Today we’d like to introduce you to Chase Lawrence.
Chase, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
When I was a young kid I always drew pictures and built little things out of sticks and rocks outside. I grew up on a Rocky Mountain show horse farm in Tennessee, so a lot of various things in my childhood definitely come out in my work. I always dreamed of becoming a paleontologist back then or a veterinarian, but around my middle school years I discovered this artist named Alex Pardee (a lot of you are probably familiar with his work). Alex Pardee’s work was like nothing I had ever seen in my life and I never knew that macabre art like this even existed. For whatever reason, his paintings and drawings made me decide in a split second that becoming an artist was the only career path I could ever take. I remember that moment like yesterday. Ever since, I have devoted myself completely to mastering my craft and pursuing a lifelong career as an artist.
When I got to high school I became way too serious about my art. I was trying to secure a profitable career with it while I was still just a kid and I really burnt myself out and quit having fun with what I was doing. During this time, my best friend and I started smoking pot a lot, and then we starting experimenting with a lot of other drugs. This was the beginning of a very difficult path for me, but little did I know then. For the next couple years, my main focus was definitely on drugs and having “psychedelic” experiences. We were doing a lot of acid back then.
I decided to go to art school after I graduated. I moved out of my parents’ house with my girlfriend to get away and be close to school. Being in college at that time, studying art I was making a ton of work, but it all sucked. I was just trying to make grades to get by so I didn’t fail out. I was highly uninspired and really just lazy. I was still doing a lot of drugs and abusing alcohol heavily too. Throughout my experience up to this point I was extremely agnostic. I really despised the Christian faith and the teachings of the Bible back then, as well as any organized religious institution. Ironically, I met this incredibly intelligent guy one day who was a brother of a friend of mine. We would have intense theological and philosophical discussions very often and I eventually found out that he was a believer in Jesus. I could not believe this guy was a believer. I was surprised and mortified to be honest.
This began my “quest” in apologetic study. I made it my mission to study the bible and its prophetic claims throughout history and the modern era in order to really understand if it could be validated. I spent about two months in complete madness, drunkenly obsessing over scriptures and running on no sleep and Adderall. I remember having a dream soon after one night when my girlfriend and I went to bed; it was very supernatural. In this dream a voice told me “You are in the age of the fig tree.” I woke up and I said out loud “I believe you, Jesus.” I don’t exactly know why, but it just came out that way. That day I was radically transformed and all of my friends thought I had lost my mind. This was when my art began to change into what it has become today.
I began taking school a lot more seriously. I was making much less contrived pieces that were intentional and much stronger conceptually. I really focused on finessing my oil painting and watercolor skills, and ended up getting into sculpting and assemblage art. I had been collecting ornamental antiques of the baroque and Gothic period style for years and loved interior decorating. All of these beautiful things I had collected and surrounded myself with began pushing me in that direction artistically. Now, most of my work is very ornamental and looks antiquated. Most of my art is in reference to some facet of Christendom or Hebraic theology.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I am an oil painter, watercolorist, and assemblage sculptor. My process varies with sculpture. It’s always a very interesting and involved process. I will sometimes take close to a year working on only a couple sculptures. When I begin a new 3D work, I usually sketch out some detailed drawings or schematics of my concept so that I’m not making things up as I go. These pieces are often very heavy and require some engineering to pull off successfully. Most of the “bones” of my sculptural work is made from basic shapes of wood. I’ll create a platform or structure out of wood that acts as a framework for something very ornamental and detailed. The figures and objects that I put into my sculptures are mostly casts of plaster or resin, made from molds.
I also use a lot of model kits from hobby stores that are often used for creating train tables or historical war dioramas too. I have many ways of acquiring the parts I need for each sculpture. With painting, I mostly use oils now, that are highly diluted with solvent and then layered on thick. I like to use a lot of texture in painting. Most of my inspiration for sculpture comes from prophecy found in Hebraic eschatology (the study of the end of time) and biblical theology. With painting, my concepts are constantly evolving still. Most of my paintings explore the practice and process of the Spanish Baroque masters, applied to contemporary portraiture and allegory. There’s not a single thing I want my viewers and collectors to take away from my work. I trust that the purpose of these artworks will be communicated to the people, regardless of my personal desire. Creating is a very spiritual and divine process to me. My purpose as an artist is to obey the Spirit that works through me and to make sure the works are completed. That is my only obligation as an artist.
What financial advice can you offer to artists who are struggling to find time to make art, because of how difficult it is to make a living with art?
This is a good question, because in a way I believe it’s a good meter for measuring your potential for success as an artist. If you call yourself an artist, you are a creative individual. You need to make money creatively too. You need to set up multiple income streams for yourself. There is not a single stream of income from art at the beginning of your career. You are not Picasso. You are not being chased down for solo exhibitions that sell out opening night. Get good at what you do and humble yourself. You are not too good to do commissions of people’s families or pets or whatever mundane traditional type of art normal people demand. Use your skills to make money. You should always be prioritizing whatever time you can to creating a cohesive body of work that could be used one day for a solo exhibition, even if you only have 20 minutes a day.
But, in the meantime, if you are good at what you do and people are asking you to paint custom pictures for them, you need to price those jobs out and get them done. If you are not making art, you will never have an art career. It’s a slow-growing career if you want longevity in it. Do not limit yourself. Do many different artistic things with your skills to make a living. It’s not as difficult as the world makes it out to be, you just need to use your creativity in a different way this time: financially. An artist should be the last person to starve. We are the only workforce that can’t be replaced by robots.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Well, we just wrapped up an exhibition that I was part of at DK Contemporary Gallery. It was up for the month of June, displaying most of my sculptural work. Sometimes I have work on display at Kibbee Gallery in Little 5 Points. I will be in an opening exhibition at Taylor English Duma in Atlanta on July 16th, 2018. My website is (www.chaselawrence.art) and I have an active Instagram account where I post everything I do (@chaselawrenceart). All of my work is for sale, just email me from my website if interested.
Contact Info:
- Address: 106 Allison Circle, Cartersville GA 30120
- Website: www.chaselawrence.art
- Phone: 7706086971
- Email: info@chaselawrence.art
- Instagram: @chaselawrenceart
- Facebook: facebook.com/chaselawrenceart
Image Credit:
Keegan Shinall
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