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Genuine people in life can be hard to come by. People who are authentically themselves without any pretentiousness. Tommy Egan is in his studio space located inside the maze that is Assembly House. His long brown hair is flowing out from a green hand-knitted hat. He is wearing a long black trench coat, a checked scarf, a hoodie over a jumper, thick trousers and big boots – I later find out that there is no heating in Assembly House! When I approach him, he is wearing large headphones and is lost in his painting. His brush decisively adding tiny details to an enormous canvas. Looking at it, I feel myself being drawn into the shapes. It’s the kind of painting that if you make a small frame with your hands, you could have a million paintings – finding something new every time you look at it.
When Tommy notices me, a big smile forms across his cheeky face. Throwing his arms in the air he embraces me with his usual, “you alright buddy?” This warm welcome is enhanced by a mug of tea from Assembly House’s charming kitchen. From the kitchen we embark on a tour of the maze; passing by artists studios, some are hypnotised in their work, some are playing ping pong, one is running around with a bucket and mop claiming there is a spillage on ‘aisle three’. It’s an eccentric, mad world, tucked away in an old, unassuming building.
Tommy leads me out the fire escape and onto an enclosed corridor ‘garden’ overlooking the railway. Trains rolling past are our soundtrack and Tommy allows me into his mind…
Was there a specific moment or experience that made you realise you wanted to be an artist or was it a gradual thing?
It’s definitely a gradual thing!
I’ve always wanted to chuck myself into something and it used to be stuff that basically had no value like playing RuneScape [laughs]. I wanted to do something that I had respect for. I wouldn’t say it’s a vocation because that should be reserved for things that really matter like nurses, and doctors, and teachers, but I love the idea of taking on something more important than yourself. Trying to add to it and becoming more than just an appreciator. You want to be the expert in something and that’s a starting point and then the more you learn the less you know. I’ve always loved the idea of having made something and it being, I don’t want to say better than me, but that’s kind of the vibe. I want it to be better than me. The idea of producing stuff, adding to the world, other than simply existing in it. You want to interact with it in a way that’s permanent.
Looking back at your early work, what’s the biggest shift in your style or approach since then?
I used to hate abstract art as a kid. I walked around the Tate Modern a lot of the times going ‘everything here is shit, this is all rubbish’, and then I started doing it and I was like ‘this is really hard’ and there is a lot of thought that goes into these things.
Like surrealism, and realism, and absurd things are all based on things which are definitely real - which you are messing with. Whereas with the abstract - you are creating stuff which does not exist, which is kind of mad. It’s a really fun way of exploring ideas and creating images that we’ve never seen before and they can’t be, well they can be referential, but you don’t have to look at any abstract work to make abstract work - you can just go completely into your own head.
How do you think your upbringing or personal experiences have shaped the kind of art you make?
I probably can’t deny the experience of growing up in London and my favourite place to go was the National Portrait Gallery.
You look at a portrait from two thousand years ago and go ‘that guy would be such a dickhead now’ or ‘I would love to hang out with that person’. You get all these different experiences by just looking at people. It’s weird how you can feel connections with the timelessness of humanity. Art has been around since we started putting two and two together and creativity is what makes us human; the experience of it and the enjoyment of it and the creation of things. Way more people are creative than actually realise or believe in themselves that they actually are.
What’s been the hardest part for you, being a freelance artist?
If for example, something like Christmas happens, you come back and there’s nothing and you’re like ‘aw god why is it all gone’ because everyone is tired and it’s January. If you’ve got a normal job, it means you maybe just don’t go the pub as much but if its freelance nothing is being commissioned or planned at the budget is at a weird state in the year and no-one is asking for things to happen. So, there is a whole month where you have just spent all your money and nothing new is coming in.
So many times, you think you have a consistent thing coming in, then it might just stop for ages because of completely fair and reasonable reasons. It’s not that you get annoyed at people but it’s frustrating to think that it’s a lack of security. You never really make more than enough to get you through to the next month and often you’ll get paid at times that you weren’t expecting. It takes a lot of learning and self-knowledge about how you are with money.
Do you ever feel pressure to post constantly on social media? How do you manage it without draining creativity?
I use the meta business way to post on Instagram. If I get a nice set of photos on my camera, I’ll get twenty or thirty posts lined up to go out every few days over the course of a month and I’ll spend one long day rather than a bit of every day getting ready for Instagram. I don’t mind something being a chore for a day because you get that feeling of like ‘I’m in a lawyer film and they got all the papers out on the table and it’s a late night and I got some noodles and I’m smashing through it!’
What is your best strategy for getting work (is it networking, social media or word of mouth?)
100% networking! Meeting people is really important and it’s essentially the bread and butter of freelance life. That has a certain social requirement to it. You have to go to things you might not necessarily feel really down for going to. If you see it as a blessing that you get to meet people whilst you’re working, then it becomes a lot easier to deal with. So many things happen by chance by just being somewhere. I just try to be in as many places as I can all the time. Being out there, talking to people and seeing not just what they can do for you but offering your help to them if you can. Recognise that you are part of a community and not just a solo thing, because you’re not. The whole world that I exist in is one that is going to be there whether I’m there or not, but I want to be a positive part of it if possible.
