“Whatever you are doing, do it for you.”

Lix North is a contemporary artist who paints reflections of her internal landscape. Conceptually layered, surreal and often subtly satirical; her work explores the hopeful journey of a physically fragile being in an increasingly imperilled world.

Graduating from NMIT’s School of Visual Arts, Lix’s work initially caught the eye of Auckland Art Fair founder and revered gallerist, Jennifer Buckley, securing a solo show in the respected gallery, Oediopus Rex. She was the youngest artist published in E.M. Caughey’s book, ‘Art New Zealand Today’, and has since been awarded the Art Lovers Australia Prize, Clayton Utz Art Award People’s Choice, a Lethbridge 10,000 Category Award, as well as finalist positions in the Portia Geach Memorial Award and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Art Prize.

In this article Lix generously shares her advice on finding her artistic identity, how she develops narratives within her surreal compositions and the process of painting on aluminium.

 Background

Developing a connection to Australia, Lix settled in Brisbane in 2007. However, it was her childhood growing up in the remote hill country of New Zealand that had a profound influence on her art making. She recalls, “Most of my youth was very isolated. My friends were sheep, sheepdogs, deer and cattle. I did not know I was isolated because that was just my world. It gave me room to explore my imagination. I developed my own stories and things in my head.”

Her Scottish grandmother, one of her primary caregivers, would recite old fashioned stories, draw and sing with her as a child. It was these memories that later became a major catalyst for Lix’s ability to think in ‘story.’

“I feel like I was an artist from a very young age. I had no reference point other than this huge sky and mountains. I was this being that created, whether I was digging holes or building things out of cardboard or drawing, creating was what I did and that sort of never faded. It was always my identity to create. It is still one of my most favourite things in the entire world, to create something from nothing.’”

Artistic Identity

‘I’m going to paint what I want to paint and everyone else and the world be damned.’

While Lix enjoyed learning about the art world and participating in intellectual debates during her studies, she questioned her role and purpose as an artist.

“When I came out of art school I was painting portraits in a way that I thought might appeal to galleries. I spent probably the first 15 years of my professional career thinking like that and I had a torrid relationship with painting. I quit multiple times. I had multiple years off. I never had any consistency to what I was doing because I was constantly stressed about what I should be doing. I asked myself, ‘Why do I hate it so much? What the hell am I saying?’ Because it has all been said before.”

In 2016 Lix North changed her mindset towards painting. With the her new work ‘Insurgent’, a self-portrait with a steampunk monocular, she made a decision to paint what she wanted. It was this ethos that greatly impacted her sales. Her response to why her work sells,“I think it's because it's authentic. When I started doing just the stuff that meant something to me, that changed everything.”

Lix states, “You can get a lot of unsolicited advice in the art world. Just ignore it, unless you actively want it. I think the best way to find yourself as an artist and find your style is to just put your head down and let the things that make you happy or inspired or excited come out. That's when I started having galleries approach me rather than the other way around.”

It was this self-realisation of painting purely the things that were important to her that led to the emergence of her own style. “I have a very complicated relationship with myself, I've always had trouble with self-confidence and crippling self-doubt. I started photographing myself and painting myself in very specific poses that illustrated a psychological foible of mine.”

 The Narrative

Lix deals daily with health struggles, however she uses these tumultuous experiences as fuel for her paintings. “I have a very active, vigorous and strong mind stuck in a fragile and vulnerable body that lets me down a lot. So I have this psychological battle with my body. It’s my friend and I try to be nice to it but it’s also my nemesis.” The painting, ‘Stress Fracture’ explores this physical turmoil. “Sometimes I feel like just ripping everything apart. Just stop trying to kill me please.”

Up until Lix’s recent series, featuring canaries in dystopian environments, her work has been primarily self-portraiture. Lix explains, “Each one deals with a unique aspect of my struggles while also mirroring society’s or the planet’s struggles. There is always a complex interplay between a sense of vulnerability or fragility and a sense of strength and freedom. It is a complex psychological battle between the reality and what you are facing and the potential of what you can do despite that. Something I think about, as much as my all-pervasive health issues, is the state of the world and what we're doing to it. It really stresses me out. There is not a lot you can do about it as an individual but I do feel like if somebody looks at one of my paintings and thinks about what I am trying to say, maybe that makes a difference.”

Studio Processes

How to Photograph Yourself

Lix has been a professional photographer for the past twenty five years. She generously shares her experience when capturing her self-portraits. “A huge part of my aesthetic is influenced by my work with photography.” Early on when Lix first started to take self-portrait references with an old Canon film SLR she used to “set a self-timer and I just let it take lots of shots.”  Two decades later her process and equipment has evolved a great deal. “Now I use a Panasonic Lumix G9 which is unbelievably awesome. The display on the back of the camera swings out and pivots around so that you can actually see yourself when you're looking down the lens. I can plug an HDMI cable in o the second screen I have mounted above my studio computer. I hook that up and I can see a huge version of what the camera sees. That’s how you get around seeing your framing.”

Lighting

“I've got a lot of softboxes which are like big tents made of nylon with a semi opaque white nylon front. You put your flash inside and it fires out a diffuse burst of light. I have two of those and a beauty dish, which is like a big round bowl painted white inside. The flash goes inside that bowl and it’s got a little round plate that the flash bounces off and then light disperses around the bowl and out. It creates really nice lighting on the skin and face.”

