Luke Meloche

Lovely to speak with you as well, and thank you so much! Recently, I saw the movie Leviticus. I absolutely loved it and immediately painted a shirt inspired by the film. I loved season three of the anime Jujutsu Kaisen. I also recently finished reading Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. I finished the last third of the book in about a day. It was so good.

Thank you! Yes, art has always been a part of my life. My siblings are in the arts as well—one in music and another in contemporary art. I’ve always loved drawing. As a kid, my mom painted my walls white and allowed my friends and me to paint, draw and doodle on my bedroom walls. I really took a liking to painting and charcoal in my teens, when I attended an arts high school.

This is always one of my favourite questions I get because my answer is so stupid. I’ve had this handle since high school, and it is based on a meme of a sign advertising, “I BUY HORSES. I bought every horse I’ve ever seen. Easy way to earn fast cash,” with a phone number attached. I wanted to get an Instagram account to troll and post stuff for my close friends without anyone else I know finding it. I’m unfortunately ignorant of horse breeds, but I would be happy with any as long as it let me pet them.

I started painting shirts about five years ago for fun. I wanted to make clothes for myself with specific references or memes that made me laugh. Slowly, over time, as I posted on social media, people started to express interest in buying, so I started doing clothing drops every few months. It took a lot of time to put together collections of hand-painted shirts to sell, and it became stress-inducing. I just focus on one-of-one, commission-based work now.

My painting process usually follows the same steps. I start with some sort of basic reference image to work with. Before I paint anything, I play around with the image on my laptop using the photo-editing program GIMP. I convert it to black and white and play around with the curves of the image to make myself several reference images to refer to as the painting progresses. I then start painting by roughly placing the darkest areas or solid black parts of the image. These are not exact, as they will get blended out. From there, I blend freehand with makeup brushes to achieve the midtones and shape the image. Depending on what the client wants, I will sometimes trace text that I generate myself on my laptop, using a monitor beneath the fabric of the shirt.

Typically, single-sided pieces take eight to ten hours, and double-sided ones take anywhere from fifteen to thirty hours, depending on the amount of detail.

I always have either YouTube or music playing while I work. My favourite is Lushious Massacr’s old three-hour YouTube livestreams or Vanilla Mace’s vlogs.

My music is all over the place. I like music to reflect my current mood or moments in my life, and I’ll usually make playlists based on either of these things. Surprisingly, despite all of the amazing divas I’ve painted and love, my most-played song of all time is One of These Nights by Eagles. I love older music like ’70s rock, ’80s hits and ’90s shoegaze. More often than not, with contemporary music, I’m drawn to female artists or a man who lets it all out and can really sing.

I haven’t had the opportunity to attend the LUX Tour__, but I love its visuals.

Jennifer Coolidge has definitely always been one of my favourites, present throughout a lot of the early-2000s comfort films from my childhood. More recent films like Everything Everywhere All at Once struck a chord, and The Worst Person in the World was excellent. In high school, learning about Michelangelo and Caravaggio in art history solidified my suspicions that I was gay. But I would say my inspiration comes from more contemporary visual artists, like Frederik Heyman’s work with Arca and waterbod’s aquatic photography. Also, Eiidothelabel’s airbrushed shirts make me want to keep creating things that make people smile.

There is often a point when I’m painting a face and I’ve been staring at the piece for too long, and I have to step away. I’ve learned there is a fine line between having just enough detail and pushing a painting too far, losing someone’s likeness and making it muddy. The most challenging piece I’ve done was a large canvas painting in black and white for a famous sex worker. It was a close-up shot of his face during an intimate moment, and capturing his likeness on a large scale took me months to finish.

I think today, when so many people develop their style through trends they see on social media and fast fashion, they find it refreshing to purchase something one-of-one. There’s an allure to the exclusivity of knowing you’re the only person who owns a specific piece that was brought to life by another person’s hands.

Matières Fécales would be cool. Often, when I see their designs, it feels like looking at something I’ve never seen before. Many of their garments are devoid of busy patterns and often use a solid-coloured fabric, which would be a great canvas for a painting. More than likely, I feel like the painting would have to be something provocative. I would hope they like memes too.

Definitely the large-scale canvas painting I did of the sex worker was the wildest commission, not only because of the imagery and the fear of getting demonetised on social media, but also because it was my first-ever canvas painting commission. Ultimately, they were such a joy to work with, and everything worked out great. The only things I say no to are exact repeats of past shirts. I feel as though it defeats the purpose of what I’m doing, and as an artist, it’s just not that interesting.

I would love to work with other artists and designers in the future and allow my work to be a vehicle to explore more cities and meet new people. Currently, I’m working on a promotional piece for a new queer film, and I would love to do more projects like this one.

One of These Nights by Eagles, El Alma Que Te Trajo by Arca and Know Who You Are at Every Age by Cocteau Twins.