shakespearean themes to common cigarette branding, drawing correlations between the literary themes of the Renaissance playwright and the fraught modern tobacco industry.

Charlotte’s work has been featured in numerous gallery presentations and exhibitions across multiple countries, and she herself is a well known social media figure, which, given the content of her artistic output, made me wonder if that popularity on social media isn’t simply another component of her work. So I asked.

How long have you been producing art in one way or another?

My mom’s an artist so I’ve always been making art and around the process of creating things, but I started professionally creating art work during the pandemic. That’s when I started focusing and thinking about what I wanted to create. 

Did you go to school for it?

No, I never studied art at all. In the UK we have GCSE’s, and I never studied art. I always did English literature and creative writing. Because my mom’s an artist, there was a part of me that didn’t want to do what my mom does, but I came back to it anyway. 

Your work is very literary, why do you think you draw so much from literature and how do you think you apply it to your paintings? 

Originally, I was just working on stuff that impressed me. At the very beginning, I was using favorite authors of mine paired with the cigarettes that they liked. I did Kurt Vonnegut with Pall-mall cigarettes and spray painted ‘so it goes,’ from Slaughterhouse Five; I was just taking literary influences and tying them to the cigarette theme. With the Shakespeare stuff, I felt like a lot of my work is very American. I use a lot of American branding, authors, writers, so I wanted to pull in something British that represents me and my ties to London. I studied a lot of Shakespeare at University so I knew it quite well, and I liked the ties between big tobacco and the ideas of mortality, death, greed - these themes that are prevalent in a lot of Shakespeare’s work.

You describe yourself as a pop artist, do you delve into other forms of art? Or maybe other mediums?

Painting is my favorite medium, it’s just something that feels very natural to me. I think that pop art is what I’m interested in because it’s what I’d want on my walls. I love Andy Warhol and the 1960’s in general, and obviously, that’s when pop art was born. It just feels like a symbol of the 60’s, which is something that has influenced a lot of me; my fashion choices, my art - it’s something that I am intrinsically interested in. I’ll explore other forms occasionally, but I’m quite obsessive, so if I enjoy doing something, I usually do it a lot. In my next exhibition, I’m doing things that aren’t about cigarettes, but I definitely feel like I’ve properly run that into the ground. I just get obsessed with stuff. I’ve tried collage work, mono printing, I’m just stuck in my ways, I guess.

What would you like out of this? Not necessarily professionally, but what would you like to get out of your art? What have you struggled to get out of it so far?

I’d like to explore something that’s a little bit more personal. In my next exhibition, I’m exploring the human experience through branding. I’m painting branding that feels omnipresent in everyone’s life and integrating this sort of faux-human sentiments or poetry or prose into the actual branding of the boxes. Almost like subliminal messaging. I’m putting a little bit more of myself into the work. What I’m trying to get out of it- I have to paint. I go a bit mental if I don’t. I’m lucky that I get to make things and get a response from people, but I think I’d be doing it even if I wasn’t. 

What do you do that isn’t art? Do you garden? 

No, I don’t do anything, all I do is paint. It gets to the point where I forget to eat. I’m obsessed with this thing  called Huel-

Like the protein powder?

Yeah, I take protein shakes and kind of negate the process of cooking but still have the energy to paint more. That's all I really do. I kind of feel like any hobbies or anything is like a waste of time, time that I could be painting. I mean, I model as well and do the whole social media thing, but that’s so that I can earn money to paint.

You make pop art, the genre of which is sort of obsessed with branding and commercialism, it makes sense that you’d be active in this way on social media. You’re a brand unto yourself. How do you negotiate or come to terms with people who are fans of you versus fans of your art?

I think it’s a really interesting thing that has happened without intention, but I am definitely aware of it. I do kind of use that to my advantage, as well. I use social media as a tool, and a little bit controversially, I use my sexuality as a tool to sell my art, but sex sells, I guess. It’s a part of me, I’m being authentic in the things that I post. I’m showing my process and dancing around the studio, because that’s actually what I do. But yeah, I am aware that it’s part of the interest- it’s not just my work, but the interest in the idea of this Charlotte Rose character. 

In the same way that a band is being told by a label that they need to make TikTok’s and shit, as an artist, how do you feel about the necessity of personal branding in art? That’s kind of a new thing, in the last couple of decades only. 

I personally find it really interesting. I don’t hate it - I know a lot of artists do - but it kind of works for me. Andy Warhol was doing it in the 60’s. It is a choice, but it helps with promotion. I’m not against it, it’s just another layer of what it means to be an artist. It’s another job that you have to do, and either you embrace it or you push it away, and I definitely embraced it. 

That additional job doesn’t really accommodate the shy artist.

That’s interesting, because I am quite shy. 

No offense- well actually, this isn’t offensive. What you do - being very visible to the public as opposed to just your output - is my worst fucking nightmare, and I know that a lot of other artists feel that way, too. What advice would you give to someone struggling with that aspect?

I mean, the most important thing is the work. You have to create the work before anything else. Everything else is just extra. When people ask me for advice, I tell them to make as much as they can, experiment with shit, and find a niche. Find a thing that identifies you so that when people see your work, they know who made it immediately. I think that identity is a very important thing, and that is probably the most important thing above any of the social media stuff. I mean, I know artists who don’t do social media at all, they go through the traditional route of galleries. 

If you use social media as a tool correctly, it can negate gatekeepers in the art industry. Early on, I hired a space in central London, curated a whole show, and sold it out, completely independently, and I was only able to do that because of social media. You could look at it as being this thing that’s negative, bad for the shy artist, and I completely agree, but it also gives opportunities to people who don’t have connections or can’t make it through the traditional route though their work is still good. You can take your career into your own hands, and I think that that’s very powerful.

If your mom wasn’t an artist and you never picked up a brush, what do you think you’d be doing? 

I wanted to be a novelist, so maybe that? When I say my mom’s an artist, she wasn’t a career artist, she was a housewife who painted really well. But yeah, I have a love for writing and literature and poetry, so I would have been a novelist. I still might be one day. 

Last question: a cheesy and obligatory one: what inspires your painting that isn’t painting?

Music is a huge thing for me. I always paint to music, and I always do my best work when I’ve found good new music that makes me feel something. I love making playlists and stuff, but I think that my taste is quite random, I like a vast array of music. It influences the energy- I want to feel quite happy and lift my mood when I paint, and music does that for me.

Earlier you said that you wanted to get more personal in your work. Do you find that it’s more observational of the outsider rather than of yourself?

Yeah, I think that my work is only ever a commentary on branding and society, but not so much a commentary of myself, and I’d like to bring that in a little bit. The whole social media stuff… I’m aware that the whole Charlotte Rose persona isn’t totally who I am. I am quite shy, and I think that it is a little bit of a performance rather than being quite bare and vulnerable. I want my art to go in that direction, where people can see this vulnerable personal side of me that I don’t think Instagram ever sees. I mean, who the fuck shows their real self on Instagram? But you know what I mean.

There isn’t really a way to do that over the internet.

I think that people think that they know who I am because they see me dance on Instagram. I feel like I’m a little more intricate than that.