Taunton and South Somerset Living Apr - May 2020

We meet
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen Designer, artist and WIT
60
Sally Thomson was recently invited to the beautiful Cotswolds home of
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen to find out more about his latest wallpaper
range, the creativity behind his work and how he gets his inspiration
from William Morris...
Sally: Your lovely late father was a
surgeon and your mother was a teacher,
what made you choose to go into the arts?
Laurence: Because I really didn’t want to
be a surgeon and I really didn’t want to
be a teacher! When my father died it was
so tragic. I was only nine and he was so
eminent and it was so embarrassing being
kind of patted on the head with people
saying ‘Oh you are going to take after
your father’. Just the idea of surgery was
just so abhorrent! Not that I’m particularly
squeamish. Actually I’m often drawn to the
nastier sorts of 14th century alter pieces,
where there’s a lot of cutting up saints! But
my sister is a doctor so it is definitely in
the blood. I actually always wanted to be
a barrister. It was very simple, ever since I
was very young and it was only when the
absolute reality of how much work it would
require hit me at about sixteen that I thought
no. I was intellectually quite successful
at school and so there was an enormous
shockwave when I suddenly decided
that I was going to do art instead which
is something that I never considered as
something that I was here to do.
You appeared on ‘Who Do You Think You
Are’ and you discovered more about your
grandparents.
It was the dullest ‘Who Do You Think
You Are’ ever. And I did say to them that
unfortunately I am the most interesting thing
in my family!
So your great grandfather being blown up
by a U-boat didn’t count?
Actually he was quite interesting. He
was a very exotic and powerful person, I
remember him very clearly and he died
when I was about four. Very commanding
and very elegant. He also had a reputation
for being very over-perfumed! But he got
sunk in both world wars! He was obviously
completely and utterly indestructible. He also
ended up getting a medal from the mayor of
Nagasaki right in the middle of the second
world war; when we were at war with Japan!
He saved an entire crew of Japanese
merchant shipmen and rowed them ashore
himself. So it was all very bemusing. But
I remember my mother said to me during
filming: ‘Never be part of somebody else’s
dynasty, start your own.’ After my father died
and when she became very ill she became
very feisty about stuff. She was inevitably
very protective of us as children. And it was
difficult for her as her family felt that she
was not fit to bring us up and wanted to step
in and even social services were sniffing
around.
You went to Camberwell College of Arts
is that where you found your passion for
interior design?
No. I went to Camberwell to do the
foundation course without having a clear
idea yet of what I wanted to do. In fact at that
stage, at the interview stage they felt I was
better suited to the illustration course. But
actually I felt very strongly whilst doing the
foundation course that I wanted to do fine
art, to do painting. This was because I was
very aware of the quite crushing snobbery
that was happening in the art market, which
is that if you were a painter/fine artist you
could go on and do whatever you wanted,
such as stage design or illustration. You
brought an enormous amount of kudos with
you if you did that. But if you specialised as
an illustrator you would never be able to do
fine art.
But fine art must have been very difficult
to break into?
It was very difficult, I had to totally change
because up until that point I am ashamed
to say I was quite arrogant about my art.
I know you will find this very difficult to
believe! But I always had a phenomenal
facility to draw, I could draw very well and
very effortlessly. But too stylistically. So half
way through I had to pretend that I liked
doing things the way they liked to, you know
with the little scratchy marks and making
paintings very dank and brown. So I did all
of that to get to get onto the fine art course,
which I did, and then immediately threw off
the cloak and went back to my monumental
neo-classical nudes in blousy landscapes,
which I think annoyed the feminist
movement in Camberwell! I used to say
‘For goodness sake, I am celebrating these
women, look at them, they are goddesses!’
Nudes are history and truths.
continued