Who is Steven Harrington?

Los Angeles-based artist Steven Harrington puts a Californian spin on Mickey Mouse and other classic Disney characters in these cheerful, psychedelic designs.
Filled with iconic characters and sunny colors, Steven Harrington’s work speaks in symbols and emotions depicted with definitive lines and pastel palettes. What is the Los Angeles based artist inspired by? For the occasion of his collection with Disney, we visited him at his studio near downtown LA.

His color palettes are inspired by the sun faded colors seen around the city of Los Angeles.

IN BETWEEN MOMENTS OF COLOR

--As a city that you live and work in, how does Los Angeles inform you?

SH: I think the major inspiration is the weather. Most days in Los Angeles you walk out and it’s sunny. Growing up here, I have this relationship with the color of this city evolving over time. There are a lot of sun-bleached colors where they are in between. Murals, buildings and cars start out with bright hues, but as the years pass on and they start to mute, become faded and take on new characteristics. I love those in between moments of color, where you have not quite a red but not quite an orange, it’s somewhere in between. It’s pastel or the faded version of the original color. Celebrating the color, the optimism of Los Angeles and my surroundings, is definitely a big part of my work.

All of the colors are pre custom mixed, and with time more colors are added to the library.

-- Your lines and characters, the whimsical nature of what you create. How did that style develop?

SH: I was first working as a graphic designer. I found that through exploring the world and language of cartoons, there exists this very approachable set of iconographies that you can use to bring viewers in, to talk about all sorts of different types of subject matter. Over time, I’ve really gravitated towards that power of iconography to talk about both whimsical and loose topics to more serious matters. For example, there is this flame that I draw, which is actually about the wildfires we experience with more intensity in the west. Such poetic application of ideas and events sometimes make it into my work.

“I’ve always loved the silk screen printed graphics.“ Steven’s lines are definite and sure.

I STOPPED SEEING PALMTREES

--One of your iconic motif is palm tree.

SH: Yes! The palm tree has become an icon that I gravitated to throughout the years. I feel that it’s unique to Los Angeles, and ever present in the landscape. I had a friend travel to LA years ago, and right when he got off the plane, he pointed them out. It was really funny because I realized that by growing up in LA, I stopped seeing them in a way. That was the moment where I realized not only how unique they are to the surrounding environment, but also it became this note to myself, to experience the things around me, and to keep my eyes open.

“Everything I am experiencing around me I am figuring out how to place that into an image.”

DISNEY, AS PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY

-- Do you remember your first encounter with Disney?

SH: I could probably speak for a lot of people especially growing up here in Southern California. I think my very first Disney experience was ‘looking at memories,’ through family photographs from visiting Disneyland. It’s one of those things that is in my Southern California psyche. I feel like I traveled to Disneyland before I was even able to understand where we were going. As years went on and looking back at photos you start to realize that oh, we WERE in Disneyland! My actual encounter to Disney animation was through the early weekday morning television, “Merrie Melodies.” It was a series of cartoons that now looking back, it almost feels like mythical moving pieces of art.

In Steven’s design, Disney characters interact with paint brush and palette, to celebrate the process of making art.

SH: For incorporating and having the ability to draw the Disney characters and blend them into my world at first it felt extremely surreal. At the same time, having permission to pull and experiment and extract elements from this really rich world of art for me felt really exciting.

--What are your most important work tools?

SH: My most important work tools are ultimately just the pen and pencil. I am one of those people that was handed a pencil or crayon at a really young age, and I just kind of kept it around. I drew through early school then into middle school, high school, then into college and here I am still drawing.

Through this project with Uniqlo, I really wanted to explore and celebrate creativity and expression through the work itself. That’s why throughout the collection, you see a lot of the characters interacting with canvases or with paint brushes or paint. I liked the idea of celebrating the process of making art and creativity. I feel like Uniqlo has such a wide audience that’s all about celebrating and exploring the arts. I thought, why not just play with that through the imagery itself?

SHARING IMAGE WITHOUT CONVERSATION

--What is the appeal of working with a wearable medium, such as a T-shirt?

SH: T-shirts are easily accessible, and they are a cool format to work in, when it comes to making the image itself. They are big and wide, and you have a lot of options to explore visually, and to create composition. From there, once the piece is made, it goes on to have its own life. It makes its way out into the world and ends up on somebody that’s walking around the city, traveling throughout the world. Other people can see that work, and that graphic can take on a whole new life and relationship. I really enjoy that type of sharing that happens with apparel. It’s this kind of sharing of an image without even having a conversation with the person. I think that can be really powerful for how simple the medium itself is. It takes on a whole unique culture to itself. Hey, here’s this artist that I enjoy, or here’s this general tone that I kind of enjoy, that can tend to speak to someone else and that can spark a dialog or conversation.

--What is your typical day like?

SH: I definitely have to wake up and do a little bit of exercise like jogging or biking to get my body and brain moving. I love getting out of the house in the morning and I try to find those moments where you could just let your mind wander. And from there I head to my studio and first take care of the communication stuff out of the way. So I’m setting myself up to get the real work done, which is drawing and painting. That’s when I let the time kind of wander, to get into the so called ‘zone.’ In the studio with either a canvas or piece of paper, I love the experience of just getting lost in the art.

“My most important work tools are ultimately just the pen and pencil.”

--What is the most important thing when you are making art?

SH: The most important thing when making art is the beginning. It’s about setting myself in front of a white piece of paper and a pencil, and just letting my brain dump onto the page, before getting into the actual composition itself, no matter how good they look, or what they are. I try to involve myself within that part of the process as long as I can.

--What kind of challenges would you like to pursue from here on out?

SH: I’ve been interested in sculpture and taking my work in to a physical dimensional world. I love the idea of taking the pieces off the canvas and sculpting them and being able to walk around them at all sorts of different scales. I’d love to push more of that within my own personal work.

Studio view. Some small 3D characters came to life from canvas through various projects.

©Disney