Featured Artist Laurent Newman

Award-winning digital artist Laurent Newman creates graphic images with impact and consumer appeal. View his website to see his complete portfolio.

 

 

My story starts in Paris in the sixties when my father, a movie producer from Casablanca, Morocco, met my mother. She was an up-and-coming French actress from a rather bourgeois background hoping to make it in the French movie scene. They fell in love, married, and had five children. I was the fourth one.

 

 

My mother is a very elegant French woman who wore “couture” clothing. Being artistically inclined myself and growing up in the center of Paris, I was able to study haute couture after graduating from high school. I had the amazing privilege to be selected for internships at Chanel and Christian Dior. Working for such iconic houses, witnessing the techniques and learning the craft was an experience I will always cherish.

 

 

Little did I know then that I would make a career in the United States as a graphic designer and an art director for consumer goods. I eventually became a professional independent artist.

 

 

In my early twenties, soon after I moved to Los Angeles from Paris, I worked for a few months at Mattel in the Barbie preliminary design group. That was my last job as a fashion designer. I really wanted to learn graphics on computers. It may sound weird to some, after having worked for Chanel, Dior and Barbie. I can see that now, but back then computers were the future, and graphic design would give me the opportunity to keep expressing my artistic self while making a living at it.

 

 

Soon after Mattel, I was given the opportunity by a large apparel company to work for them as a graphic designer. They were aware that I would be learning on the job. Very quickly, I was designing textile prints and patterns, then graphics for t-shirts, labels, embroideries and packaging—all digitally—on the computer.

 

 

Over the years I expanded my reach and designed or art directed imagery for other types of consumer products like sporting goods, toys, electronics, home décor and health and beauty goods. Again, all digitally created. That path led me to work for the largest manufacturer and distributor of wall décor in North America as a full-time artist and an art director. I finally found my calling. During my tenure there, I won seven American Graphic Design Awards for my artwork, awarded by GDUSA.

 

 

Today, I am an independent artist working from my own studio to create imagery for the gift industry, home décor, paper goods and other decorative products.

 

 

My style is eclectic, the result of an odd combination coming from my upbringing in Paris (at school, “museum day” meant that you went to The Louvre or Versailles), mixed with heavy influences of American pop culture, and living in places with their own unique identity and style, like Hawaii, Chicago, New York or even Burke, Virginia.

 

 

I enjoy creating images for others, images that will resonate with them on a personal level. I listen to my client’s expectations and I let my mind go from there.

 

 

Voluntarily or not, I bring my own style and emotions in each image, even as I focus on my customer’s request, however specific it can be. It’s like an exercise each time, but that’s what drives me. I enjoy creating images that we can all connect with and am always available for projects, commissions and licensing opportunities.

 

Artist Laurent Newman invites you to follow him on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Society6.

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