Leif Podhajski Interview

Alicja McCarthy talks to Leif Podhajsky, the Melbourne based artist and creative director, about his imagination, favourite colour and Lykke Li.

Publicly, Leif’s work is known to explore connectedness, nature and altered experiences, but where do his ideas actually come from? Do I dare mention mind altering substances or can these dreamscapes really come from within?
Leif says he get this question a lot and explains that his ideas come from the collective consciousness of everyone and everything filtered through his own personal experiences and made almost tangible through his imagination. That it’s mostly a feeling and the exploration of things he feels are true but cannot see or touch. Such as the existence of intelligence on different frequencies or higher states of awareness, the feeling that nature is core to the balance of all things.

“I believe these things are true and through my imagination I try and put them into something which people can see, this in an attempt to justify, explain, gain wisdom from, or just marvel in the beauty of, firstly for myself and hopefully for others also. One doesn’t need drugs to experience these things, they can defiantly help facilitate your exposure to them, give you a taste. I am more interested in using other techniques such as meditation, music, yoga to get insight into these altered states and bring some of the knowledge I think we can gain back into the everyday”.

So what are the top three things that inspire you the most?

“Love, knowledge and creativity”.

Colour and tone appear to be of utmost importance in your work, so I have to ask, what’s your favourite colour?

“Colour and tone are central to capturing a certain mood or feeling in my work. Black is defiantly one of my favourite colours (tones). It’s like it has absorbed all the frequencies of light and therefore contains all colour and no colour. Other favourites are forest green, Burgundy and deep aqua”.

The record labels love your work, how important then is music to you when you create an artwork? Could you tell us what you do listen to when creating?

“Music plays a big part in how I create, and not just for record labels or bands, across everything I do. I find it helps me turn the part of my brain that over analyzes and makes things logical switch off. This helps as it lets me form compositions in a more natural and fluid way.
I listen to a very wide range of things when creating, I find it doesn’t matter so much what it is, just if I can lock into that feeling and be transported away”.

Interestingly adding,

“I have just finished two mixed tapes (which you can download on my site). One is a mixture of Psychedelic, Kraut-rock and progressive songs from bands like German Oak, Can, Brainticket, Sun Araw.
The other one called ‘The Solstice Mixtape’ was compiled with good friend Isaac from the band Young Magic whilst we where in Mexico over the new year and has a lot of old African/beats/psych and folk music we both where listening to at the time, I have been into a lot of this old Nigerian, Ghanian and Turkish music which just has the best flow for working. Plus a lot of the new beats coming out of the LA scene like Teebs and Fly Lo. So a bit of a mixed bag.”

You worked with Lykke Li on the artwork for her new album, Wounded Rhymes, how did that come about?

“Yeah I have just finished working with Lykke. It was sort of strange how it came about, kind of felt like it was meant to be. I actually randomly got into contact with her creative director which I didn’t know at the time, and was trying to get him to look at my work for a different reason, and he though I was getting in contact about the Lykke job which I was oblivious to. They both had a look at my work and thought it was perfect. Lykke and I where exploring a lot of the same ideas in our work and so I think it was natural that we worked together. I was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time”.

How well did you get on in terms of creativity?

“Creatively we got on great! She has great vision in all aspects of what she is doing, and was very open to pushing and exploring the limits of what we could achieve.
I went to New York and worked with her face to face which was so much better than over the internet and doesn’t happen as much these days.
I really think we captured the mood of the record and the concepts she was exploring on the album.”

So… what’s next?

“I really want to keep working with great musicians creating visuals for their music. I have a few exhibitions coming up this year which will keep me busy. I am also in the process of setting up an online shop to sell limited edition prints of my work which will be up very soon.
But mostly to try and enjoy life and have new experiences, lots of travel and sunshine”.

For more info about Leif, visit his site here.