John Lurie

Photo courtesy John Lurie

John Lurie, "Bunny—Produit De Arabie"

Photo courtesy John Lurie

John Lurie, "My Trip To The Country Birds Fly Up"

James Nares Paul Klee Santa's Little Helper History’s Limits Martín Ramírez Weimar Celebrating 90th Anniversary of Bauhaus Oranges and Sardines Art Meets Music at the Louvre

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As a musician and composer, he founded in the late 1970s the seminal avant-jazz/punk band, The Lounge Lizards, and he has scored the soundtrack to more than a dozen movies, receiving a Grammy nomination in 1996 for Get Shorty.

As an actor, he starred in a number of Jim Jarmusch’s best films, including his unforgettable performance as Jack in Down by Law. His 1991 TV series, “Fishing with John,” which saw him casting his line accompanied by famous friends in exotic locations around the globe, has become a cult classic. More recently, he starred in HBO’s gritty prison drama, “Oz.”

But his focus in recent years has been on the visual arts. Although he has been painting since the 1970s, he had his first solo show only in 2004 at New York’s Anton Kern Gallery and has since had one-man exhibitions at Roebling Hall in New York and Galerie Daniel Blau in Munich.

His mostly small-scale watercolors on paper, rendered in a faux-naif style that can achieve a luminous beauty, are always accompanied by the perfect title—sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious (“Heroin Leads to Harder Drugs”); sometimes poignant (“Dog Is Blind. Who Will Help?); sometimes purely descriptive of Lurie’s intensely imaginative, color-saturated depictions (“Man Belching Mud Cats”; “Obscure Presidents and Sally Field on the Water”).

Animals, too, figure prominently in his slightly off-kilter universe, and his anthropomorphic beasts are full of human quirks: talented lions, horny horses, rude bears, Nazi birds, brutally honest dogs, murderous bunnies.

Lurie, who just this month began selling limited-edition prints of his work on his aptly named Web site, StrangeAndBeautiful.com, is currently enjoying his first solo museum show at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York. “John Lurie: Works on Paper” is on view there through Aug. 14.

John, I can think of only a few artists who have really succeeded in two separate areas of the cultural arena—Dennis Hopper as actor and photographer, for example—but I can't think of anyone else but you who has achieved true critical acclaim in three (or really, four) fields: actor, musician/composer and painter. Can you talk a little about your artistic background and development? In high school, were you performing in school plays, playing in the band, taking art seriously?

My mother was a painter and taught art in Liverpool when she was young. I think she gave me a sense of freedom in what I was doing with painting.

Mostly in high school, I played harmonica and basketball and tried to have sex.

You've been known as an actor and musician for decades now, but your recognition as a visual artist is somewhat new—although you've been painting for three decades. What were the factors that led to your "coming out" as an artist with gallery representation and now a museum show?

How this all unfolded is a very long answer. It has a lot to do with what happened to my health. I always painted. From the time I was very young. If I had not gotten sick, I would probably have not shown them, nor would painting have become my primary focus.

I was shy to show the work and way more shy because of what was happening to my nervous system, and how vulnerable I felt, to dare to put myself in a position of going to galleries asking for a show.

[The artist] James Nares saw the paintings at my house and talked me into doing it. He hooked me up with my first show at Anton Kern.

Which creative act gives you the most satisfaction?

The greatest artistic joy I’ve had is when the band is really together and hovering off the ground and you love the guys and this feeling of chills goes up your spine and it is so beautiful that you can hardly stand it.

I love painting but it has never given me chills like that. I did have a very wonderful feeling of accomplishment and beauty after hanging the PS 1 show.

Whether the painting I have going at any particular time is good or bad has an enormous effect on my mood.

I have always felt that acting, except in very rare occasions, is kind of like being a human puppet.