Mastering Simplicity With Lauryn Alvarez

Lauryn Alvarez is a Southern Californian based artist whose work includes both photography and painting to an excellent, excellent standard.

It is the kind of art that makes you stop and look, because that is exactly how I came across Lauryn’s work on my Instagram explore. With South American influence, Lauryn paints a series of characters and symbols that give me the same feeling as a sunny day. Never really setting out to pursue being an artist as a full time job but still landing it is a testament to someone doing their thing with a lot of heart. Here’s our chat with Lauryn below.

Hey Lauryn, thanks for chatting today. I randomly came across your stuff on the good old explore page and was like wow I like this. 

Lauryn: That's so awesome. Glad the algorithm is working.

It doesn’t usually work for me, so I had to jump on the opportunity. 

I love to hear that.

I wanted to ask what were you doing before art and how did get to where you are now?

I grew up very creative. I dabbled in many different things as a child. As I got a little bit older, I was really into photography and focused primarily on that, honing in on that skill in high school. I would just try to shoot my friends and put together fun creative shoots around our town in Laguna Beach. After high school I was torn on where to go next. I know a lot of people go to college but that didn't really feel like that was the right fit for me. I ended up going to community college anyway and chose graphic design. My first semester, I failed all my classes except art. By the second semester I ended up dropping out as I was starting to get paid for photography, so I figured if I'm making money and I'm able to support myself and be successful in photography than I’m just going to follow that and go there. By 2019 I was a full-time photographer but then that’s when the world shut down as we know. I needed some sort of creative outlet, so I really took to painting. I just started dabbling in watercolours and just anything I could do in a sketchbook. I was working at a very small scale at that time. I just started sharing some of the things that I was making, and people took interest to that which was really cool. I ended up selling a few really small pieces just to friends, and then some more to interstate people and I realised people wanted to buy my art, which was crazy. 

That’s so cool. 

I really was just trying to do it for fun and then it kind of took off from there. I got a job with Thalia Surf which is a pretty reputable surf shop in Laguna Beach, which is local to me. They have a pretty good fan base and cult following. I think that really propelled my art career as they allowed me a space to do art shows. I had no idea what I was doing, and it was terrifying, but I ended up selling out all my pieces in a few hours of the show being released. And then from there. Sorry, I'm just going on a tangent.

No, no don’t be sorry. We love tangents. 

So, from, I just really wanted to hone in on my art. I knew I wanted to work on larger scales. I moved up to acrylic and worked on canvases. I started doing some murals for a few local businesses, doing a few other brand collaborations, selling commissions and selling paintings. Right now, I am the busiest I've been with art, which is really cool. And I'm so stoked because it's seriously, honestly, my dream. All I want to be doing is sitting in my studio painting. 

Well, I am very glad to hear that you are doing what you love, and it sounds like you weren't even pursuing it from a place of trying to make money. it just organically sorts of fell into your lap, which is always so lovely to hear that that still happens.

I truly think that I feel like doing something just out of the love of it doesn't get enough credit. I still think if you want to make money in the future you can do that because when you do something from a place of your authentic self and do it for the love of it, people resonate with that. If you’re an artist looking at other people’s work to see what sells that’s going to come across in your work. 

For sure, you can always pick up when someone is doing it for the love. Can I ask if your last name is Alvarez South American because I see some South American influence in your work?

Yeah, it is and there is definitely influence. When I started painting, I always thought you had to able to paint something realistic, like a really good portrait or landscape to be considered a painter. I would try to do that, and I just didn't enjoy it, and I could not pick it up or figure it out. Then I studied tribal art. In that, they’re using such simple shapes to create a beautiful image. You could create a bird just by using circles and triangles. It’s much more graphical. I definitely leaned towards that.

So, you have a blank canvas, what are you doing first?

