This British Artist Makes Sculptures Out Of Children’s Colored Pencils

A Smith & Wesson revolver, Glock, M16 rifle, Remington 870 shotgun, MG 3 machine gun or Colt handgun – these are some of the weapons in English artist Luke Newton’s arsenal. But instead of steel, aluminum or carbon fiber, these firearms are shaped from thousands of stacked colored pencils in a wide array of vibrant hues.

Stripped of their functionality and rendered useless, these accumulations of drawing instruments have been metamorphosed into sculptures that have become the Paris- and Roubaix-based artist’s calling card ever since the 2015 terrorist attacks on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris. Ordinary pencils embodying the power of creation and imagination became symbols of resistance and freedom of expression in France, and through his pieces in which violence and innocence converge, he unites what initially appears to be diametrically opposed. Today, he has expanded his repertoire and uses colored pencils to build skulls, dynamite or rocket launchers in a painstaking process that takes weeks or even months for the construction of each piece.

Catch him now at the “Saint-Tropez Art Show 2023” where he is presenting works alongside artists such as JonOne, César, Erró, Robert Combas, Jef Aérosol and Lenz. Organized by Galerie David Pluskwa, the group exhibition is on view through August 9, 2023 at Salle Jean Despas in St. Tropez on the French Riviera. Newton speaks about his background and how he came to create sculptures out of pencils.

Tell me about your origins.

I was born in Burnley and grew up in a little town called Colne with my brother and sister. It’s a good place to grow up in as a kid because you have the countryside around you and you can play out on the streets. But then to study, you need to move out of that area because there’s not much opportunity work wise or culturally. My father and grandfather used to have an ironmongery, and it used to be like the shop in the center of town. My mother was a hairdresser, which was part of this ironmongery. This was before big supermarkets moved in, so you could buy plates, nails, tools, all sorts of different things, there.

Were any of your family members artists?

Yeah, my uncle, Mark Newton. He was a massive inspiration for my brother, sister and myself growing up, and still is to this day. He was a little bit the first rebel of the family because he was born a lot later than my father and my aunts, and he was always interested in art and painting. He was the first to lead the way and move away as well from the north of England. He went to Japan and taught as an English teacher, he moved to France, traveled a lot. He was the one who inspired us to see the bigger picture outside of our town. He studied portrait painting and was a good friend of Anthony Phuong’s [a Parisian gallerist]. I first met Anthony with my uncle when he came to London for Frieze Art Fair. Today, my uncle works more in design and graphics, but he opened the doors for me to a world to escape to while doing art. He was the one to show me a way to express my creativity and was always super supportive of that.

At which point did you know that you wanted to become an artist?

The thing is I’ve always made art. I don’t know whether I really made a conscious decision to be an artist. It was just art was always my way of expressing myself and my way to communicate. I looked back not so long ago at one of my first school records when I was four years old, and even at that point, it highlighted how really motivated and excited I was by creating in general.

When you went to study at Central St. Martins, did you know then for sure that you could make a living from your art?

I’m lucky that I can make art as a career, as my job. I’ve always loved learning and studying about art and was super excited to be accepted into that prestigious school. I think the first thing I ever sold as an artist was a drawing of somebody’s dog, but making money from art was never really the motivation, just the ability to be able to make art, to express myself.

Why did you move to Paris after you graduated?

I stayed for another year in London whilst my girlfriend at the time was finishing her studies as well, and then we both decided at that point to move to Paris. I was 23 years old. My uncle was living in Paris at the time and he had a place to let us both stay until we found our feet, and obviously him being an artist and very involved in the art world helped a lot with meeting people and connections; it opened a lot of doors. When Anthony Phuong found out I was moving to Paris, within the first week, he called me up and said he would give me carte blanche for an exhibition. It was really nice on his part to have that much confidence and to offer me such a great opportunity. A few days later, my uncle told me that JonOne was looking for somebody to help out with his work, so I met John and ended up working with him for 10 years, until I felt I needed to focus just on my own work.

What did you learn from your time as JonOne’s assistant?

I learned more about the art market. When you study art at school and university, you don’t learn anything about what it actually really takes to be an artist, that dedication, the sacrifices that you have to make in order to develop and push yourself. It’s not an easy job for sure, but I learned a lot about the strength that’s required in order to make it happen and to succeed.

Describe to me your artistic language and philosophy.

I like the accessibility of my art, that it can be accessible to different audiences, that it doesn’t become some sort of elitist notion of art. And I think another thing is that it has some sort of concept or idea behind it; it’s saying something other than just its own existence. It has a message or a story to tell or some different way of thinking about everyday life that hopefully people can access, read into, analyze and make their own judgements.

How long does it take you to make an artwork?

It depends. Certain pieces may take a day or two, others might take a month.

When and how did you come up with the idea to use colored pencils?

It was a mix of two different things that I was working on. Futility is something that has always interested me, like art being futile and existing within itself. One series that I was making was a homage to Marcel Duchamp and the readymade object, and the beauty that the readymade object has within itself. So I was just assembling colored pencils together, which kind of made the tool itself useless, but it helped you see the beauty within the everyday things around you at the same time and also question their functionality or practicality, sort of what constitutes art. My first piece was just an accumulation of sharpened pencils, an exploration of something that’s intended to create art, but could be an art object in and of itself. At the same time, I was making these silhouette paintings of weapons because I was trying to make some sort of social commentary on the commodification of objects within society, but also the commodification of art, and giving people the possibility to buy their silhouette of a weapon in whatever color they desired. When Galerie David Pluskwa in Marseille asked me to make a piece for an auction for the families of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I decided to join the two ideas together and make weapons from the colored pencils themselves. This idea had been floating around in my head for a while, but as colored pencils took on a kind of social symbolism, of being a symbol of liberty, freedom of expression and creativity, it seemed like the right time to make these pieces or to start this series.

How do you choose the colors for your weapons?

A lot of it is subconscious. I don’t know whether I really make conscious decisions in the choices of the colors or the positioning even. I just try to avoid putting the same colors next to each other. It’s random but, at the same time, even a random drawing or painting is never really random. Because you compose the painting, you’re always trying to balance the equilibrium and the composition. You don’t necessarily make those decisions once you’ve been doing it for a long time. I could compare it to a painting of JonOne, like how does he choose his colors or where does he place them? He does it because he has always done it and he’s a great compositionist and colorist.

By making your sculptures colorful, you make your weapons appear playful like toys to draw people in, but we tell kids not to play with guns. Is your aim ultimately to send an important message about the violent world in which we live?

Exactly. What interests me is the subversion of associated symbolism or the value of symbolism. For example, a colored pencil, we can imagine a child coloring, scribbling or drawing with it, so we already have that pre-formatted concept of what the material is used for, and then juxtaposing it or confronting it with a different symbol with which we associate aggression, death or violence creates this contrast and paradox between those two pre-formatted concepts. That space in between is what interests me. The choice of the material in every series is always linked to the idea at the base that I want to try to communicate.

Using color is also a way to attract people to your artwork before conveying your message…

On the face of it, everything is playful and joyous, but then you start to question the more you think and read into what is actually trying to be created. I think the world in general is very paradoxical or life is very paradoxical in nature, so I try to make my work about the everyday in which we find ourselves, but also try to highlight those paradoxes, too. I think the commentaries are formatted or created by the people who read the artwork. I don’t think they should necessarily be imposed by the artist, but I obviously consciously or subconsciously have those thoughts and ideas in my mind as well.