Hugo Lau of Hong Kong's MiLK Magazine Interviews Lee Harvey Roswell

LHR: I like time travel in general, whether that be the 60's or the stone age. I think the 60's were a very stoned age anyway, but that's beside the point. I tend to set my dials for the 1920s mostly, not because they were the good ol' days, but because despite all the bad that era had to offer, people found optimism and a will to fight the odds. That, and it was an all-out heyday for comedy with Chaplin, Keaton, Harry Langdon and so many more in the full bloom of their careers.

I'm also a big fan of Uncle Ray. I don't know how much his work weighs into my own, but I love him all the same.

And yes, suits are what I feel best in, and if you add stripes I'm
twice as cozy.

MiLK: Do you have religion?

LHR: Buckets full! Makes great fertilizer.

MiLK: Do you put on clown make up when painting? is the moustache real?

LHR: I do wear the grease paint while painting. Public painting, mind you. Never in the studio. There's no audience in the studio, so I'm more likely to be nude, or at the very least... er, most... dressed in filthy pajamas or overalls, unshaven and unkempt, hair sticking out in all directions. The mustache however I wear at all times, and is securely rooted under the skin of my upper lip. It's a very important part of my physique, like any other insect... an extrasensory apparatus if you will.

MiLK: In your artist statement you mentioned about Shakespearian and King Lear, a well-known phrase "nothing will come of nothing", but in Hong Kong and China very few people has read about shakespeare in leisure, I just want to know is the literature so popular in US.

LHR: Hmmm... I think the rule of thumb is books are used to prop up televisions. That, and maybe as something to throw at noisy pets and unruly children. Or to keep doors propped open. Or as something to stand on when reaching something high up on a shelf and difficult to reach. Or as a hiding place for money. In other words, I don't think there's a great amount of reading going on here. I wouldn't expect the average American to be able to summarize King Lear, much less know who wrote the play. But illiteracy be damned, you can't keep a good story down! And thankfully it's assigned reading in a lot of schools here in the United States, and failing that you can probably find the bare bones of the story in a heaping handful of all that comes out of Hollywood. Personally, I like to read.

MiLK: Anything you want to paint in mind that you have not started
yet and why?

LHR: Oh, plenty of ideas never make it to canvas. There's a wonderful Irish writer, a contemporary of Samuel Beckett's named Flann O'Brien who wrote a novel titled The Third Policeman. I've got a completely thought-out version of a painting based on that book that has yet to make it on canvas. And there are several scenes I've dreamt up over the past few years that I just didn't have time to paint, that I'm still hoping to see come to fruition. It's impossible seeing every idea through. It's almost like Tetris or one of those video games where you have to stop all objects from getting past you. Some ideas, good ones even, will slip you by. If half of all my ideas- the good ones I'm talking- made it to being signed and completed I'll die a happy man.

MiLK: What are you busy with? Your solo show?

LHR: At the moment I'm working on several commissions, including a triptych heading to Seoul this fall for an erotic exhibition. I also have a solo show coming up here in San Francisco in June. After those and a few other unfinished projects I'm planning on taking things in some new directions, but that's probably a matter better left unsaid for now.

Thanks Hugo Lau and MiLK Magazine.