From Bond Legend To Art ‘LGND’: Interview With Artistically Gifted James Bond Star PIERCE BROSNAN On Art, Acting And His Amazing Debut NFT Collection On LGND.Art
The Exceptionally Talented Artist And World-Renowned Actor Debuts His Collection Of Digital Artworks Inspired By His Painting "Earplugs" Created While Filming His First James Bond Film GOLDENEYE in 1995
PIERCE BROSNAN is the epitome of a modern-day Renaissance man, perfect gentleman and true artist in every sense of the word. A world-renowned Irish actor known to the world as the one and only iconic spy James Bond or '007' in four films of the celebrated film franchise - GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day - and for starring in many other smash hit films and shows throughout his incredible acting career (Mamma Mia!, Remington Steele, The Thomas Crown Affair, Dante's Peak, Mrs. Doubtfire, etc.), Brosnan is also an environmentalist, philanthropist and most certainly an extremely talented painter. Finding inspiration in the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard and Kandinsky, Brosnan is an artist who always makes time to paint and sets up a studio wherever he goes to film the latest upcoming box office hits - creating beautiful and mesmerizing landscapes, abstracts, and colourful portraits that have sold for up to $1.4 million dollars for charity. He is currently also busy working on an exhibition of his paintings and drawings in Los Angeles that will open later this year.
While Brosnan was filming his first James Bond film GoldenEye in 1995, he created the painting Earplugs, which was inspired by the “how to” instructions found on earplug packets handed out on the set of the movie. Brosnan is now embracing the NFT market with hist first-ever NFT collection of digital artworks titled BIG NOISE - inspired by Earplugs - which is available to preview on the digital arts platform LGND.art and will officially launch on Father's Day, June 20th, at 8 PM. Brosnan's unique debut NFT collection features new work that is reminiscent of primitive graphics and 90's multi-player video games. Compelled by source material, Brosnan transforms his artwork into a captivating multimedia NFT that incorporates abstract movement, self-recorded sound elements, including his voice, and bespoke visuals.
What is fascinating is that Brosnan's debut NFT collection is showcased by LGND, Inc. - an inspiring platform and community focusing on artist empowerment, sustainability and technical innovation. According to Ty Carter, Head of the Artist Council at LGND who is an immensely talented artist himself with a background in animation work for Blue Sky Studios, Pixar, Disney and Netflix Animation, "the continued growth of LGND on the WAX blockchain provides more opportunities for underrepresented artists to have a platform with extensive research into the market while ensuring a sustainable infrastructure they can feel ethically secure in being a part of." The WAX blockchain that LGND is built on uses the "Delegated Proof of Stake protocol", which boasts "a low carbon footprint by design and commits LGND to minimizing the ecological impact of NFTs on the environment."
Georgina Lara Booth sat down to interview Pierce Brosnan - who was on set in Georgia of the upcoming DC Extended Universe movie Black Adam in which he stars as Doctor Fate alongside Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - to talk about art and Brosnan's life an artist, his background, his extraordinary acting career and more.
PIERCE BROSNAN
Hi Pierce! How are you?
"Good morning, Georgina! My life has been rather pastoral to say the least...I’m in Georgia and I am shooting a movie with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and it’s a DC Comic movie - it’s called Black Adam and I play Doctor Fate. I am here in the beautiful Georgia countryside. Georgia is delightful. I have been welcomed with open arms and it’s a two way street of friendship."
You are usually based in California or Hawaii - what is it like being based in sunny locations compared to Ireland where you are from?
"Yes, I live in Hawaii and I live in California. I enjoy them both. I also enjoy my country of Ireland very much!"
"Wherever I go, I set up a studio...I draw every day. Still life, abstracts...as I am speaking to you now, I am drawing."
Do the locations and environments that you travel to as an actor inspire your artwork in any way?
"Wherever I go, I set up a studio. I had a studio here in Georgia and I have five canvasses that I am working on at the moment. The drawings are constant in my day-to-day practice. I draw every day...still life, abstracts, and some of these. As I am speaking to you now, I am drawing. I have phone tablets and these drawings sometimes make them into paintings."
You are currently collaborating with LGND. Could you tell me more about this project and why did you decide to create an NFT of your artwork?
