Phyllis & Fergus

This piece joins my "Hot Chips & Cigarette Butts" Collection

This series came to me through funny hypothetical conversations I had in my household with my husband & children.

The first conversation was between me & my husband. I was deep down a rabbit hole of pondering why we, as a human race, settled on eating the animals we eat. Why, for example, do we eat chickens but not seagulls, was there a moment in history where someone ate a seagull & it didn't taste very good? What if in the future, resources become low & we have to eat seagulls, what would they taste like? So I asked my husband what he thinks seagulls taste like & in his infinite wisdom & without missing a beat he said "Hot chips & cigarette butts." and I lost it laughing.

The second conversation was at the dinner table. We had a pack of "conversation starter" cards that asked thoughtful questions to discuss (like when the kids can't remember what they did at school) & on this particular dinner the question asked was "If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?" and my 9 year old son Kobe, relayed to us how he would be a seagull, but as himself now (so a child sized seagull) flapping around in the sky. He went on to say that when people saw him flying in the sky they would point & exclaim "Whoa, would you look at the size of that seagull!" This is a moment with my family I wish we had been recording because I will never remember exactly how he said it, but we were all in tears of laughter because the way he expressed this idea was so comical. Kobe also does a great impression of a seagull.

Those conversations in combination with the fact I am 43 years old and, as my husband would say, become a bit of a bird nerd in recent years, had me noticing seagulls even more than I had before. I've come to realise seagulls are quite funny & with the hilarity of those conversations bouncing around in my head, I felt like reframing these attitude filled "pests" into something fun was worth doing.

As intended, this motley crew of birds is full of sass, ass, attitude & expression. Each has been named with a delightfully ill-fitting name from yesteryear just to make them seem even more unhinged than the name "Hot Chips & Cigarette Butts" suggests.

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Hi – I’m Lauren, but feel free to call me Loz!

I’ve identified with being an artist my whole life, but life has often gotten in the way, so it has taken me a REALLY long time to get here.

Graduating from high school way, way back in the 90’s, art as a career felt completely out of reach. So, after indulging in every art class I could during school, off I plodded into adulthood to get a “real job.” Other than a brief stint in art & design at college in 2000, my art was relegated to hobby status, a status it kept until my late 20’s, when it slipped off the radar entirely.

I found my way back to art in 2019 (after a 12-year hiatus). Having recently relocated overseas with my husband & two children, I started attending creative work shops in the hopes of connecting with some new people, what I wasn’t expecting is that I would reconnect with myself. My passion for art was so quickly reignited that it only took a very short stint back in the corporate world to realise art is where I belong & I haven't put the brushes down since.

As a now *cough*mature age artist*cough*, I would describe my much of my work as colourful chaos, some with a smidge of rebellious humour, some with a lot of deep feelings & all of it with a LOT of palpable energy. I consider myself as a bit of a “Jill of many trades” artist, because I paint wherever my imagination, or my emotions, take me & find it impossible to niche down, I am constantly overwhelmed with inspiration to paint all the things. You could say when it comes to the rule book of art, I do tend to piff it out the window & flip it the bird…but not before covering it in a crap-tonne of paint & glitter, of course!

At a first glance my body of work can sometimes look disjointed, but the more you experience it, the more you can start to see running themes, symbols, colours, subjects, patterns & mediums that thread through most of it. Much of my art is inspired by my very own experiences, stories, feelings, memories & emotions, very little of it exists, just because. My style is often recognisable due to my tendency towards a more is more aesthetic that evolves from myriads of layers, which come together to create a weirdly evocative balance of chaos & calm. A lot of people who experience my work in person (particularly my abstract pieces), often tell me they appreciate how it is the kind of work where "the longer you look, the more you see," which makes it feel ever evolving & giving. I think my style is quite reflective of the fact that, as a late diagnosed neurodivergent human being, I have a relentlessly loud & chaotic, complex mind.

Needless to say, I have a deeply intimate relationship with the therapeutic benefits of creating. However, what inherently inspires me to keep creating, what I relish the most, is witnessing the connection & meaning people find in my work for themselves. When people feel seen, comforted, relatable, feel joy & even healing, in my art, my heart cracks wide open. Better yet, when people feel inspired, or empowered, by my work, I like to think that maybe my art is helping them to go out into the world & totally kick-ass. If that is the legacy I leave in this lifetime, it feels pretty sweet.

If you are here to purchase a piece of my art, thank you so much. I can't explain enough how honoured & humbled I am when someone chooses a part of my story, to become a part of theirs.