The view from Lori Campbell's high-on-a-Montauk-bluff art studio is all Fort Pond Bay. Which seems appropriate because her Surrealist paintings are supposed to operate like fishing nets, trawling material out of the subconscious.
As is the way with Surrealism, it's not always easy to put your finger on what's going on in her work -- none of her paintings straightforwardly "mean" anything. But therein lies their unsettling beauty, their madcap attempts to make us see the absurd. So, if you ever decide to visit her studio, best leave any intense detective work at the door and simply enjoy a chaotic romp through her eccentric world. And, anyway, the great Surrealist Rene Magritte, once said, "I want to create a mystery, not to solve it."
One aspect of her work is certain, however: While many Surrealist artists often dive deep into dark and garish corners of their psyches, and find monsters, Ms. Campbell is mining a more playful and farcical, Dr. Suess-like alter ego.
"Yes, definitely," she conceded. "It has to do with the bright colors and the furriness. But then, who's not influenced by Dr. Suess?"
Canvases of varying sizes are propped up throughout her studio, originally a guest cottage but since Covid her work space. In her collection of puzzling images, fantastical creatures, half-human, half-furry beasts, often occupy a spot on -- or under, or beside -- velvet chairs, ottomans, benches. A head is sometimes swapped for a bunch of grapes; human legs, wearing pants, emerge from under a cascade of feathers and flowers. Soft tubes reach out of a landscape scene, while what looks like debris scooped up from the bottom of Fort Pond Bay, broken and crusted, sits off to one side.
And in almost all of the pieces, giant eyeballs peer out, suspiciously, or maybe judgmentally, who's to say. Ms. Campbell seems to take something mundane and familiar and makes you see it in an unexpected way. Viewing her work, set in gorgeous auras of magentas, reds, yellows, and bluish greens, is like taking a trip to the fairground.
Remarkably, she has been painting with oils for only four years. "I'm an emerging artist," said Ms. Campbell, 59, who has been coming out to Montauk with her husband for over 25 years. She had dabbled in acrylics for a while, but during a class at the Art Barge four years ago with the artist Michael Rosch, she discovered her new medium. "Once I learned how to use oil paints, that's when the Surrealism really cracked open," she said.
She also took classes with Margaret McCann at the Art Students League in Manhattan. "Because I started painting later in life, I decided I was going to hit the ground running and paint as much as I could," Ms. Campbell explained. "And I was the only person in the class who would pretty much bring in a new painting every other day. I just figured the more I do, the more she can critique, and the more I can learn."
Her first solo show took place in February 2020, at the Storefront Project, an art gallery on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Last year, she was selected to participate in the Live Mural and Graffiti Competition in East Hampton, whose judges included Eric Fischl.
Like many creative careers, Ms. Campbell's did not have a conventional trajectory. After growing up in New Jersey and studying journalism in Boulder, Colo., where she took an art class every semester, she contemplated becoming a painter after graduating, but went into advertising instead.
"It turned out to be pretty good training for painting, because as a creative in advertising, you really do face the blank page every day," she said. "And it teaches you not just to face a blank page, but to find an original voice because there are 10 other brands trying to say the same thing. And the only way you can differentiate yourself is with your voice, or your humor, or your originality."
She co-founded a successful advertising agency, Dweck & Campbell, known for comedy. Then, after having two children and taking some time off, "the blank page drew me back in," she said. Rather than going back into advertising, she wrote four screenplays and six books. "I sold two books, and a screenplay came close, but it's hard to sell a comedy script," she said.
"Cartboy and the Time Capsule" and "Cartboy Goes to Camp," her published novels for middle-grade readers, are written in the voice of a 12-year-old boy and covered in sketches and illustrations done by Ms. Campbell.
"When I would do readings in schools, the kids would often say, 'Why did you write as a 12-year-old boy?' And it's funny, the only answer I had for that is, because that's what came naturally to me."
The same childish absurdity, in which inconsequence invades the world of logic and portrays what the eye cannot see, can now be seen in her paintings. When asked who might be most interested in collecting her whimsical work, she replied, "Anybody who's looking to loosen up the joint a little bit."
They often say that Surrealism is like holding up a mirror and painting the opposite of what is reflected. So, is there a half-human, half-fantastical creature lurking behind the neat, well-presented facade of Ms. Campbell?
"Well, I do love a costume party," she said, laughing. "And I do feel that drag is an amazing form of art, an underappreciated art form."
She might need to remember that if she gets her wish to have a solo show featuring about 20 of her pieces. In 1936, for the opening of the first International Surrealist Exhibition in London, Salvador Dali famously visited an English diving shop and asked to be fitted for a deep-sea diving suit. When the sales assistant inquired how deep he intended to journey, Dali replied that he would be diving into the depths of the human subconscious.
He wore the elaborate, articulated suit, helmet and all, for the opening of the event. There, with a pair of leashed dogs in one hand and a billiard cue in the other, he delivered a lecture illustrated by upside-down slides.
