Filthy MacNasty’s, frequented by an old guard of cultural luminaries including Nick Cave, Irvine Welsh and Shane McGowan, became the focal point of the New Rock Revolution. Lawrie exchanged ideas with a new generation of musicians, poets and artists and helped establish the seminal Skint and Minted Cabaret.
Lawrie began to mount exhibitions drawing inspiration from the bohemian characters around him. Most notable of these early shows was Frames which sought to represent the spirit of this explosive time through the individuals that encapsulated its spirit.
While the Libertines, Razorlight and Coldplay captured the moment in popular music, Lawrie represented the forgotten elements in an art which said as much about those within the frame as those without.
Using bright acrylics and wax pastels so his pictures could be framed and displayed as soon as possible, Lawrie portrayed the main players emerging through a chaotic vortex.
Impoverished and dissolute aristocrats, wild characters such as Daithi, who rode a motorbike through the bar every night, and the peerless and Catholic Rabbi John were all captured by Lawrie’s brush.
During this period, any figurative elements in Lawrie’s paintings are carefully counterpoised with vigorous abstraction. The creeping abstraction may be seen to represent chaos and oblivion – either in the subject, the viewer, or more probably, the artist himself.
The constant struggle with or towards abstraction is a constant theme in Lawrie’s work, later coming to be associated with purity as opposed to the degeneration of the Filthy's years.