"It’s a kind of fascinating advancement in the way that artists can interact and grow their audience. The NFT really came out of left field. Last year, I was getting ready to have my first show in Santa Monica, but Covid really put the kibosh on that and in the interim time my good friend, Guy, who is my gallerist at Seasons introduced me to Ty at LGND. We began to explore the possibilities of creating an NFT. I had already given rebirth to a painting of mine, which had been rendered back in 1995 when I was shooting GoldenEye, and again Guy who is my gallerist introduced me to these wonderful artisans who created a beautiful silk screen of earplugs. When the discussion started with LGND on how to go forward and how to find subject matter to create an NFT, we hit on the idea of Earplugs. It's very graphic, it's very simple and I suggested we might make it into a Rubik's cube - and so began the collaboration between Seasons and LGND and myself. In the last six months or so, we have created something which is quite captivating and amusing called "Big Noise". The drop will happen here on the 20th, Father's Day, which is an appropriate day I think for such a work. This is my first venture into this field, but I think it provides an opportunity to directly offer one's work to anyone anywhere in the world, so that's the kind of long winded answer to it."
What do you think about NFTs in general and the digitalisation of artwork?
"Well, you know, it’s a brand new world out there - this new digital world of cryptocurrencies. They do, I believe, have great potential when it comes to the art world, the film world and entertainment. It is very hard to try and predict the future, but we can choose a future that is supportive of the arts, I believe, by leveraging this world-changing technology to give artists and their communities new opportunities to connect. I think the NFT world has collided and crashed into the world of the pandemic, which has been a mighty body blow to our earth and people and, you know. That constant thump of anxiety can provoke great imagination in the world of the arts, so I think NFTs are here to stay. It’s an exhilarating time in our lives, I think, if you go to higher ground and then I think wonderful opportunities will come about from the world of NFTs and for artists in general."
"We can choose a future that is supportive of the arts, I believe, by leveraging this world-changing technology to give artists and their communities new opportunities to connect."
Would you consider creating more NFTs in the future or do you prefer traditional painting with physical products?
"Well, I think my painting practice has been a slow one and a steady one. It has a consistency of articulation and progress and I think that will always remain with me, because as it heals the anxieties of life - the necessity to paint - one has to paint. You have to pick up a brush and I have to create something. It’s in my kind of everyday living, as it were. I would like to explore more NFTs. I have spoken with LGND and with Guy and there are a few pieces that I think could be effective, but I think for now, let’s see how the 'big noise' of it all acquits itself. I have no expectations and I have high expectations, so that leaves one really to go along for the ride. It’s a free for all out there, it seems, but again it is so exciting if you don’t get too wrapped up in it too much...then I think you can enjoy it. I think BIG NOISE has something to say for itself. It's the big noise of art, the big noise of NFT, the big noise of politics, the big noise of the pandemic and there’s a lot of it, noise in the world, so that is where the title comes into play - and I love the world of crypto, the meanings and the different avenues you can go down in exploring your art and creating something that could be mysterious, just slightly of kilter, but properly entertaining."
Do you think that filmmaking will progress with NFTs in the future and that both filmmaking and NFT art can be combined?
"I do see the gift here of being a movie maker. How do you put that in the form of an NFT? Sorry...there is a scorpion here - don’t want to kill him, I will just throw him outside...We're in the woods at the moment here in Georgia...You don’t want to kill him, but you don’t want him in your bed either...! Yes, where were we...? You can make an NFT movie! I see the great possibilities of performance and art within this realm."
"It was a very long shoot, GoldenEye, my first James Bond. It was six months and sometimes weeks would go by where there were just action sequences, so I had to create something...and I set up studios wherever I go"
Your collection of digital artwork BIG NOISE is inspired by your painting Earplugs, which was created while filming your first James Bond film GoldenEye. Why did you create a painting based on "how to" instructions on earplug packets handed out on set of GoldenEye?
"Roy Lichtenstein is the starting point of it and what he created of his time and life with the comic books was hugely entertaining, inventive, and in some ways as plain as the nose on the end of your face, but he had the brilliance and audacity to make "POW!" and "WOW!" and all of these other pieces always intrigued me...so the graphics of the ear packet was constantly at hand and it was a simple idea to turn it into a 48 x 48 painting. It was a simple graphic and it hung on the wall for many, many years - as it still does in my home - and it is as simple as that. It was a very long shoot, GoldenEye, my first James Bond. It was six months and sometimes weeks would go by where there were just action sequences, so I had to create something and, like I said, I set up studios wherever I go and that’s what came out of that period of time."
So...you are a Pop Art fan? I love Pop Art! I love Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, etc.! What is your favourite Pop Art artwork - and what is your favourite artwork in general?
