Scott Lawrie, art lover, writer and entrepreneur

Running a gallery is different every single day. Every show is different, every artist is so different and I LOVE it.   

Art has been my escape. I grew up in a council house in Scotland. My parents were quite poor and it could be pretty tough at home. Art was my way out.  I studied at Edinburgh College of Art, four years for my undergraduate degree and three years of postgrad. And I did every shitty job to fund my way through.  Literally. I cleaned toilets between 6-9am in the uni law library for three and a half years until the Principal of the art school found out.  He called me into his office and I couldn’t believe it. For my final year, they’d decided to fund the amount I was being paid to clean the toilets, so I didn’t have to.

Of course, after seven years at art school, I wanted to be an artist but I couldn’t get a job. I thought my only option was teaching and I really didn’t want to do that. But then my mate got a job in advertising and they needed someone to draw storyboards so I went for it. That started my twenty year career in advertising and I loved it! It took me around the world. 

I quickly moved from drawing to writing, mainly because the scripts that went with the storyboards were so terrible! I’d make these suggestions to the Creative Director to improve them. He said ‘I think you’re more of a writer than a drawer’ and so I moved into the copywriting department.  Later I founded a niche agency in Sydney helping brands find their tone of voice and I’ve worked with some incredible global brands.  But I've always collected art and been in and around art galleries. 

And then five years ago, I took a leap into the dark and started my own gallery. I’d moved up to Matakana and the lady that owned a local gallery, The Vivian, said she wanted to retire. I’ve always fantasised about running a gallery. As a collector, it was always in the back of my mind “how am I going to display this?” or share the passion. So I phoned her that night and made her an offer.  

I thought “how hard can it be to put art on a wall?”. It turns out it's really hard and really complicated because there are so many parts to it! There were times when I thought, ‘what the hell am I doing?’ I was worried that I was too old at 45 to start a new career. I’ve also had to wear two hats for quite a while because the brand voice work brought in the money while I built up the gallery.  You run yourself very thin. I was tired and very stressed. I was getting great feedback about the gallery but what really kept me going through the tough times was the artists. I love supporting artists that I believe in. And then Covid hit and thin stretched to breaking point. I had to close The Vivian and it nearly broke my heart. 

I’ve come to understand making mistakes is a good thing. A lot of artists I’ve worked with want everything to be perfect. I think mistakes are more interesting than perfection. Make thousands of them! I made some big mistakes at The Vivian but it turns out they have helped me. I got an opportunity to turn a small space in Ponsonby into a gallery and I’ve been able to take all my learnings into my new space, Scott Lawrie Gallery. It's smaller, more manageable and I couldn’t be more happy.

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