Gallery : the art magazine from Gallery Delta

came, the sanctions, no materials, and for me I think that '74 was the
time when I really started creating... as late as that... when I explored
and 1 improvised and I got hooked on trying to make materials and
work with the materials that I was alien to.
BM: When you set out to do a work, do you have a subject in mind,
some event, some emotion?
HL: I don't think I know consciously. I think it is very much a
subconscious process.
BM: Is it inspiration?
HL: 1 don't believe in inspiration. 1 think inspiration, if you want to
use that word, only comes when you have worked and worked and
worked. It is the accumulation of the work and the ideas, the
problems that you have been facing. You are in search of that thing
which occupies you. There are things you feel you've got to get out.
And there's times when your mind is blank and then this is when you
start exploring again. I find maybe my colours are becoming boring
and I get all my bits and piecej and I feel that I need to find some-
thing else to work. It's a preliminary search into something new,
something else... whatever is coming. I think that my biggest fear in
my life is to be repetitive. I would rather stop painting entirely
because I feel that you have to explore. I remember an old professor
of mine saying if you have a standstill period rather go one step
backward so that you can go forward. My step backward is to go
back to drawing, back to just sketching and rethinking. I enjoy
working with drawings. I find it's like people who sit down and
write diaries. For me, my diary is all those sketches that I do.
There's no words. It's the images that portray what I feel.
BM: And you sketch what's around you?
HL: No, it's what comes from my heart, my mind, and my soul.
Things that disturb me; things that make me happy.
BM: So you don't look for outside subjects like nature or land-
scape?
HL: They all stand in my mind but very rarely do I work from
nature. I might just do a contour line that has everything that I want.
The organic, the texture is very strong in what I look at. I love the
positive / negative shapes and the textural qualities.
BM: The texture has always been very strong m your work, even in
your graphics... the acid eating, then the layers of paint, papers, the
collage... when did you start doing collage?
HL: '74 / '75 was my collage. It stemmed from all the work which
was unsuccessful which I kept in boxes. I started using my own
pieces within a painting. Also at that time, it makes me laugh now
when I think of it, our paper was in very very small sizes and I
wanted to work large so therefore I went and stuck two pieces of
paper together and then added collage so that it looked like a larger
piece of work. But then I have a psychological hatred, again very
personal, of using other people's images in my painting, like
magazines or photographs, unless I have taken the photograph,
unless I have gone through the process. It has always got to be part
of me. I don't like takmg from anybody else. Sometimes I'm biased
if you want, but I feel it's not ethical and I thmk this is what is
happening in art. This ethical part is being destroyed. There's no
ethics in a lot of things that are happening today.
BM: A lot of people take pieces from around their environment and
put it together and say this is a work of art.
HL: Yes, but we can take Schwitters for example. I just love his
work. Every little piece was his trip by bus, taxi or whatever. And
] 4 ihe way he put it together. So again that was like a personal
collection. And people may have a mania of collecting toothbrushes,
so I mean, what a wonderful painting you can make of it — a piece
of art from toothbrushes because it's part of you. Also there have
been artists that have used other artists' work. Like Picasso, who
literally copied Manet's Dejeuner sur I'herbe , but what came out of
that? What did Picasso do from that? It was something totally
different. He'd used the composition, that I think is wonderful
because at the same time he was paying tribute to a master. That I
understand. But I'm saying I feel there is a deadline to anything you
do. And my deadline is to use personal, preferably my own, pieces
for collage.
BM: You mention Picasso going back and looking at Manet. Have
there been any artists that have made a very strong impression on
you, that have been influencial, used as a jumping off point?
HL: One person who had a great influence over me in my youth was
Kokoschka. I loved Kokoschka's feeling in his work and somehow I
think I related him to Africa, though it had nothing to do with Africa.
Another artist who had a very strong infiuence on my work when I
first came back home was Daumier; the political thiiigs, the black
and white, the people, and again maybe at that time I was very
attached to the peasants, the people, and the society and the political
possibilities. Daumier and Kokoschka were at that time the strong-
est influences in my work.
BM: It is mteresting that you chose Kokoschka because his work
has a strong sense of inner turmoil, and to me, much of your work is
expressive of storms, violence, turmoil.
HL: Maybe that's the Greek part of me coming out. Probably the
drama. I feel that the biggest thing in my life is to try and be an
individual and try and identify who I really am. It is a battle in my
life, in my work, this identity. Am I Greek? Am I African? And yet
there is a link in the superstitions of the Greek and of the African.
The relationship is very similar in many, many ways. And to be
accepted as a Greek or as a white African... I feel this has been
really my biggest fight. I go to Greece and I enjoy it but I don't
think I'm part of that. And in Switzerland... I find a peace there. I
find a tranquil quality that I've always enjoyed immensely, and
maybe recapturing my youth. But because I'm very sort of aggres-
sive or... I always feel I need the opposite to calm the situation and
give it a good balance. But I think my work is based on this fight
between who and what I am.
BM: Your work is not concerned with material reality, is it rather an
imaginative psychological reconstruction ?
HL: Possibly, yes. Human forms have always been a prominent
feature in my work, whether symbolic or figurative, losing their
everyday appearance and individuality and assuming a degree of
anonymity and stylisation of shape. Their origins come from my
love of the Byzantine stylisation and spirituality and even further
back and beyond, the Cycladic, and linking forward to the African
stylisation. The simplicity of form. I have analysed the anatomy,
the character, and then it's a breakaway to minimalise and just to use
the bare essentials of what is the human figure, what he represents.
Symbolism. I think the symbolic quality has a large part in my
work,., the symbolism of what the human being is or what he
represents, and what the painting is about.
BM: What have been the major themes in your work?
HL: I think ii was the earth, Ihe discovery of Africa, the stratas, the
land lormalion was very strong. Mysticism, ritual, the strong
symbolic force of form and shape, always with a human element,
occur again and again. Man taking over in the space and becoming
the patriarch, the ruler. That again, lor me, had a lot to do with the
war. So much killing. Brother killing brother. The whole turbu-
lence. And ihc bird came into that. It was not the bird of peace, for