Today we’d like to introduce you to Dion Laurent.
Hi Dion, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I am a fourth generation artist and sold my first drawings to my grandmother’s neighbors when I was five years old or so. Since then, I’ve never created for money, but rather out of passion. My family moved around a bit in my early years, and to Houston when I was in fourth grade. I had some great teachers as a child, and a few mentors in Houston and around the world. My English mother was beautiful, adventuresome, and an artist going back three generations, so I always had the encouragement to explore and create. My dad was into race cars, photography, and piano and accordion. Really, I was a wild and free child to hippy parents. However, I am an Eagle Scout, I was in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M on full scholarship, and Class President there elected three years in a row, so I also have some sense of discipline and self discipline, but I was obviously out of place in the Corps. I think I really started hitting my stride when I moved to Nashville after leaving the Corps. I felt so free and more encouraged than ever, and this is going back to 1986. I had been up there the previous summer looking for real estate deals for a mentor here in Houston. However, I was doing oil paintings, performances, graffiti, and started working with some great artists, and was constantly exhibiting, and invited to show at the Tennessee State Museum. I soon went to Jamaica and painted and was welcomed in an unimaginable tropical setting, and then on to Auvers Sur Oise, France to paint and perform for the Centennial of VanGogh’s death. I literally led the village procession holding candles up to Vincent and Theo’s graves by torch, layed on his grave as they covered me with sunflowers from the fields 100 years to the day he died, and then jumped the wall out of the cemetery as the torch flamed out. True story. I was going to return to France, but changed plans to Japan when I saw the eruption of Mt.Unzen on the news. I landed with a two week return ticket, 14 cans of tuna fish, a big bag of trail mix, a small portfolio, and art supplies. I planned to hitchhike from Tokyo to Unzen, paint and leave, but ended up living there for 7 years in Tokyo and in the south on a beautiful little island. I’m not kidding, and from there, I traveled and painted across SE Asia, Korea, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bali, Hong Kong, etc.. with just a backpack of art supplies. I was bitten and paralyzed by a poisonous snake in Malaysia, washed out to sea in Japan, survived a deadly bus crash in Thailand, and an armed mugging and attempted robbery in Manilla. After 7 years, I did one last big show in Japan, bringing all of my art together from Tokyo and the island to Osaka. After the show, we loaded all of my art onto an old Houston friend’s cargo ship, I had a tour and lunch with the Captain, and off it went to Seattle. I moved back to Houston and rented a studio in Winter Street Art Center in 1997, right here in the First Ward and did a big exhibition there. A friend’s bakery catered the opening party, we had kegs and a good bar, and several hundred people showed up, and Catherine Anspon wrote a great review. But I wasn’t quite ready for Houston, or vis a vis. I ended up buying an old schoolhouse out in the countryside and working from there, showed a little bit in the US and Japan, but mostly across Europe for several years.
There was a brief period during which time I wanted to sell everything again and fully take off, maybe back to Japan, the south pacific, and I would say “if not for willie nelson, I would probably leave Texas”. Around this time, someone told me of the Art Car Museum, and I met the director, Noah Edmondson, and just immediately felt an affinity for the whole of the scene over there. Noah literally drove the few hours out to my studio, and a week or so later, Jim Harithas came out and visited. He walked in, said, “Wow!” and then asked, “Do you have a joint?” Jim invited me to join a group show at his new museum, the Station Museum. After a while, I started to say, “If not for Jim and Ann Harithas, I might have left Texas”.
I met my wife Lisa while I was doing a performance in Houston, and about 14 years ago we bought a little bungalow right here in the First Ward, The Arts District. I now have a warehouse studio one block from our home, and a little studio that I built in our back yard, and the old schoolhouse out in the county. I like being spread out a bit, having some space between projects and inspiration, but Houston is my hometown. I still have many friends going back to 4th grade and onward through Memorial High School and A&M. I have met so many great artists and gallerists and collectors and friends here in Houston and really feel a great appreciation for Houston’s presence in the art world, and our life in Houston.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I am so fascinated by life, I love it, and can’t wait for the next day. I literally count my blessings every day, and I consider myself the luckiest person alive, and this is a conscious choice that I choose to believe. I am so inspired by the great adventure of living, life and nature that I really don’t want to sleep because I may miss something. I often sleep with a sketch pad next to me so that I can just scribble in the dark the visions or images that may emerge. When I was preparing to go to Jamaica, I prepared 11 x 16 inch ply boards covered in white house paint carefully fitted into a suitcase, bought a palette of paint and brushes and oil and turpentine, tuna, the trail mix, and had $40 left after buying my 2 week return $199 ticket. I told my mom, and she said, “oh, you’ll be fine, you’ll have a great time. Can’t wait to see what you paint!” By the end of that 2 weeks, I had eaten like a king, drank and partied with the local artists, painted some of my favorite paintings ever, painted signs for a few roadside food and drink huts in exchange for food and drinks, and the whole of Negril was calling me “painter mon” by the end of the first week. It is so much easier to be positive than it is to be negative or angry or to have a chip on your shoulder. And man, if you are still blaming your parents, your siblings or your friends or neighbors for your problems and choices by the time you are an adult, get up, go outside and get some sun, dance in the rain, and keep moving. Some of the happiest people I have ever met were living in thatch huts with dirt floors. I often would just concentrate on creating, so inspired and just jamming that I would forget about eating right, and forget about other responsibilities, other than rolling with the inspiration and getting it all to the next show. I have been as starving an artist as one may be, sometimes on the other side of the world. I will use any material or medium I can find to create art, and keep on creating, and keep on moving. I’ve hitchhiked and walked across parts of Texas and the US, across Japan, across Europe, miles and miles in every country I have ever lived and painted and created in. I do that every day every place I am. I would rather live my dream than live a regret.
