Brilliant Nature.com [ Andrew Lakey ]

Andrew Lakey : Brilliant Nature Collection

In late 1996 artist Andrew Lakey commenced an enormously prodigious painting cycle that continued (in its first phase at least) until November 1997, and which resulted in thousands of dazzlingly colorful works of art.

Remarkably, each painting is completely different, stylistically fresh and unmistakeably original. Andrew Lakey’s extraordinary subjects in Brilliant Nature were derived using an improvisational process employing the unconscious, his memory and imagination. The sheer volume of subjects painted in this collection, including flowers of every type, exotic fish, mythical birds, idyllic animals, magical crickets, psychedelic snails and countless other-worldly flora and fauna, represent a whole taxonomy of an artist’s known and imagined world. Lakey does not simply sample his universe, he exhausts it completely.

What began as a methodological color study using nature icons has become an obsessive-compulsive journey into a vast and phantasmagoric world of enchanting and utterly original, new form factors of botanica and beings, detailed in sumptuous color and signature line work.

This extraordinary uber compendium of paintings are works in toto referred to Brilliant Nature. The first monograph, Flora & Fauna is broken down into two discrete sections: Part 1 - Tokyo Flowers and Part 2 – Unencountered, and has been carefully catalogued.

These works are a revelation - as they have remained unseen for nearly a decade. Andrew Lakey’s immense creative drive transformed an otherwise ordinary project into an extraordinary oeuvre of work that challenges any of his other major painting phases. Brilliant Nature – a total of 200 original paintings carefully and chronologically culled from the Brilliant Nature archive are full of narrative form and seductive surprise.

Flora – Tokyo Flowers

Though Andrew Lakey was born in Chateauroux France, he spent his much of his early childhood years living in Japan. His formative world was instructed by Japanese culture and style. For the artist these primal experiences and recollections greatly affected his creative vision and personal reality. A powerful receptor, Lakey began his ascent into the world of art making simple drawings and pictures that were constantly flowing from his head, through his hand and onto paper. While none of these early images presently exist, his tactile remembrance of Japan’s sights, sounds, smells and senses still inform his work in Brilliant Nature, stylistically and aesthetically.

What began as a disciplinary effort to master color and content became a frenzy of prolific creation using the medium of acrylic paint on small (mostly 4” x 4”) wooden canvases that would occupy a period of two years where the artist painted almost continuously. It is estimated that Lakey painted nearly 25,000 original works during this period – an almost unbelievable output save the fact that these works exist, are painstakingly and individually catalogued and archived (each painting is hermetically sealed in private storage vaults which are security protected with video cameras, sprinkler systems and 24-hour guards).

In fact, his obsession to master his painting craft and record his real and imagined world, has caused him to move from the more comfortable surroundings of an artist’s studio, to a specially designed painting facility that he fashioned out of several contiguous storage rooms. Lakey was generating art at such pace and proclivity that his need to be close to his paintings changed his entire work process.

Douglas Brown