Originally born and raised in Brussels, Lewis Lazar is a Greenpoint-based painter and musician who draws elements of folklore into his visual artwork and photography journals. Throughout his career, he has had exhibitions worldwide in London, New York, and Nicaragua. Usually dabbling in watercolours, oil paintings, photography, etchings and Lino cut prints, Lewis creates to seek understanding of the world and communicate the acknowledgement of desires from needs, as well as disingenuous advertising when it comes to art and self-exposure. “It is not enough to know and to show, it also has to be lived and experienced,” he tells Greenpointers.
“I got into painting before talking or writing, I used to paint with spaghetti. Writing was an abhorrence and a nuisance that distracted me from my preferred medium of communication: Pictures. It developed on and off but got more serious at say 13 or 14 when I first forced myself to draw from paintings, photographs and also album covers and posters. Any interesting image that shows more than what meets the eye in terms of meaning, technique and intention. It has always run parallel to music and both have informed each other,” Lewis further explains.
“To expand on my mention of folklore in my work is that it is always going to be a story about more than what is front of you – it’s going to be a moment in a greater narrative. The bible is folklore to me: the story of a people. Blues music is folklore to me, and so is folk music. Folklore to me is just that – the story of people’s dreams, their struggles, their hopes, the symbols and dreams -and their experience. My message to humanity is “Watch out! Look carefully, ’cause it’s never going to happen again.”
You can also follow Lazar on Instagram, and check out his work in person during Greenpoint Open Studios on May 30 & 31.