Interview by Jimon

1-Where do you live and create?  Stockholm Sweden.

2-How would you describe Leo Park?  Bold Sensitive Unstoppable

3- Where did you study art and do you think Art school was necessary for

your process?  I did my MFA at Konstfack University of Arts in Stockholm. It was a very nurturing place to meet people and encounter ideas. I think my journey as an artist took

place mainly elsewhere. Out in the wild.

4-You have a distinct style. What is the origin or inspiration behind your

style?  I never planned to have a style and I sort of worked against it for a long time. It is a mix of method and desire that leaves certain traits turning out as a style. Gradually some attributes reappeared in my work that created this consistency which I started to like. It is like a bass drum. My journey has gone from comics to graffiti to modernist figuration to Baroque to Renaissance to The Antique, and from there back to contemporary painting. I like artists that work with the figure, often non-photorealistic. When you paint a more synthetic or artificial figure, without copying nature, it is as if you are rhyming on nature. In those rhymes there is room for poetry and ambiguity. Elements in the painting can have multiple meanings and functions. That is why modernist figuration has been such a big inspiration for me and it’s probably obvious. Back then a lot of artists felt they had to position themselves against photography. But by doing that they also released color, line etc and turned to pre-renaissance and non-European art.

5-How do you choose the colors and shapes in your paintings? The shapes comes from my source material, but it is also just a fruit of improvisation. It is a mixture. I think it is similar to dancing and choreography. You mimic existing movements that tell a story with cultural connotations. But those movements collide with the convulsions and affects of the body that are carrying them out. The shapes in my paintings are mimicking a body and sometimes how another artist has rendered that body. And in that act my emotion just jolts the shape and it becomes something else.  Color is tricky. It either follow or lead in a painting. I experience competition between form and color. Then there are rare examples of superheroes that manage to intertwine the two. That’s really something. Since I paint naturalistic to some degree, I mimic nature. Scandinavian nature in particular; that specific blue sky. I often crank up the saturation a few steps to get that feeling of sharp sunlight. I’m not working so much from direct observation as from memory. I use that nature as a starting point that evokes a feeling. Like a stage where drama take place. Since I’m working with oil, you can’t only talk about pure color either. It’s made out of chemicals that react with each other and with the oil in unique ways. They are like analog synthesizers, each pigment has its own “sound”. There is also a third element in my paintings which are the tattoos. The tattoos exist both inside the picture and on the surface of the painting.

6-Do you work on one painting at a time or multiple?  I usually have multiple works going at the same time, at least when I work towards a show. I like my shows to be symphonic in a way. So things like consistency, pace and variation are things I work with. Even though the paintings split up to go separate ways after the show.

7-What is the toughest part about being an artist, please explain?  You are never done. You thirst for a state of magic and mystery, which requires total love and devotion, complete concentration and heart invested funambulism. You may get there, but the next day or the next show it all starts over.

8-Tell us something about the art world that you want to see changed?  The art world will always belong to the people surrounding the artists. I don’t think that will change. Some of those people are beautiful and some are not. Magic belongs to the artists.

9-The future is:  A big white spiral spiralling up towards the sky.

10-What inspires you the most?  Pain, pleasure and painting.

11-If you could live in any museum anywhere in the world, which would be your choice?  The Louvre. Someday I will hold the keys to that museum like Lucien Freud did with the

National Gallery. I will go there in the middle of the night and study the water drops on the Barque of Dante. Delacroix is one of the superheroes of color. Who else could turn a water

drop into a Rastafarian flag?

12-Do you listen to music or prefer to work in silence?  Music most of the time. A lot of classical music that soothes the senses and helps concentration, but also records or music artists that sets the tone for a certain exhibition I’m working with. I listen a lot to MF Doom. His flow creates a semi abstract wicker that resembles painting for me. Here and there holes appear where meaning pours through and the continuum halts. Then you are back again, locked to the pulse of the rhyme.

13-If you could have dinner with 3 artists living/dead who would be at your table?  Per Kirkeby, David Hockney and Matisse. Julian Schnabel would cook pasta.

14-Name three things you can’t live without in your studio?  Energy drinks, meal replacement powder and strip lights.

15-If you were asking the questions what question would you ask please follow up with an answer?

Q: How do you make good paintings?

A: Make good drawings.

16-How would someone find you on social media?  Insta @leoparkpictures

17- Please name the first thing that comes to your mind while reading the following:

Art= Fear

Food= Mmm

Sports= Test

Politics= Numb

Poor= Acid

God= Give

Rich= Easy

Luxury= Trees

Sex= Drool

Picasso= Musk

Religion= Esquire