I never just go straight to canvas. I usually start off with my sketchbook. I could redraw the same thing ten times with slight variations. It starts with intuitive drawing and whatever combination of figures or shapes feel good to me. Then I’ll pick a colour palette, which I grab a lot of inspiration for the colours from interior design. Vintage furniture where it’s colourful but still muted in a way. And then from there, I just take that to canvas. And that's the best part. It’s so therapeutic just sitting there with a big blank sheet.

I saw in your recent Instagram post that you were enjoying experimenting with more rigid strokes and layers. Do you feel like you always have to find new ways as an artist to produce your art?

Yes and no. There was a point where I was questioning my art because I really just enjoyed the style that I'm in. The repeated characters that you see throughout my work is such a fun subject for me it does not get tiring recreating those characters. I've thought, should I be changing it up? But I feel like if I were to be asking those questions, then it’s not truly coming from me. It's more so I don't want other people to get bored. If I'm happy doing what I'm doing, I'm just going to keep doing it. It genuinely is fun, creating this world for myself. This last collection I did was for a furniture showroom in LA and it was really great working on that. It was a collection of a six larger pieces but I had this thought during the process that I didn’t need to be as precise with my lines but I wasn’t ready to experiment with that collection as I had a deadline and was worried if I didn’t like how they turned out that I wouldn’t finish the collection. But from that I had ton of scrap pieces of canvas so I just put four different colors on my palette and then just started going doing whatever felt right.  I didn't plan out the colour palette at all. Everything was really intuitive. I think I'm going to start dabbling with that more because it’s really fun to see where the painting goes.

Do the characters you paint represent anything?

It has evolved over the years. In the beginning, I wanted to create a sort of identity that I felt embodied me. It was a version of me in my paintings. But then as I got more into meditation the characters started to embody some sort of multi-dimensional otherworldly being. It’s cool because some people will see spacemen in this character, or I’ve even been told they remind them of Egyptian gods. It’s interesting how people interpret a very simple character.

Yeah I mean people look to art to find some answer within the art for themselves right?

Definitely. It's like projecting onto the art, which I think is great. I want people to do that when they look at my art.

Back to your photography. When I stalked you for this I realised your photography is absolutely amazing. Do you still do that now?

Thank you. I still shoot photos. It's not super often. I'm currently just focusing on painting but if someone hits me up for a job I still really enjoy it and it's still super fun for me. It's really nice having two different outlets of creativity and they're so different because with photography I'm outside with other people whereas with painting I’m just by myself working. So, it's nice to have a social outlet to be creative and bounce ideas off others.

Do you ever find yourself getting into creative blocks? And if you do, how do you get out of that?

I was just talking about this to a friend. It’s funny, exactly a year ago I had just moved into this house with a home studio now and it was really weird but I had no desire to go into the studio.  I was almost repelled to be in my art studio. And I was questioning, does this mean I don’t want to paint anymore? But I realised I just needed to take time and space away. At the time my schedule was pretty rigid and so from that I've learned to change up my routine. In order to get out of a rut, you have to change your day-to-day, see new things and have new experiences.

Get out of your head a bit.

Totally. Going on a fishing trip doesn’t mean I’m going to come back and just paint fish, although I did do that (laughs), but it’s way more about embracing different perspectives than anything.

For sure. Hard relate. And you mentioned that you worked out of a surf shop. Do you surf?

I unfortunately haven't surfed in quite a while because again, I've been so busy working and I get in these phases of not doing it for ages.

I go through the same thing. It's kind of one of those things that just ends up on the back burner, at least for me anyway. And then you get back into it again and are like why did I stop this?   

No, totally. I respect the people who are every day in the water. I wish I could do that but I enjoy so many other things and I cannot do it all. I'm one person.

For sure. On that, is there anything that you're currently working on? Any upcoming shows?

By the time this comes out, I will have just had the opening reception for the group show I'm doing in Ventura at this gallery called Endowak. It’s a gallery I’ve wanted to work with for a while, so I am really excited to be part of the show.  There are so many awesome, amazing artists that I've looked up to for so long that are going to be there. I’m looking forward to the new year, hopefully creating some larger scale pieces. Let’s see where that takes me.