The PureHoney featured artist of the month, Lewis Rossignol, lives in a small city in his longtime home state of Maine. But unlike, say, that extremely famous local who writes horror novels set in fictional Maine towns, Rossignol doesn’t view his surroundings as key. “Honestly I don’t think Maine has influenced my style very much,” Rossignol says in an email interview, “because everybody is so connected online I feel like most of my influences come from pop culture and things outside of my immediate bubble.”
It was online, for example, that hip-hop star Tyler the Creator found Rossignol and, with some persistent DMing over months (“insane … bro I really like ur stuff … lmfao i want to commission art but I guess you don’t take hints haha … ”), recruited him, as Rossignol explained in a TikTok reel. The result was the jarring, splatter-faced, portrait-of-the-artist cover image for Tyler’s Grammy-winning 2019 album, Igor.
Despite the instant clout gained from pairing up with one of hip-hop’s most celebrated performers, Rossignol hasn’t fled Maine for an art capital. People come to him on TikTok or Instagram, where hundreds of thousands of people follow his offbeat posts, how-to reels, and images rendered in a sometimes polarizing childlike scrawl. As one Instagrammer wrote, in a comment Rossignol highlighted for a reel, “How are his drawings absolutely horrible but awesome at the same time?I?!?”
“It’s a balancing act,” Rossignol replied. Gen Xers will particularly enjoy his pop culture references, with standard bearers like The Big Lebowski, David Lynch, and Sesame Street all recently memorialized by his squiggly touch on Instagram. While he does have an impressive client list ranging from HBO to fellow Mainer Drew Taggart from The Chainsmokers, Rossignol emphasizes that his almost daily Instagram artwork is uncommissioned and for the enjoyment of his followers,
Once you know something else about Rossignol, that he has the motor disorder Tourette Syndrome, his output and his technique make a kind of sense. Rossignol says that drawing calms his symptoms, and you can almost see the therapeutic element in his work. By building up successive levels of jagged colored pencil markings, Rossignol is able to call decipherable figures out of the pigmented chaos.
“I wouldn’t say I embraced it,” he says of having Tourette’s. “I just didn’t let it slow me down. And creating art does seem to help my tics for periods, which is relieving.”
Asked about exhibitions, Rossignol says there aren’t any in the offing. “I’m asked a lot to exhibit my work but I generally turn it down because I don’t love going to openings and feeling exposed and judged,” he says. “For me It’s easier to sell art online, and let internet trolls judge my work all they want.”
Rossignol was born in New Hampshire and got a degree in illustration from Maine College of Art & Design in Portland. Describing how he approaches portraiture, he says, “I generally draw their face first and then fit other complimentary details around them with what room is left over, so often times that space dictates what I can add. Sometimes the added details don’t even necessarily go with the person, I just added something that I thought was visually appealing.”
Music is an inspiration for him as well as a source of subject matter and soundtracking for his social media clips. His rejoinder to one online detractor was a reel of him drawing Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson to the strains of “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” a traditional folk song recorded by Cash.
“I really like Stephen Wilson Jr.’s new album Søn of Dad,” Rossignol says. “I also have been listening to Myles Bullen, Mos Def, and Will Varley a lot. My musical taste is all over the place, from George Jones to the New York Dolls.” He continues to do music commissions, noting, “I have some experimental rap albums that I’ve done the cover work for that will be released soon.”
If there’s a philosophy behind the work, it’s a straightforward one. “I just love creating and don’t take anything I do too seriously,” Rossignol says. “I try to bring an upbeat and humorous vibe to my art.”
lewisrossignolart.com AND @lewisrossignol on Instagram and TikTok ~ Kelli Bodle