"I am a great fan of Pop Art! I grew up in the sixties...you couldn’t escape Pop Art - it was everywhere and it remains so! You know, NFTs are Pop Art, but I will have to go to Monet and Cézanne, Kandinsky and the Impressionists. The art world for me...I suppose the first time I really was captivated, beguiled and just taken into another realm of beauty was with Salvador Dali. I bought a book at W.H. Smiths many, many years ago, and it was on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea - all about existentialism - but the cover was Dali, so I just always remember seeing his art and that led me to exploring many avenues of art. So it started with Dali and I suppose the Surrealist movement still holds me in its thrall, but I am a self-taught artist. I really did not go to art school. I started as a trainee commercial artist with high hopes and expectations of creating album covers. Thank god for acting...that is all I can say!"
James Bond is one of the most iconic - if not the most iconic character of all time in film history. Has any James Bond film in particular, or character, ever inspired any of the paintings that you have created?
"I think Earplugs indirectly. I have, beyond that...no not really. I did a self portrait from a photograph of James Bond, which was rendered very quickly, but not really. I can’t think of any paintings inspired by James Bond."
What materials do you usually use for your paintings? Do you use oil paint or acrylic paint? What is your favourite colour?
"What is my favourite colour? It depends on what time of the day it is and depends on what mood I am in. I love acrylics. I do a lot in acrylics just because they are quick, but I enjoy oils very much. I enjoy linocuts, I enjoy pencils, graphite, charcoal. I have started doing some sculpture, carvings. Gauguin, again, is someone who has inspired me a lot - just his rough and ready carvings and inspiration...well I can do that. I do like yellow, whatever that means...!"
What first inspired you to become an artist and how did you end up going from art to acting? Why did you choose acting as a main career over painting?
"I left school early. I didn’t like school and there were no great teachers. There was no one of any guidance, but I enjoyed my art and I just left with a cardboard folder of drawings and paintings of plants and friends. When I was 16, I found myself a job in an art studio in Putney, South London, and that’s where it started. I think I made about 20 pounds a week and I was happy. I called myself an artist, even though I wasn’t really an artist, but later on I called myself an actor...when I wasn’t really an actor - so I worked at being an artist and after about three years I discovered acting. I discovered a wonderful arts lab called the Oval House Theatre and I started doing workshops and this was the late sixties, so I eventually gave up my job and I formed a theatre company. We got an Arts Council grant and we performed for children in schools. We did our own shows and went to Paris and Amsterdam and I supported myself by washing dishes and cleaning houses, waiting tables, digging ditches and eventually I then decided after three years to train as an actor. I auditioned and got in to an academy called The Drama Centre and I got a grant and became a drama student for three years. I came out the head of my class in 1977 and I have worked consistently as an actor since then."
I was just curious...is there any specific acting method that you follow for your acting work? Like Lee Strasberg's method acting or Meisner? Drama schools in London are usually very traditional and based on classical acting without a specific method like in the US.
"I use the method I was taught at Drama Centre. That was really the only method-oriented drama school in London. It was very strict. It was not for everyone. You had to be as tough as old boots to endure the course, but I did because when your back is up against the wall, you had to come out fighting. That is what you draw on strength of character, strength of vision, passion and imagination and I was taught in the method. Do I use it? Yes, I do I think it is engrained in me now when I pick up a script."
"My art is something that is just for myself and I hope for the rest of the world for people in general to enjoy and hang my hat."
Would you consider yourself more of a painter than an actor? Or an artist in general?
"I would say an artist in general. Artistic life is what nourishes me - whether it is writing poetry, writing fiction, acting, painting and just good old dreaming! I am an actor first and foremost. This world I have now kind of nudged myself on to the stage with is a brand new way of life. A new way of looking at one’s work, how to make it more meaningful, how to make it more decorative, how to make it to have some to be more pleasing to the eye, to have someone say I really enjoy that, I’d like to put it on my wall. How do you make something like that? I think Matisse was the grand master at doing that. His work was so joyful, so light as a feather, so sensuous and with such an articulate gift of gesture and colour, so that’s what I would like to aspire to. A lot of it comes from the subconscious, but really I am not quite sure where it comes from - especially from the drawing practice on to the canvas. I do step back and wonder what it means, but first and foremost I am an actor. That is how I make my living. My art is something that is just for myself and I hope for the rest of the world for people in general to enjoy and hang my hat."
You just mentioned that you write as well, like poetry, but do you write scripts and would you ever consider performing in your own written work or scripts?
"I have no real strong desire to write a script. I have the notion of scenes and the notion of some story, but I haven’t really put pen to paper, so I cant answer the question beyond that."
"To stand beside a painting that one had created - the character an iconic poet rockstar Bob Dylan - and I had the courage and guts to say "well it looks like him and it has good balance and colour, it has some power on the wall."
When you started painting, did you ever think you would be selling artwork for more than a million dollars...? What do you think about that?
