In Conversation With 🖌️ Brian Grimwood

Brian Grimwood is one of the world’s leading artist/illustrators.

He has been described as the person who ‘transformed the course of illustration.’

His unique aesthetic, gift for line, imagination, elegance and wit are unmatched.

He migrates effortlessly from traditional media to the digital canvas.

And, after 50 years working at the top of his game, is as prolific as any artist working today.

We’re honored to interview him here. And if you want to experience more of his work please visit here and here

Decadent: Hi Brian, and welcome to Decadent! So to begin with, a relatively straightforward question – every day you post new work on Instagram. What motivates you to create new work at such a rate? What makes you so prolific?

BG: I’ve been working as an illustrator going on 50 years and now I’m just doing exactly what I want to do without being briefed by anybody – not that I was briefed much before either. I’ve always been my own person – people just gave me a script and then let me get on with it. I’ve got away with it because of that!

Decadent: Do you think the fact that you are so unique and individual people just step back and let it happen?

BG: Yeah people used to say to me “just do a Grimwood” which was really nice, just basically be myself. Instagram is just me being me and seeing how far I can push it.

Decadent: You seem to have had a fair few imitators in the past, people have tried to copy you…

BG: Well if someone got close to my style, I’d copy them back! If they did something good, I’d be the first one to acknowledge it and try and better it. I’ve always been very competitive that way. The reason I’ve retained a certain presence is because I’ve been doing it the way I want to do it for so long. I knew that as long as I kept focus on me being me I would pull it off and it seemed to have worked.

Decadent: It’s worked bloody well! So we’ve talked about your individual style, but can you pinpoint any specific influences now or in the past?

BG: Initially, when I was 12 (which was a long time ago!) it was Picasso – I felt my line was very similar to his line. I’ve always been encouraged to draw so that was my biggest influence. When I decided to become an illustrator there was a company called Push Pin Studio run by two people, Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser; they were my idols. In fact when Seymour Chwast came to London people thought he’d been copying me! I got to know them. They were brilliant illustrators and thinkers, just beautiful.

Decadent: There was always so much thought behind what they were doing.

BG: Agreed. And like them, with me it was always the concept and the thinking and the ideas behind what I was going to do – so I could then draw it.

Decadent: Everyone just thinks of Milton Glaser as the man who created ‘I ❤️ New York’ but he did so much more…

BG: Oh my god yes! I’m his biggest fan. If anybody wanted to check out Milton Glaser, he was the man. He was so bright, so intelligent.

Decadent: And what do you find currently inspiring?

BG: At the moment I’m being inspired by music. In particular people like Billie Eilish. Her voice as a singer and a songwriter; that’s the sort of madness and conceptual stuff that I really like.

Decadent: Can you talk to me about a piece of your work of yours that you really love?

BG: Yes, it’s the first picture I ever produced as an illustrator. I call it the Stereo Lady. It’s a Botticelli looking woman with snail shells over her ears.

Decadent: There’s a sort of joy and whimsy and strangeness in that. The more you look at it the weirder it is.

BG: The line itself was based on my doodles. In fact most of my early work was, as I used to say, ‘tarted up doodles.’ They were done small so if they were blown up they looked even better. Because ‘all the best posters are done on the side of a matchbox’ as Milton Glaser would say.

Decadent: On that note have you ever worked on a large scale? Some of your work is shown in galleries. It looks bloody fantastic.

BG: No! That was me faking it! As I used to say, ‘fake it till you make it!’

Decadent: There are a lot of artists out there who have got away with it by making things big – but they’re not necessarily very good. The opposite is true of your work – your work is amazing small so one can only imagine it big! Changing tack now, let’s talk digital vs traditional. Do you find working digitally liberating or just different?

BG: In both traditional and digital I work with layers They’re both quite similar. If you’re a painter you work in paint and layering to build a picture up. With digital you can do that really quickly. It’s the speed that’s different. I can do pictures now incredibly fast. I can do it in minutes.

Decadent: Do you find that the fact it’s ‘easy’ makes it more fun?

BG: Well I do actually because for me it’s showing off! And that’s fun. I like showing off. I’ve got a big ego. I’ve always been a bit of a showoff!

Decadent: I think that’s part of being a creative. We do what we do to be seen. We don’t do it to be locked away in a room

BG: Exactly!

Decadent: One thing about your work, it’s very loose and yet very precise at the same time. Is that tension something you work at consciously?

BG: Everything I do starts as a doodle. It starts as a loose drawing and then I’ll work on say, a hand, or an eye, and then I pull it all together. Actually a lot of it happens by accident. I was reading a book on Francis Bacon and it turns out that in most of his paintings he just followed what happened to the brush. My work’s quite similar to that. Making my accidents work. I often think what if Picasso had had a computer? He’s left it to me to play conceptually. My idea from when I first started as an illustrator was to ‘excite the eyeballs’ and that’s what I try to do. When you look at something I’d like you to think ‘wow! I’ve not seen anything like that before’ in terms of the colours, the composition; how I technically do it is to work in and around the space that I’m drawing within the drawing itself.

Decadent: Well your work we’re featuring here is genuinely beautiful. It’s fresh and dynamic. It fits intrinsically with the freedom of creativity we’re here to encourage. We’re called decadent because amongst many definitions it means art free of constraints. What does decadent mean to you?

BG: Well…I looked that one up by the way! One definition is self indulgence which, I suppose, is exactly what I’m about. It also means corrupt, immoral and depraved! Funnily enough I think the word ‘decadent’ is brighter than that. I think it’s a lighter, nicer word than corrupt and self indulgent.

Decadent: Haha, that’s kind of why we chose it. It means different things to different people. And on that note, Brian, thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure. See you on Instagram.