In my 10th interview in this series I interview my studio-buddy, the artist Lauren Smith. Lauren is a papermaker, printmaker and illustrator whose creative practice is rooted in her relationship with the natural world. Working with botanical dyes, handmade paper, and slow, seasonally-led processes, her work celebrates the small, often-overlooked details of our living environment. In this conversation, we talk about inspiration, crafting with nature, creative confidence, and the launch of her new Patreon – a space for shared learning, making, and connection.

Shelley Skail: Hey studio-buddy! Thanks for agreeing to let me interview you. I’d like to start by asking, where do you draw your inspiration from?

Lauren Smith: Everything I create, whether it’s illustration or whether I’ve got a craftsperson’s hat on and I’m making paper or printing, it usually starts outside in as natural a space as I can find. 

Which, you know, sometimes that’s really easy – I live by the beach so that really helps in that sense.But, the city also has so many great green spaces! And there’s so much going on when you actually stop and look and listen. Generally ,my eyes are looking on ground level at all the small little things that are going on in the grassy verges and the sides of paths and things like that. 

I’ve noticed that as well, since I’ve been doing this little project where I’ve been drawing flowers every month that I’m actually seeing what flowers there are every month. It’s November and there’s still marigolds! 

Yeah, it’s wild! And it’s so easy to miss it when you’re walking along and you’re trying to get somewhere.

I moved here a year ago from quite a rural place and I was genuinely worried that I would feel really disconnected from the living world. I was so pleasantly surprised when I got here at how many wildflowers there are in the city, even in really built-up areas.

I was really pleased to discover that, because it was like oh there you are, there’s my old friends, you’re here too. 

It’s one of the really nice things about Edinburgh, all the greenness of it. 

I wonder if there’s a policy of not spraying.

They have deliberately introduced wildflowers over the last, I don’t know, five years, so maybe. 

You can tell they’ve done well. I was delighted to discover that because it’s how I feel grounded. It’s how I know where I belong in the world in relation to all these other more-than-human things. 

So that’s always where it starts. 

And sometimes I’ve got my craftsperson’s hat on and I’m thinking about dye plants and what kind of plants could produce dye or whether there are plants with fibres that would make good inclusions of paper blends and that kind of thing. And then other times, I’m just like, I want to capture that silhouette or I want to capture that colour. 

Because if I remember rightly, when you colour your paper, it’s usually with dyes you’ve made yourself?

“Usually” would be generous. [laughing]

[laughing]

I’d love for that to be the case every time. I use a lot of dye extract, and there’s a lot of very traditional plant dyes that perform really well and have really stood the test of time, but that are not grown in the UK, or don’t grow here in the wild, and I would say the bulk of my paper is dyed with extract that someone else has processed.

But I love it when I get the time and when the season’s right to forage for my own dyes. 

And the UK does have some really great traditional dye plants that have been used for centuries here. Like weld – that makes a really vibrant, sometimes, almost fluorescent, yellow. It’s a wildflower that grows in the UK and they’ve been using that for centuries to dye fabric. And then there’s other stuff that’s not necessarily traditionally used or perhaps it was, but maybe less frequently, like nettles which make a really lovely kind of pale greeny shade. And the shade differs depending on what time of year you harvest the leaves and that kind of thing. 

That’s really cool! I didn’t know that. Thinking about other kinds of inspiration, do you have a favourite artist or two?

So there’s a printmaker in Australia. She’s called Dalee Ella. She hand-carves lino prints and she does sometimes make her own paper as well. We’ve collaborated a little bit before: I’ve made some paper for her, and we did a bit of a trade, which was nice. And so I now have a lovely Dalee Ella print called “Self-care is Community Care” 

It’s a gorgeous illustration of a human face and hands and lots of wildflowers surrounded by lots of insects and it’s the idea of community being not just your human community, but beyond that. Your flowers and creatures, and connecting with that and caring for that being part of your healing and self-care – it just really resonated with me. 

And Loré Pemberton. I think she might be based in Canada. She does really beautiful illustrations, the kind that make me feel I’m a child looking at my favourite storybook. Her illustrations are always women in their gardens, or women on walks or interacting with the natural world around them. It’s so nostalgic and very aspirational for me in terms of, I look at her illustrations and I think I want to live in that illustration.

And so I have one of hers on my wall as well. 

What’s your favourite piece of art that you’ve made?

Gosh, that’s hard to do because I would say some of my first creations, some of the earlier works when I got my printing press and I first started making paper and discovering the magic of plant dying. Some of those represent (for me) a part of my life that was very exciting. And a part when I felt what I wanted in life was possible; that I could have a creative life, and I could make art. 

But they’re not my best work. 

I suppose there’s a distinction there, between your best work and your favourite work. 

Yeah, definitely! 

And then you go through a creative process and journey and your work changes and develops through the years.

If I look at my earlier work. I can see there are some styles there that I’ve moved past, and I’m done with, I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite work, but I do have an emotional connection to those pieces that I think will always be there. 

