Drawing And Painting with Florence Shaw of Dry Cleaning
Last year, in an article that listed 7 bands you ought to know by now, we described Dry Cleaning’s musical style as ‘Though the lyricism is spoken, Dry Cleaning, thankfully, is not melodrama.
The vocals live somewhere in the middle of speaking, singing, confessing, and demanding, with very fucking good instrumentation spilling all over it.’ I’d agree with that. They are talented, and Flo is an excellent front-woman, subdued but vehement in her vocals. Florence Shaw, the artist, writer, singer, and creative emoji utilizer also draws, paints, doodles, illustrates, and sketches. Quite a bit, actually, and quite good. Some simple, some complex, all charming. We bugged her to share 10 of her favorite scribbles, paintings, and art pieces and give us a little info about why she favors them.
2022 - This is an idea for a tattoo, drawn in pencil. The sexy eyes were not intended to be on the lamb’s butt, but I didn’t leave enough space for the body of the lamb. I think it’s a nice combination!
2020 - This is a drawing done with a brush and black ink which I call Eyebrow Flower. It was tattooed by Charleine Boieiro who runs Françoise Tattoo Parlour in Lisbon, onto Sian Davies, a psychiatric nurse and major Dry Cleaning supporter from Llanelli in Wales. These are the people who have been touched by Eyebrow Flower!
2018 - I drew this from a photograph of Charles Jeffrey’s AW 2018 show. A quick pencil drawing basically. I seriously love drawing fashion.
2017 - This is a model from a graduate show, drawn from life this time. I like to get a profile down quickly, then I go in with the little soft hairs to describe the haircut and a right shaped blob for the lips. I feel extremely alive when I’m doing drawings from life like this.
2016 - Drawings for an exhibition called Short Scenes in collaboration with my friend Jonathan Allen. We were making up simple stories together, drawing them in comic book form, small and rough and then redrawing the panels over and over, larger and in different materials. These are with a Sharpie.
2015 - Oil pastel drawing. I was drawing a lot from TV so I started using cards from a rolodex to draw on because they were the right sort of aspect ratio to suggest the shape of a wide screen. I don’t remember who this man is.
2017 - I draw a lot in public places. This is a drawing of a girl who’s face was in shadow. I try to keep the pencil on the paper most of the time when I’m drawing.
2015- This is a mono screen print of a playground with colourful rubbish. I am mainly interested in lines as you can see. Someone suggested to me to use coloured paper to bring some colour into my drawings which was a pretty good suggestion!
2018 - When I’m home in London I go out drawing with friends who like to draw, we call it drawing club. I always feel like myself with those guys! This is a drawing of a Francis Upritchard sculpture from her show Wet Wang Slack that was up that year.
2021 - Drawn on the plane. My partner makes me small sketchbooks held together with a rubber band to draw in on the plane. I’m scared of flying but we fly a lot as a band. These are perfume bottles from the in-flight magazine spraying out their stuff.
2014 - I drew this a long time ago. This was when I worked in a few galleries for a while in central London. I hated it mostly, and would eat a lot of food in the city, city worker kind of food like edamame beans. This is me squeezing out an edamame bean. You can tell its a long time ago because I have short hair. I used to draw myself doing things a lot. I think writing and performing in Dry Cleaning has taken the place of this, drawing myself, as I don’t really do it anymore.
Listen to Dry Cleaning, here. See more of Florence’s work, here.