How does being based in Armley influence your work?
I think that the studio we’re in is really good in terms of how many people there are or how down to do things together people are. You spend so much of making things by yourself, and I really value that time because I love to be by myself making stuff but at the same time it is quite good to be able to pop round the corner and someone’s stressing about their work and you can calm them down or you have the same experience as well.
Having a fresh pair of eyes on something is never a bad thing. If they say something they don’t like about it that’s actually so beneficial because you can either disagree with them and be like ‘actually no that’s why I’m doing it’ and the fact that they’ve not seen that means that maybe I need to make that more clear or if you do agree with them it’s like ‘thank you for pointing that out’ because even if that the time you are like ‘nah nah this is good’ if later on you are thinking ‘I should change that that’s actually right’, they are dead on there. A lot of the credit of how things change is down to outside influence in a passive way.
If you could change one thing about the Leeds creative scene, what would it be?
I think it would be better if there was a way for people to sell their work in Leeds. It’s a great place to make things but it’s really hard to actually get it into people's hands. It’s not an affluent place for the most part. It’s got a bit of an upsurge going on but that’s mostly in the finance and stuff, I don’t know, I don’t know what those guys do [laughs]. I just see these new buildings going up and I’m like ‘who are you, who are you people?’
I’m optimistic about it, but I do think it’s hard to get your stuff onto people’s walls. Trying to ger properly paid for your time doing it is out of people’s pay range, and that is completely fair enough because it is expensive. If you spend three weeks on something, then sell it for £50 you’re getting paid such a small amount that it’s actually going to bum you out.
Yeah, you’re not even near reaching minimum wage then!
Exactly! It’s really hard. I know what it’s like for artists there (London) having grown up there.
What makes you want to stay in the Leeds scene, rather than somewhere like London?
Once you start getting your roots somewhere it’s hard to pop them somewhere else. I really care about this place [gestures to Assembly house] I love it here. Just sort of as a beating heart of all the people who add to it and get stuff from it. I’ve just come back from Berlin, and I came through Manchester, and when I got to Leeds, the people in Leeds are the friendliest ones. Without a doubt. As soon as I got back there was just this warmth from people talking to each other and the way they were sharing stuff with each other. There’s a few dodgy characters about [laughs]. Anyway, I had five nice encounters on the way home. I just really like being here and the attitude people have. There’s so many people who are just super sound all the time. Who are just interested in who you are and what you are doing. It’s very mutual.
What’s on the horizon for you? You’ve just done your big exhibition at The Bowery, what’s next?
I’ve got an affordable art fair in Battersea in March. It’s a moving art gallery that goes to all the affordable art fairs around THE WORLD which is cool! I’m working on some big stuff to go down to that – get some big stuff on people’s walls.
What’s a dream project you would love to work on, no matter how ambitious it is?
Having a huge studio where I could do loads of massive work all the time. It would be cool to start an art school. That would be wicked! Where you are painting with people and both learning from each other. I’d love to have a huge, massive warehouse where the size of your canvas is only limited only by your ambition.
That’s the dream vibe I got from abstract work and the figurative stuff I’d love to be able to spend like thirty hours of the model rather than twenty minutes as a sort of maximum and see what comes of that. Which would be different to working on these shorter time frames that life make us follow – for obvious reasons and practical reasons.
But being impractical is one of the wonderful things about being an artist. I’ve carried extremely large wooden canvases through town for like so long. Because they can’t get on the bus and I haven’t got a car and they wouldn’t even fit in a van and you are just carrying them forever. Thinking ‘this better go really well’ but how annoying it is to be an artist pushes you forwards. I’m not stopping now I’ve got all this stuff. You accumulate so much stuff. Anything you can’t give away or sell you still got to have. You can’t destroy it you spent so much time on it. I was going through a really hard time a few years ago and I spent so much time every morning till night that I wasn’t at work; before and after doing that. It got to the point where I would say goodnight to them all when I left the building. When I turned off the lights I was like ‘goodnight, guys, bye’. I made some of favourite things at that time so there’s that sort of madness with it that is what inspires me. I’m always inspired by completely mental people that do mental things with their lives. I think I’ve got quite a tame version of that going on, but I like that it’s weird and strange. At the same time it’s weird to talk about at parties because people ask what you do and I go mental for about four hours a day. Occasionally I like something, more often I hate it.
If someone reading this wanted to support local artists in a meaningful way what’s the best thing they could do?
Probably just buy their work would be good. If you like something and you connect with and you want to support local artists, go to their show, I don’t want to tell anyone to buy something because I don’t really like selling, which isn’t helpful for me. But it is does really help you as an artist to have people recognise things and support you financially with it because it can be really depressing when there is a long period of time where you are getting nothing back from it in, unfortunately, the materialistic ways we have to live, we live in the material world, like Madonna.
She made it sound so much more fun.
She did, she really did. But it can really help you keep going. So if you want to see more from someone then buy something off them. It could help them not stop. Stopping is the biggest fear of any artist. If you can do that you can help the conquer their fears and it does really help.
If you could sum up your approach to art and life in one sentence, what would it be?
Just keep going.
