Catch Up: Illustrator Suzi Kemp
We caught up with illustrator, Suzi Kemp for issue two of Coven Magazine and found out more about her love of punk, hardcore and Raymond Pettibon.
Our interview began with me teasing a few hesitant answers from Miss Kemp as I perched on the bed in her flat behind Kingsland Road. The shy and unassuming Suzi squirmed in her chair as our photographer circled her and seemed bashful when we turned the conversation onto her. I admired the eclectic collage she’d assembled behind the desk in her bedroom and questioned her about her influences, noticing flyers and doodles lovingly scissored and positioned on the wall. Things were getting off to a slow start but eventually the gentle natured Suzi talked us through her illustrative process and the path she took from her initial doodlings to working with the likes of Vans.
Coming to London by way of Brighton where she studied illustration, Suzi always drew at school but was unaware that her hobby could ever constitute a career, not even knowing such a course existed until two years before commencing. It was during her time at Brighton that Suzie met Mark ‘Fos’ Foster, director of Heroin Skateboards and it was Fos who was to give Suzi her first commercial job. I caught up with Fos to find out why he picked this unknown college girl to design a deck for Heroin and he told me why the young ingenue stuck out:
“I hate illustrators. I can say this because I suppose that I am one myself, but I hate all the twee 70′s Marcus Oakley rip off stuff that they send me all the time for consideration for Heroin, or the fake Japanese style Manga stuff. Ninety nine percent of the stuff I get sent is a direct rip off of someone else. There’s so much garbage out there. So I must have been out of my mind when I went to an illustration degree show a few years ago. A hot girl invited me, what can I say? Anyway, amongst all the trash there was a bright pungent shining light, black metal images, zombies covered in tattoos, darkness, madness, beauty. This was Suzi Kemp’s work. So I get talking to this girl in a Descendents tee shirt and it ends up being her work, she’s really cool too, it seemed only natural and somehow organic that I ask her to do some Heroin graphics and then later some Altamont ones. So yeah, amid a sea of banal, boring illustrations there are people out there making beautifully disgusting work still, and Suzie is one of those.”
Since working with Fos, twenty four year old Suzi has gone on to further develop her commercial portfolio and is finally beginning to clamber her way out of student debt.
“ I always drew as a kid, I just didn’t realise it was a job that you could get paid for. And it’s hard at the start, it’s been a bit hand to mouth for about the last two years. I always feel like it’s a struggle but it’s not a job you should get into if you want to make money straight away. You feel like you’re getting somewhere but then you can just get nothing for another month. I do odd jobs, you cant really give up, you just have to keep going and have a plan. As time goes on, you develop and work on more projects but it takes quite a lot of time for them to come into production. It’s often just a matter of being patient.”
It’s a slow process; it’s tough for everyone these days, even when you’re young and gifted but hidden beneath Suzi’s shy exterior lies a tenacity which paired with her talent, should see her go a long way. With her game plan drawn up, Suzi is working through the list of people and companies she’d like to target for work and having a remarkable degree of success. Recently Suzi worked with Vans on their women’s look book.
“Working with Vans was genuinely a dream! I just thought, ‘well why not email someone, something might come from it!’ I only get in touch with people who I think it would really work with and getting the go ahead from Vans was amazing. I emailed the art director and she was so nice and I ended up doing some illustrations and type for them.”
Noting Suzie’s Black Flag sweatshirt, whilst the photographer hovers and repositions Suzi in the light from her window I ask her about her influences, guessing music would figure in there somewhere. We giggle about Dalston’s ‘thrash uniform’ and the lack of these faux metallers at any of the gigs; a recent SSS show at the Shacklewell Arms was pretty much empty despite all the posturing thrashers littering the streets of East London. Suzi wears her influences on her sleeve these days but that wasn’t always the case:
“I’m into punk bands and going to hardcore shows. When I went to art college I felt like I couldn’t really show those influences, and that everything had to look a certain way and be a certain way. I finally realised when I left that not everyone likes the kind of stuff you like and that’s what makes you and your work different, so why not put those things in? At college I think you worry that you have to go through some kind of a process but I actually think that sometimes it’s best to just go with what you initially think and work on instinct.
Other than my musical influences, I’ve always like naive artists, like ‘outside art’. I like graphic stuff, I love Raymond Pettibon, but he didn’t actually influence me, he just kinda made everything make sense. I thought, actually, yeah, I could do this! I also like tattoo art but then I guess that doesn’t really influence my work either, I just really like it and respect it a lot.”
I can see Suzi’s influences in her work but notice that unlike some of her contemporaries, she likes to take a slightly different approach, adding a digital element to the hand drawn lines she begins with.
“I always start with black ink but then I take it onto the computer to add colour. I love colour, it’s the best. I used to do painting and I do love painting but when I paint it takes ages and it just kinda sucks the life from me. I like doing stuff by hand but I just really love block colour so I love to start manually and then just add blocks of colour on the computer. I like to put the two together, I think it works really well and it’s become my kind of style. I do a lot of stuff for web which I love as you don’t have to convert to CMYK, it can just be proper bright. I’d like to get back into screen printing too but at the moment I often just do a digital print if I want to exhibit something. I’ve been doing a lot of fabric design as well; I’ve been doing some t shirts which obviously is pretty straight forward but I’ve also been working on some fabric patterns for a client.
To wrap things up, I ask Suzi if she could do artwork for one band, who it would be and she struggles for an answering before declaring, “probably a bunch of cheesy hellcat bands or Epitaph bands, all the Hellcat artwork really influenced me every though its really cheesy!” And as Suzi’s eyes finally connect with the camera lens we know we’ve got our shot.
By Juliet Elliott / Photography by Dave Noakes
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