Brush With Death
Interview with Artist LAURIE LIPTON
By The Grin Creeper

“My weird way of drawing takes a horrendous amount of time, but I was able to get the same kind of luminous quality that the Renaissance Flemish painters had achieved. My teachers tried to dissuade me and get me to ‘draw for drawing's sake’ and loosen up, but I knew what I wanted. I ached to make something no one had ever seen before with pencil.”

G&C: Your artwork is both beautiful and deliciously macabre. You blend the horrific with dark humor like… well, we do. Are we Siamese twins separated at birth? Why do you think this ‘humorrific’ combination works so well for your illustrations? And why do you think this lust for death flows so effortlessly from your ink tip?

LL: Are you really my long lost Other Half? Great! Should I shoot myself now or wait until after this interview? Firstly, I don’t use ink. It’s all pencil and charcoal and paper. Secondly, I blame my parents. I grew up in a household where gallows humor was the norm, and even when my mother was dying of cancer in a hospice, I wheeled her around and we made snide remarks about the nurses and inmates that sent us into hysterics. It’s a way of coping with The Horror, I suppose.
 
G&C: The painstaking details of your illustrations are awe-inspiring. At what age did you realize that you had this artistic talent at your fingertips? Were you like an idiot savant? And where and when did your talent blossom?

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