But lately, I decided to try something very different, and I created an illustration to have Riso printed and I’ve never done anything Riso. It was my first time using Procreate – I’m usually very analogue and I usually have my hand in everything I do – so it was a bit of an unusual move for me, but I just felt like doing something different. And I created an illustration about dirt and soil ecology. I just wanted to create something for me that’s really, probably, not got much commercial potential, but communicates something I was feeling really excited about and learning about. 

I’d say that most recently, that’s my favourite. It’s not a usual part of my creative practice, but it represented me playing with something completely without the mindset of does this make sense in terms of the rest of my art? or does this have any commercial value or whatever? It was just like I just want to make a poster that celebrates all of the life that happens under our feet in the soil.

So yeah, I guess that maybe is my favourite at the moment, but it will change I’m sure. 

For me it’s always pretty much the last finished piece I did. 

Yeah! And that’s great, isn’t it? Because I feel like there was a time when I was on a creative pathway where I hated everything I made. I’m so glad I’m through that phase. So I just consider it such a privilege that I can make something with my own hands and love it. And whether anyone else loves it or not, it’s kind of irrelevant. 

There was a time when the self-doubt was so real and you just go through such emotional turmoil in the creative process of being like I hate, I hate it. It’s not what I imagined. It’s not what I wanted it to be. And I’m glad to say that that just doesn’t happen anymore. And even when there’s a hint of it now I know that nothing’s wasted and it will be repurposed and regurgitated to something else creative or it’s part of a process of development, or a lesson. 

And usually, if you put it away for a couple of weeks, your emotional reaction to it is not as strong.

That’s so so true! 

And actually, I have found that if you hold whatever you’ve created – your picture, or your painting – in the mirror, and look at it in the mirror, you see it new. And suddenly you’re like, oh I actually do like this. When you’ve been staring at it for so long or trying to perfect something, you’re just very stuck in the details. Sometimes you gotta step back somehow, and I found holding it in a mirror and just looking at the mirror image of it, somehow jolts you out of that critical mindset. Sometimes. 

That’s fascinating. I guess it creates emotional distance… 

Speaking of creating things, do you have a something you’re working on just now that you’re quite excited about?

At the moment, all my energy is going into setting up a Patreon account which I’m really excited about. My hopes for it is that it will allow some deeper, more authentic connection, with people. But there’s also a very real need for some financial stability, but alongside some freedom to grow creatively and I’m really feeling very hopeful and excited that my Patreon account will allow that, but that it will be a two-way exchange: that I will be able to grow and develop my project practise and hopefully alongside that I’ll be able to inspire my subscribers to get excited about being creative and being in nature and creating in collaboration with nature. 

I think you’ve mentioned to me that your Patreon’s not just one thing, right? It’s not just a paper subscription or an illustration subscription, that’s it’s more rounded?

Yeah. I don’t want to be constrained too much by one thing because there’s so many branches to my creative practice and I’m also aware that there’s so much more possibility as well. So I want there to be printmaking in there, and I wanted to be botanical dyeing in there, and I want there to be paper-making in there.

But I feel like I don’t want to limit myself to those things. They’re my passions right now, and that’s what I love. But ultimately, I love to create, and I love to make art, and I love to engage with my environment. So promising tangible, hold-in-your hand, nature-led artworks or art supplies feels to me, like a good promise that I can, with excitement, stick to. 

That ‘with excitement’ is quite key. 

Yeah, it’s really key because if I said this is a print subscription, then that means I’m committing to making a print every month, which, you know wouldn’t be so bad; I love printmaking. But then I’m not necessarily allowing time for some pigment-making that I’m really excited to do, and I’m really excited to, for example, send people some homemade paints and handmade paper in the post and let them be creative with those materials and let them get excited about making something as well. 

And I feel like I’m sort of many people in one sense. I’m on one hand, an artist and on one hand, a craftsperson – if you really want to separate the two – I kind of think they’re the same most of the time – and on the other hand, I love dying my own fabrics and making quilts. And I love painting. And so I want to honour all of those aspects of myself through this. And I just want to share some of that creative magic and inspire other people through my journey.

I love that. And you said it’s taking up all of your time at the moment. Speaking of time, can you tell me about a typical day in your life? What does that look like? 

Well, it’s actually hard to do a typical day because most of my processes span days or weeks.

Usually the first half of my week is paper making. And that’s just because of practical reasons: that’s when my studio is quieter and it’s less open to the public so the noisier, messier part of my practise happens at the beginning of the week. But then there’s dyeing time when the fibres are dying overnight, sometimes it’s just overnight and sometimes I leave it for a couple of days to really get a good saturated colour. And there’s also drying time once the sheets have been formed, and that happens over a few days.

So it’s really hard to say what a typical day looks like but there’s definitely patterns. 

Are you a late riser or an early riser? 

I’m a very late riser. I do not do early mornings well, at all. It was one of the things I gave myself, when I left employment and went self-employed, I was like, you are gonna wake up whenever you want to.