“I also make weird things that I can put flashes inside. I have this old mailing tube I painted white on the inside and black on the outside. I can shove the flash in one end and the other end has a plastic lid with a little slit cut out like a letterbox. When the flash fires there’s this slash of light, which is really cool if you want to do something dramatic.”

Pre-production

“I get really anxious when I paint if I don’t have everything the way I want it before I start. All the detail is done in my mind and in pre-production. I take all my photos, find all my other little references and put it all together on the computer. I then take that image, colour grade it, then I'll put it on my iPad and draw into it in Procreate to tweak things. By the time I’m actually painting I just get to listen to my audiobook, relax and paint by numbers.”

“Often when I think of something that’s part of the story I want to tell, I want to make it first so I can see all the way round it, so I can know it. So, either I 3D design it or put it together with found objects, modelling clay or appropriated stuff. It is an act of familiarising an idea by making the intangible, tangible. Often when a story or idea comes to mind it is not going to be just one painting. If I feel like if I make something that’s going to be a key element in those stories, I will reuse it. Because photography is such a big part of it for me, creating those scenes and getting the lighting the way I want.”

Painting on Aluminium

The aluminium surface Lix paints on is called ‘ACM’ or ‘ Aluminium Composite Material’. This is made up of two thin sheets of coated aluminium with a layer of  polyethylene material sandwiched in the middle. It’s a product initially designed for sign-writing printing and it has a very smooth surface that is tough and slightly flexible. There will typically be at least one aluminium side with a thick coating designed for printing. Some more expensive brands have that thicker coating on both sides. Either way, it’s always the side with the thicker shiny coating that’s ideal for painting. As a fine art substrate it’s extremely inert and has no issues with humidity, mould or warping. Gesso isn’t necessary and makes no difference to paint adhesion. Lix simply begins with a very light hand-sand using 1200 grit sandpaper. She’s found this is all that’s needed to optimise adhesion. The only downside she finds painting on aluminium, due to being synthetic, is that’s it’s slightly static so it attracts dust very easily. However, the level of detail that can be achieved on this substrate and the affordability of this material, compared to other more traditional options, far outweighs any negatives.

Framing Aluminium Paintings

Lix has used two different mounting methods over almost a decade of painting on aluminium. The first used a special metal epoxy called ‘J.B. Weld’ to glue right-angle aluminium extrusion around all sides on the back of the panel, with the rear coating sanded back to expose the metal first, for optimum adhesion. From the front this method mimics the appearance of a seamless stretched canvas edge. These edges can be painted, like one might paint stretched canvas edges, to enhance this illusion.

Her second and current mounting system, which can accomodate the addition of a float frame, involves affixing strips of plywood to the back of the aluminium panel using Liquid Nails. Float frame mounts can then easily be screwed into the plywood backing of the finished painting.

Sourcing and Cutting Aluminium

There are sometimes pre-cut aluminium panel pieces available at art supply stores but Lix recommends sourcing ACM from sign-writing or construction industry suppliers as a much more economic option. To cut her aluminium panels Lix uses a good ruler, a table edge and a craft knife, preferably with carbide blades (available from most hardware stores). She marks her line, scores it with the knife about ten times until she gets through the top surface of the aluminium. Then it’s placed on the edge of a table and with a hand on either side of the score line and weight is applied until the polyethylene middle layer snaps. The remaining layer of aluminium will then detach easy with just a little hinging action.

Lix’s Choice of Mediums

Art Spectrum Oil Paints Lix’s preferred brand due to their quality and innovation without sacrificing affordability. Many unique custom Australian-inspired colours in their range. Excellent customer service.

Winsor and Newton Artists’ Oil Colour (for rare colours).
Bismuth Yellow is a brilliant opaque yellow that is hard to source from other brands. It’s Lix’s choice for her omnipresent canary avatars. Its extraordinary level of opacity typically only requires one coat. She often uses it in tandem with Art Spectrum’s Spectrum Orange when rendering vibrant feather variegations.

Archival Oils Odourless Lean is an alkyd based fast-drying medium for oil paint. Lix pours a little into a bottle cap beside her palette and works a drop of it into every colour she mixes as she goes. Using this method her paint typically dries overnight and can be safely worked over the next day. As the name states, it is genuinely odourless and safe for those with sensitivities or those working in shared environments.

National Art Materials Retouch Varnish (spray).
Lix swears by this as the only varnish she trusts for fail-safe varnishing success. Designed for use as a working varnish, it’s able to be sprayed between layers of touch-dry oil paint to deepen colours and blacks revealing accurate tonality as an artist works. Lix also uses multiple layers as a finishing varnish due to it’s ability to ‘play nicely’ over any brand of oil or mix of mediums. It gives a beautiful, consistent satin lustre to new barely touch-dry works and equally can bring life back to an old work that’s been in storage for years.

A Guiding Principle

Lix believes “Whatever you are doing, do it for you. Whatever concepts you’re wishing to express, express it because it means something to you and because you have something to say. I just think things start to go right for you when you have something super authentic to say without external noise getting in the way.”

Thank you Lix, for your heartfelt advice on finding your true artistic voice. I was inspired by how you shared your vulnerabilities and use them as a strength in your art-making.

To view a complete folio of Lix North’s work please click on the website link below:

https://lixnorth.com/