Laurie Lipton. Interview and Montage.

Laurie Lipton was born in New York and began drawing at the age of four.She was the first person to graduate from Carneige-Mellon University in Pennsylvania with a Fine Art Degree in Drawing.She has lived in Holland,Belgium,Germany and has made her home in London since 1986.Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europa and the USA.


Lipton was inspired by the religious paintings of the Flemish School.She tried to teach herself how to paint in the style of the 16th century Dutch Masters and failed.When traveling around Europe as a student,she began developing her very own peculiar Drawing technique building up tone with thousand of fine cross-hatching lines like an egg tempera painting."It's an insane way to draw",she says,"but the resulting detail and luminosity is worth the amount of effort.My drawings take longer to create than a paintings of equal size and detail".

"It was all abstract and conceptual art when I attended university.My teachers told me that figurative art went 'out' in theMiddle Ages and that I should express myself using form and shapes,but splashes an canvas and rochs an the floor bored me.

I knew wath I wanted: I wanted to create something no one had ever seen before,something that was brewing in the back of my brain. I used to sit for hours in the library copyng Durer,Memling,Van Eyck,Goya and Rembrandt.The photographer,Diane Arbus,was another of my inspirations.Her use of black and white hit me at the core of my Being.Black and white is the color of ancient photographs and old TV shows..it is the color of ghosts,longing,time passing,memory,and madness.Black and white ached.I realized that it was perfect for the imagery in my work".

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