Mike Lewis

Self-Portrait

Mike Lewis
- Acrylic Mike

Mike Lewis painter of this and that has captured the attention of folks far and wide. But he is currently, as of early '007, stirring things up in the Pacific NW, with shows at Lunar Boy Gallery and Gallery 070 on Vashon Island in March.

You have bounced back and forth across the country a few times now.
Since you are currently residing on the left coast can we assume that you are finding living in Seattle more inspirational that somewhere in the east?Actually the east coast was very good for me. There is something that feels very adventurous and free to moving all over, but I don’t think it is necessarily more inspirational. I am just enjoying seeing as much that is new as possible before I have to have kids and do the domestic thing.

When were you born?
I was born September 19, 1980 in Cobleskill, NY.

Age of Reason

Casco Bay

Given the name of your website www.lewisacrylics.com tells me something about what medium you work in. How did you come to this medium and become so attached to it that you have included it in your namesake?
I enjoy acrylics a great deal, and when I first got out of college there were no facilities for me to use oil paints, and for that matter I don't want either of my cats trying to drink a ton of linseed or stand oils. So I just kind of embraced the circumstances.

Have you ever worked with oils? Do they not agree with you?
I've worked with oils before, and they were very agreeable, but they don't dry very quickly and like to work very quickly on as many paintings as possible, so acrylics seem to be the best match for those habits.

More than a couple of your paintings are done on cardboard. How important is permanence to you?
Permanence is growing way more important to me, because my audience seems to want it, however for myself I feel that if it lasts for a few years and someone enjoys it, that is more what it is all about.
That said, I think I have made my last painting on cardboard, well at least the last one I will attempt to sell.

You also work a lot on found panels. I find this a most interesting practice... for some reason I feel there is always something that comes to a painting when the board or whatever had a life of it's own before and artist paints on it. Do you feel similarly? And what is it about the idea of working on used materials that seems add that something extra?
Well, it all started as sort of a canvas costs X amount of dollars and found wood costs 0 dollars, but since then I've found an interest in that, someone may throw something away and then later in life buy that same thing back without even knowing it. I don't necessarily worry about the boards’ prior life, but obviously every surface has already started a conversation that an artist needs to commence their discourse with.

The Good Life

In My Headphones

Do you approach illustration very different than you paintings?
My illustration work is mainly the same thing, however I will often try to calm down parts of my paintings via Photoshop or other computer type methods if I think they are hurting the point of the illustration. Using the computer that way I can still keep the painting that I wanted it to begin with.

You did a series of fifty illustrations, what can you tell me about that project?
I was incredibly tired when I was done, but it was a lot of fun. When you are trying to make fifty things, the number takes over and you stop thinking about composition and color quite as much, and you are left with your instincts. It might have been the purest work that I've done since I've been out of school.

How long of a period of time did you do the fifty illustrations in?
The fifty illustrations was a project I put together for a show last February. It took me about half of December and most of January.

Tell me about the zine Halo.
My girlfriends' sister in law is an English major at Plymouth State in New Hampshire. She and I both came from very religious backgrounds and have kind of delineated from that.... So we tried to make a short book on how we felt about a church that I for one will never feel like part of and she was kind of a similar attitude. The book is about finding your own way. We interworked the poetry into the poems however and vice versa. I think it came out quite well.

Is Halo continuing to live on?
Halo itself was a one shot, but Ivy and I are planning on putting together a second book as well.

How has it evolved?
The second book is probably going to be more genre scenes as opposed to anything as heavy as the first.

Walking on Water (illustration from Halo)

Thought Process

Your sketch a day blog seems pretty ambitious. Your sketches on the blog are pretty well developed. Do you have plans to turn these drawings in to anything more? Like paintings?
Well currently the ambition and the doing aren't matching up. I have about forty sketches that I intend to put there that I haven't. The lunar boy and 070 shows have taken up a lot of my year 2007 so far. But I intend to make the project come to fruition. As far as paintings, some will become paintings and some just look better in black and white.

Art is obviously what you are about, but how much of your daily life is sketching?
To be frank, I have a nine to five that I go to, so Lots of my day is eaten Monday to Friday, but I end up sketching on my notes for work and in the book I keep in my back pocket, napkins, sketchbooks; when everything is on, maybe three hours a day. A lot of my work is thought out in my head before it ever reaches paper though. So including hours that I'm thinking about my paintings, the time increases exponentially.

I like that the patchwork sort of fills that you use in your backgrounds of your sketches actually make their way into your paintings. Explain your process for when you set out to make a painting.
Most of my paintings come from me basically playing in my sketchbook or thinking about something that I did prior and then expounding. Lots of times I will have a cool piece of wood that I look at and think to myself that needs to be covered. I sketch in pencil if I know exactly what the piece is and in sharpie if I'm not sure yet. I do a basic gessoing out of anything that needs to go away and them I am off to the races.

You have a couple curious reoccurring themes in your work. The use of plumbing and plumbing parts are things we see often. What is the significance of all this piping?
When I was a kid I used to stare at all the piping in the corners of room especially basements and I just loved the shapes and how they linked together. I really was into machinery as well, so now that stuff just pops up all over, as well as TVs and stereos...

The Arch's Crutch

Mechanics 1

Mechanics 2

Clouds and smoke are also elements that may or may not need to be spoken about. What is there to say about the soft billowy shapes?
Well I do live in Seattle.

This commingling of the soft and the cold hard industrial images make one wonder if you are concerned more with hope or with despair. What is the story here?
I'm not preaching an Al Gore story here, but I can hear what he has to say, and I agree with it quite a bit. Mostly I just want people to realize how miniscule their entire population is in comparison to the earth's size. But I'm working on being positive....

Preparing for Percipitation

The Boob Tube

What is next? Where are you headed with this art thing?
If you reach for the stars.......?

In a perfect world where would you and your art fit in?
In a perfect world perhaps people would see my work and say, "hey, I've never thought of it that way. Maybe I could ______"