Meet Louis Carreon of The Drip Factory in Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Louis Carreon.

Louis, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My story begins at the beach where the surf meets the turf, stealing paint, fighting over the alphabet and competing with urban kids in the vanity game. It was the 90’s and the early days of graffiti. This time when nothing else mattered but hip-hop and art. That’s what gave me the drive and made me the artist that I am today, through my trials and tribulations through the streets, drugs, addiction, and back.

Art has always been my release, and it’s always my number one addiction. It’s what has propelled me and motivated me through life. I’m in a place where the lines have been blurred about what art is. Now it doesn’t seem to be what you paint—it’s about who sees it and what narratives you’re speaking and who and what group of collectors are buying your work.

As I’ve entered this space, everything that I thought I knew about art, which is nothing, really, disappears, but it feels like I’m in a very healthy place as a contemporary painter. I feel like I’m working with the best brands. I feel like I have a great list of collectors that appreciate me for who I am and my story. And it’s given me the privilege of being able to travel the world, which has filled me full of light and full of knowledge, which constantly renews my voice and keeps my work very authentic.

Has it been a smooth road?
I think if you’re a real artist, you automatically operate differently from most people in society. You work out of a different part of your brain, and you work out of a different place emotionally. You don’t really fit in in a lot of ways.

So I think most artists gravitate towards things that may cause them damage. Drugs, booze, stuff like that. They’re a way of dealing with all the raw emotion that a lot of artists have to work with. So I did get caught up in drugs and addiction and the streets, and that was a big hurdle for me personally. But it’s propelled me into who I am as a man and an artist.

Street art felt like it really was a hurdle for me because when I started out, it was underground and it was graffiti. Then it moved into fine art, and street art became famous. All of a sudden you have a whole new generation of people that weren’t in graffiti doing street art, and now with different social media platforms, these artists are able to gain fame.

In my opinion, they didn’t come up using the codes of graffiti so that they aren’t that authentic. It was very lonely to feel that way at the time. This was probably about six or seven years ago when a lot of street artists started blowing up, you know, and the word street art became a big thing. I feel like I sort of missed that. I never was a “street artist.” We were trying to get out of the streets.

We were graffiti artists, you know when we were trying to hang out in better places and go to more sophisticated places because we didn’t want to be street. We were forced to be street because that’s where we came from. The rise of street art was a hurdle that kind of fucked me up for a minute.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Drip Factory story. Tell us more about the business.
I think that I’m never really proud, you know. I think that I’m constantly learning. I don’t think any artists could ever be too proud. We’re never going to master anything. So with that said, you know, there are moments that I do feel accomplishments. Not monetary and not based on recognition or any of that.

I feel accomplishments from perseverance and personal growth as a painter. I’ve had chapters where I’ve worked to climb the ladder of the art world. But it’s ultimately worthless to try to wrestle with the artists that are above you.

One of the things I’m best known for is painting that jet at Art Basel. So great, I can paint a plane. Do people think it’s great? I guess if I’m proud of something, it’s that I came from a killer graffiti crew in California and was raised on street culture. I’m proud of those roots.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.louiscarreon.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louiscarreon/

Image Credit:
Courtesy of Louis Carreon

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