So I get up late. I try to get up at nine, but it doesn’t always happen. I’m usually awake before then, but I’m sitting in bed and I’m drinking coffee and I’m maybe reading a little bit. That, I think, is actually really important for inspiration and just resting. And I know that that is such a luxury; I’m very aware of what a luxury that is. And because I’m aware of it, I’m gonna embrace it while I can. 

Then when I head into the studio, I try, if I’ve given myself enough time to walk the long route on the beach.  For so many reasons that’s a good thing to do. 

Quite often, I will miss the bus that I intended to get because I’ve been distracted by something on the beach, or I’m just sat looking out at the horizon. Yeah, but it’s fine. There’s always another bus, right? And you know what? I haven’t got an employer that’s going to lay into me for being late. So that’s great. 

Are you pretty good as an employer on timekeeping? 

[Laughs] Do you know what? I’m very relaxed about timekeeping. 

[Laughs] You know, that’s a great trait in an employer. 

I think so. I remember the days when I used to sit there and get the telling off because I was late. 

I’m actually not so bad at turning up when I say I’m gonna do that, I’m pretty good at timekeeping when I say I’m going to be somewhere. But I had a job once and I was carpooling into work every day, so I had not much control over when my carpool would show up and, you know, there was just a lot of factors outside of my control.

So I’d sometimes show up maybe 5 or 10 minutes late and I had to sign in. And because I’m really, ridiculously, honest about everything I would say when I’m five minutes late. I didn’t have to! And my boss came to me once and said, “I’ve been adding up all of the fives and the 10 minutes and I’d like you to stay a couple of hours this month extra at the end of the day.”

And I was so annoyed because I was also staying a lot later at work because my bus home didn’t coincide very well with when I finished work. So I would just stick around and finish my my jobs but I wasn’t really saying that I was doing that either!

So this whole thing about like, just trusting that I was gonna, you know, get a job done, it was just not there. And so now I just really love that my time is my own. It makes me very happy.

And, I think that being kind to yourself about those things, if you can, is really useful and important. I sometimes just stop myself and go, you know what? It’s not that important. If you don’t finish everything you wanted to do today, you’ve got tomorrow, and it’s just paper and it’s just prints.

I think a lot of artists that I’ve talked to, myself included, have an ongoing battle with perfectionism, and that’s the bit in your head, I think, that makes it hard to be okay with that stuff. 

Yeah. And little bit of like, culturally instilled ideas of productivity that make you feel like if you’re not always operating on the edge of burnout or not rushing from one thing to another constantly then you’re somehow not doing something right. 

And it’s really hard to deconstruct that I think, even when you don’t have to adhere to that, it has taken me a while to get to this mindset of being very laid back about timekeeping and productivity in a day, and changing my perspective on what productivity looks like in a creative life.

It’s still very hard to not be stuck on the idea that you’ve got to produce something; you’ve got to constantly be producing something. And you forget that you’ve actually gotta also feed that creativity and that sometimes means stepping away from production.

And people are jealous, right? Because not everyone is able to give time to those things and so, you feel a bit guilty, and people can sometimes make comments that make you think, oh, maybe I should be working myself harder or maybe I should be trying to produce more but you just gotta dance to your own beat, I guess. 

So you dance into the studio, you do whatever studio work you’re doing that day and then are your evenings spent doing more artwork?

No. I try to really give myself firm boundaries in terms of when I’m doing art or creating for work, and when I’m doing art and creating for just me.

I guess I do get home and I do more artwork, because I might get home and I might do some quilting. But I’m quilting just for me or I’m quilting for loved ones. 

You’re doing a hobby? 

I’m doing hobbies. Yeah and I do try to separate hobbies from my creative practice.

I don’t think you have to do that. I think it can all flow into one, but for me, I like to have things that are just for me alone and I guess some of my hobbies are one of those things.  

I’d like to share that with people because I think it’s important to show that you can have other interests outside of your main passion; the thing that you’ve chosen to dedicate most of your time to. And I think those interests can feed into that thing. I wouldn’t say that’s part of my work day.  It’s hard using words like ‘work day’ because the boundaries are a bit less rigid than a typical nine-to-five kind of work day. 

Thanks for that. Can you finish this sentence: If you really knew me, you’d know that… 

Well, since being a teenager I have had a ‘zombie apocalypse response and survival plan’ that changes with each time I move house and generally involves how to gather friends and family, find resources like food, medicine and weapons and create a fortified commune.

Haha, that’s amazing. I also have one of those plans!

Ha ha! We can have allied apocalypse communities!

Yes! Love this. Okay, so my last question is, do you have a joke for me? 

I have one joke, though it’s visual comedy. It might not not translate well to the written word. But when I say it, I imagine fish [laughs]. Because some fish have such a severe over-bites and underbites.

Okay, are you ready? 

I’m ready. 

[Sticks lower jaw forward creating an underbite and mumbles] “Does your mouth fill up when it rains?”

[Tucks lower jaw far back creating an overbite] “No…”.

[Both laughing]

—

You can see more of Lauren’s work on Instagram.

She has a delightful new Patreon, and her website is also well worth a visit.

—

If you enjoyed this interview with Lauren Smith, you might enjoy my other artist interviews.