Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Lasley.
Tom, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was born and raised in the suburbs just outside New York City. As a child I was creative and wanted to be an artist but ultimately, I studied acting. When I was an actor living in New York in the eighties I supported myself working as a cater-waiter. I was exposed to a lot of art at events in museums, galleries and collector’s homes. I was particularly attracted to naive and folk art – the work of artists with no training, but a strong urge to express themselves through art. I have since lived in Los Angeles for twenty years and had not been acting for a long time, but found I had a need to share my experience through art. I’ve been making assemblage art for about 18 years.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I make assemblage art using found objects – although if I feel I need a particular thing to support the story, I sometimes “find” things on eBay. Usually my pieces are in shadow boxes, but sometimes they’re sculptural and free standing. My work is very autobiographical – they usually depict some aspect of my experience or represent it in a somewhat surreal or cryptic way. I was a gay kid growing up in a more repressed time and that’s a recurring theme in many pieces. My art is not unlike the kind of play I enjoyed as a kid and the real satisfaction for me is reconnecting with a more genuine authentic sense of self in the process while “processing” and – I hate the cliché – healing a lot of what came later in life. What I hope is that others identify with the experience and see themselves in them.
How can artists connect with other artists?
Sometimes I’ll get stuck on a piece and have to put it aside for a while and that can be frustrating. What I find is when the solution presents itself it was worth the wait because it’s something that for whatever reason I just couldn’t have imagined before. Sometimes an object appears and I say “That’s it! That’s what I have been waiting for!” and that’s very satisfying. Once I realized I couldn’t finish a piece because the story It was inspired by hadn’t reached its conclusion so it got set aside for a long time!
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I’m very happy and grateful my work has now been shown in galleries all over Los Angeles. Information about upcoming shows can be found on my www.tomlasley.com.
Contact Info:
- Address: Studio City
- Website: www.tomlasley.com
- Phone: 818-730-9770
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: Tom Lasley
- Facebook: Tom Lasley Art
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