Interwiew with Lucas Beaufort

Hello Lucas, thank you for giving us your time, to begin with, could you give us an outline of your journey ?

I started drawing very late at 27 years old. I didn't have the goal of becoming an artist, I didn't even know it was possible. I made a drawing for a friend, I had no conviction, no goal behind it. And then one drawing leads to another which will lead to an exhibition and voila ... Afterwards, I was swimming in it, my mother was an artist in her spare time so I saw a lot of paintings and my father was a collector so he took me to galleries, they showed me paintings that they bought.

To sum up, I started late, but I was immersed in an artistic universe as I come from the skateboard world which is a creative environment. At 27, I started drawing and it got serious ... Seriously ... Let's say that I gave up on that at the age of 33, today I'm 39.

It took me 5 years to convert this passion into enough work to be able to make a living from it. We see a lot of people who have a job and who develop their passion at the same time. I was very lucky and I worked a lot just to be able to avoid having a job that I am not very passionate about and paint at night when I come home from work.

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How do we go from skateboarding to art?

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It’s skateboarding that brought me to who I am today. If I have to thank someone, it's my mom who at the age of 13 kindly took me to a skate shop and bought me a real skateboard. Which later led me to meet people who were skateboarding and also artists, photographers, musicians, writers. The transition happened naturally because I was immersed in this universe and it has nourished me since I was 13 years old.

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What are your main inspirations ?

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Skateboarding is the base, then music. I even wonder if I don't have a thing to do in music. Music is synonymous with very, very strong emotion just like art. When I go to museums or exhibitions, I can come across works that move me a lot. My mother brought me a classical culture and on my side, I listen to a lot of types of music, but pretty sharp stuff. There is a group that comes to me called "explosion in the sky", we talk about inspiration, clearly it is. I saw them in Paris just before the lockdown in February, and it brought tears to my eyes. My wife was next to me and asked me "what's going on" and she wasn't feeling what I was feeling and that is inexplicable.
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Me, music makes me rise in emotions and sensations that are inexplicable. There is also the journey. Before the covid, I rented my accommodation for 3 years and I traveled all over the world with my wife who is also my agent my friend, in short, we are a duo. We had the chance to travel all over the world, to do in one year the equivalent of a lifetime of travel. Instead of one big trip a year, we made 50 in the same year. Africa, Australia, Asia, United States ... In fact what fascinates me is the others. Why do I like to travel? Because I discover cultures, I create connections with people who make me discover music, local gastronomy, their worlds, etc. I am free in my head because I am an artist, I wake up when I do what I want, but today with the pandemic, I no longer have this freedom of movement and this inspiration that came to me of my travels.

For the past three years, I've been taking 100 planes a year. There, I just celebrated a year without taking a flight (laughs).

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What is GusGus for you?

Gus Gus is a key figure. At the beginning, you try to find a style in your art, it comes little by little and then I had this big inspiration coming from a trip to Egypt in 2018. I saw a lot of Egyptian art, including hieroglyphics which gave the style of this Gus Gus in 2D. I've always loved Cinderella's GusGus mouse so the name comes from that. Half-man, half-bird, it reminds a bit of Egyptian art with masks, and then Gus Gus is me in fact, free as a bird, my feet on the ground like a man, passionate about the world, sharing and always a hat on the head.

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Isn't it too hard to convert a 2D character to 3D ?

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It was a big problem. It is in 2D and I could draw this character with my eyes closed . I was helped a lot by the team at Artoyz who asked me to draw it from the front, from above, from below ... I was unable to imagine it from the front. They told me to make it in plasticine and to photograph it from every angle. Maybe I'll show the photos, but when you see the plasticine sculpture and the end result, you think Team Artoyz did a miracle (laughs).

Devoted is a nice documentary on the skate press. Two questions suddenly: do you plan to return a film again? Your opinion on the skate press?

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I am very hard on myself. I'm doing things and a few months later I'm very critical of what I'm doing. One of the few things I'm proud of today is this movie. It was a struggle to do so. I have no basis in the documentary, I left camera in hand and there it is. I premiered in a movie theater in Los Angeles, imagine the emotion ... It spends two years of work traveling the world meeting legends, my idols. Let's say you're a Formula 1 fan. It's like this, you were doing a documentary on all the F1 champions and you had access to their homes with all their trophies, all their stories. I wanted to make a movie behind after it was pointed out to me that you don't see a lot of young people in my movie. The younger generations did not necessarily know the print and suddenly it was very complicated to include them in it.
For the next movie, I had to go see 5 youth groups, in Israel, Asia, Africa and France and experience with them what it's like to be 14 and skate. I started in Bangkok and was following a young skater crew. I start interviewing them and I was really taken aback because they weren't telling me anything. When I asked questions to find out how their days were, they would say a word like "Great". And I decided to give it all up. While I'm not like that ... I'll do it again later one day. Maybe if I had started in Paris I would have been more confident and it would have gone better.

Regarding the press it touches me a little less, but it's funny that you talk about it because at the moment, I'm working on a book for skate shops around the world. The book will bring together 85 iconic skate shops spread over 27 countries, shops that are 20.30 years old! Skateboarding is the foundation of everything, so this book on the foundation of skateboarding via the skate shops! The advantage of the book is that it stays, you reopen it, reread it, it's tangible. I've been asked why I'm not doing something online, but imagine I'm making a video tomorrow, it's going to be forgotten the day after tomorrow. The book, it will remain on the counter of the skate shop 5, 10, 15 years. I pick up on the subject, but I'm from the VHS generation, at the time we bought a VHS and we watched it 30, 40 times a month, we knew it by heart. Today, you take a video on Thrasher, the guy takes 2 and a half years to prepare a video, to hurt himself, it comes out on Thursday, on Friday you already have a new video that replaces it and it's over . Maybe we should slow down.

And in the future, what are your plans?

I have a billion things (laughs). I have one that is particularly close to my heart, this summer, I'm going with two friends to do 1,800 bike stations. We called it the Petit tout de France. We start from Normandy to Cannes, by electric bike with the desire to reconnect a little already between us, who each have our separate lives but also with France as a whole to stop in small villages, play pétanque l afternoon with the old people. I've had to cycle 4 km in my entire life so it's a hell of a 3 week challenge. I just hope not to overshadow the real Tour de France which will take place at the same time (laughs)

You can find Lucas Beaufort's work on his website and on his Instagram account

For the release of our new figurine, he will be present this Saturday March 06, 2021 in our shop located at 83 rue Saint-Honoré -75001 Paris for an exceptional signing session.