Born in Rochester NY in the mid 50’s, Lou grew up within a typical large blue collar American “Leave it To Beaver” family household. Lou has been drawing and painting faces, figures and forms since he was a teenager. A self-taught artist, Lou has been steadily creating an impressive body of work with a portfolio that spans nearly four decades. He was
A US Navy filmmaker for 4 years in an elite motion picture unit called Combat Camera Group. Lou then moved out west and spent the next two decades in Hollywood where he continued massing his body of fine art when he wasn’t working on film and television projects.
The influences on my work over the years has been from all of my visual jobs, from photography and lighting, cinematography for television and motion pictures, paparazzi photo lab print work, product design, neon design and fabrication, movie set and prop design & production, animation for music videos, events design and advertising.
While working in a large fine art graphics house in Los Angeles in the mid 80’s Lou started experimenting with reproducing his images as fine art photographic reproductions and over the years began selling large mural prints of his work on various substrates as installation pieces. That marked a beginning of people collecting his prints.
I have been interested in creating faces since I can remember first drawing when I was a teenager. Over the years I began making distilled versions of them and also started adding decorative elements into them. Some concepts have intentional meaning to me, some have very little and might be just design and form. I don’t like to do the same thing over and over and I don’t follow a familiar path and process each time. I love careful design and also spontaneous work so I sometimes split the difference and pull from each approach. I also like to mix things up within that approach by adding new twists and turns that become pleasant discoveries. I think it is good to grow as you go and look for new doorways and levels in order to keep myself challenged. If a piece or idea isn’t very satisfying me to work on I won’t
even bother to take it any further. That is one of the freedoms I have set up for myself by not working either for hire or under pressure of making a sale or making quantities. I take my time, or should I say the art takes time.
The satisfaction for me comes not only after completion of a piece but it rides along during the entire process like a surfer on a wave when I can get into the “zone”.
Lou currently lives in the New York City area and has developed a following among collectors and fans of his work all over the US and abroad. Lou Has exhibited his work in NYC and had his work in magazines including; BG Magazine (8 page feature) , Colorink Book (cover) , Chronogram (back cover). In the last few years Lou has been very involved in product development and has been incorporating his work into product design. His mix of whimsical & Pop Surrealistic images have been featured in countless magazines and are also finding their way onto various products.