"Oh good heavens, no! Not in the least! $1.4 million for Bob Dylan was for a charity and charities and auctions have a great sense of drama to them...It was directly/indirectly my wife Keely. Her movie Poisoning Paradise was invited to the Cannes Film Festival and they found out I was a painter. They asked me to submit a painting for the Amfar Aids charity, so we put it on the block for 30.000 and I thought if it came out at 35.000 it would be a win-win, but you know the night was a big joyful occasion...black tie, glitterati, fanfare and so it was a night to remember. To stand there beside a painting that one had created - the character an iconic poet rockstar Bob Dylan - and I had the courage and guts to say "well it looks like him and it has good balance and colour, it has some power on the wall". If I thought "let's do it if I could be assured 1.4 million every time out the door", then I would definitely give up acting, but no, that was just a one-off most delightful rewarding evening all round. It went to a great cause and AIDS is definitely still in our society and it has plagued many lives, though it is something that had sincerity to it. It was a kick in the pants and I think Keely and I skipped home that night!"
Would you create more art in the future for charity? You are an environmentalist, so are you involved with environmental charities?
"Yes, I do the silk screen of Earplugs donations - it is a limited edition of 100 prints and so part of the proceeds goes to A Sense of Home. A Sense of Home is a wonderful organisation, which enables young men and women coming out of the foster care system to create a home for themselves and donations are made whether it be a washing machine or refrigerator. In my case, it was a piece of art to hang on a wall, so that is one avenue of philanthropic work hand in hand with a community. I suppose, if I hadn’t been an actor, I would have gone into social services or something like that and, yes, it remains to be seen what charities. St Jude's is a wonderful organisation, which I have supported for many, many years. My environmental work is ongoing. I am in the middle of being part of a documentary about the saving of the San Ignacio Laguna, which was a breeding ground for the Grey Whale. I along with many other people had the good fortune in stopping Mitsubishi from creating a salt mine, so they are making a documentary about this and I will be working on it this weekend, so yes, the work goes on. There is always work to be done when it comes to the environment and we try to make a better world for ourselves, so my collaboration with LGND and Seasons will have a philanthropic aspect to it. It is essential whether it for children, the environment or healthcare."
If you could ask any question to any artist, dead or alive, what would you ask and who would you ask?
"I would ask Picasso. It starts and ends with Picasso...'When you get up in the morning, when do you start painting?'".
"I think there is a collection of work there that has something pleasing to look at. It is kind of naive, but it also has an artistic progression of some artistic gesture and meaningfulness."
I would love to go to your exhibition of your paintings and drawings later this year in Los Angeles! Will it be an interactive exhibition with NFTs that people can touch and be involved in or will it be a traditional exhibition with paintings that are hanging on a wall?
"I do hope - and I think I am getting closer to it - we will have an exhibit, dare I say a date – oh why not - it is September 25th! So September 25th I hope to have my first show and that will be done in Venice, California, at Mr. Chuck Arnoldi's Studio. Chuck Arnoldi is an artist I discovered when I landed in America in 1982, along with Carlos Almaraz - great artists who really inspired me, so we are acquainted with each other. He has said he would let me use his studio on that said date to hang paintings. I don’t know how many paintings, whether it will be paintings,, drawings and the NFT of it will all be there. I have been making videos of myself painting and the progress of painting or the attempt at making progress of the paintings. There will be a short film and beyond that I really don’t know. I am not quite sure what more will be revealed as these months go on, but there is a date and a place and there is this body of work, which is very personal really, and some of it deeply personal, because they were made at times in my life that were difficult, but I do feel if this is the only art show that I do, then so be it. I do feel I have to let them go, because they are just taking up space and I think there is a collection of work there that has something pleasing to look at. It is kind of naive, but it also has an artistic progression of some artistic gesture and meaningfulness."
What is the most memorable experience in your life so far and what would you say to our readers in general?
"Coming to America was just the greatest joy. Coming to America, getting Remington Steele. I came in on a wing and a prayer. Freddie Laker, you wouldn’t know who he is...I don’t think you would, but he was an Englishman and he had cheap flights. They were 50 quid, bring your own sandwiches and I hopped on Freddie Laker with my late wife Cassie. I rented a car, Rent-a-Wreck, I think that was 50 bucks too, and I went for my first audition, my first interview, and it was for a show called Remington Steele and I got it. So I think that’s fairly memorable. I mean, I do have many, many more. That’s what one hopes for in life - to have great memories - and I must say this is an exciting moment to be working with LGND and Seasons and to have created this tiny pocket of art. It is definitely one for the books."
BIG NOISE is available to preview on LGND.art and will officially launch on Father’s Day, June 20th, at 8 PM.
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