The only obstacles I’ve run into are those that we should never have to worry about as Americans with our civil liberties, our freedom of expression, so the biggest obstacle for artists is censorship of any and all sorts of our constitutional rights to artistic freedom. I will not hang out with any detractors or anyone that tries in any way to stop my freedom of expression in any way. It is a choice.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I love oil paint and oil painting, old school, impressionists, surrealism, pop, all of it! I love outsider work, primitive, Michelangelo and Leonardo. I spent years painting landscapes and certain objects in every country I visited because I was absolutely passionate about it, and later because I knew I needed landscapes and these objects in parts of larger works. I painted plein air for years, never from a photo. I wanted the wind and the waves and the scents and sounds to influence my painting, the changing light, the glimmer and glow and darkness and light, the changing shadows and highlights. It is all faster than you can paint, but it is there, along with the bugs and sand and dust that land in the wet oil paint. The adventure and journey is part of each painting. I can’t replicate that, nor do I want to. And of course, I also painted and created crazy shit that just arrived in my head, begging for a piece of paper or a nice canvas, or a pile of strange objects. I collect found objects in every place I travel. Just trash on the beaches, along the roadsides, in the jungle or along the riverbanks. I don’t photograph what I want to paint, a superstition that it would remove the life of the object or scene, rather to wait and paint it later when I had the time if so still inspired, or let it evolve and become something else. I’m an old film photographer, and started playing with video, and performance and installations. I’ve done my share of street graffiti, stencil works, assemblages. So ultimately, I’ve become this multidisciplinary artist, using everything available to create an evolving vision. Sure, I’m the common thread throughout my work, and sometimes I have no idea how I created something, and I want to keep it around and see what else it may inspire. It often takes years for me to collect objects and create the whole piece or installation. Some of my most famous works like AirPlane 1, which most recently was on Heights Boulevard as part of True North: A Heights Boulevard Sculpture Project, took years to complete. And even then, I keep modifying it to the original vision. And EarthMan, my performance work is on it’s third iteration. If the work is still relevant and timeless, I am not done with it. Everything I paint, I may sculpt, and everything I sculpt, I may paint, or just let it evolve. I have so many works in the works, so many plans to plan, and so much serendipity to see what happens. I always feel like I’m just getting started, and I can’t wait to see what evolves. I can’t wait to wake up, and see a new day.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I’ve been sailing since childhood, and over the past 4 or 5 years I’ve sailed some 15,000 miles across the Gulf of Mexico, up and down the east coast, across the Caribbean and Bahamas, and of course, around Galveston Bay and the Gulf Coast. Slowly, these adventures are making their way into my art.
Oh, I have been working on a song for over 30 years. I started it in Nashville. I think it’s almost an album by now. I recorded one single, Trip to Mars in Jack White’s Third Man Records Record Booth last year.
My next installation is part of Sculpture Month Houston opening in early October in the Silos at SITE Gallery Houston in Sawyer Yards, curated by Volker Eisele . https://www.sculpturemonthhouston.org/
AirPlane 1 will be moving to JFK Boulevard south of Bush Intercontinental Airport, curated by the great Gus Kopriva of Redbud Arts Center. My new major work, Blurp, will be on display on Richmond Avenue as part of Richmond Avenue Public Art Trail in October, a project organized by Redbud Arts Center for the St. George Place Redevelopment Authority’s (SGPRA). https://www.redbudartscenter.com/
***Please call or email or let me know if you all need anything else, or if something needs adding to or clarifying
Contact Info:
- Website: www.earthman2.com and www.dionlaurent.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dionrlaurent/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dion.laurent/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dion-laurent-54748941/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@earthman1
- Other: http://airstation1.com/
