Think about it for a minute. If you’re hungry, you’re only greedy if you keep eating when you’re full. That’s not a good thing. You get fat, your looks start to deteriorate and you struggle to get up the stairs on your anniversary.
But if you’re hungry for success, that’s different. A completely different type of tea. Think about it some more. If you have the drive to become successful and then you stop when you’re full, the success will start to dwindle away or plateau. So you need more than just hunger to really ring the bell. What you need, is greed.
This is what I realised when I sat down with Lincoln Townley, currently one of the most successful artists on the planet. “I see myself as greedy,” he tells me. “I use greed as an energy. I use it as something to be celebrated. Some people might call it drive, but I believe there's greed in a lot of things related to success.”
Historically, Lincoln’s shows have included exhibitions at Art Basel Miami, Saatchi gallery in London and Somerset House. He is currently making his third appearance at the prestigious La Biennale, Venice at Palazzo Bembo.
Lincoln has produced an exhibition dedicated to his long-term friend and loyal client Sir Michael Caine, comprising 65 artworks. “It's British, it's Hollywood, it's legendary. It's iconic,” he says. At 51, the self-taught portrait artist is 12 years sober and laps up a life taking holidays from holidays with wife Denise Welch.
“When I started this I had nothing,” he says. Before cashing in on the canvas, Lincoln spent most his nights driving around London looking for coke. “When I finally got sober, I had everything, my wife, my family and my sanity. But materially and financially I had nothing.”
Lincoln does all his own marketing and says he’s “half salesman, half artist.” He avoids exhibiting in galleries, displaying his private collections in LA and London by appointment only, plus a Manchester showroom that opens to the public. “It's not a sort of, "Let's jump in the car and go and see Lincoln's showroom.” You have to contact us to make the appointment,” he says. “The commissions galleries take are crazy. I don’t like that business model.”
If you wanna get your hands on a Michael Caine piece, go get a second job. “The new pieces start at fifteen thousand pounds, and the large ones sold already at over a quarter of a million,” says Lincoln.
“Michael's been collecting my work since 2016. I've done 24 portraits of him, from the 60s right the way up to the present day. One of the images from the new collection is from the Mona Lisa movie. It's probably my favourite. The extra large one is Michael’s favourite. He loves that piece, I sold it to a film producer and I created something slightly smaller for Michael.
“I've had endless conversations with him and dinner at his home with friends. We’ve chatted a lot about where his career has taken him. Michael is always extremely optimistic about the next project, even though he's 91 years old and has been in and out of retirement.
“There's a sort of a synergy between the way Michael and I think and operate and I believe Michael sees a lot of me in him within regards to where I'm going and what I want to achieve. When I do something, I give it everything I've got.
“I love looking at what makes a star a star. Michael’s very focused on wanting to deliver at all times without the worry of how old he is, which I find fascinating because it's a bit like as an artist, you don't want to stop. I’ll keep painting forever and I'll probably fall down dead in my studio one day, but the reason I do it is because I want to drive myself to be successful.
“It all goes back to being greedy. When I worked for Peter Stringfellow in his clubs, I used to see a lot of people come in who were driven by wants and desires. They wanted the attention from the girls, they wanted the drugs, they wanted the drink. I was always fascinated by what drove them to be like that, because I was one of them. I was intensely excited by cocaine, strippers, the Soho life. I lived on Old Compton Street, and I survived it, which is incredible, to be fair. That drive was fuelled by greed, but not in a monetary sense. I wanted to be going out with the best looking girl from the club and I wanted to be out all night at the best clubs.
“I was getting to a point where my anxiety was literally going through the roof, because when you're using and you’re in that environment, you can only really take your energy in a destructive direction. I wondered what would drive me to be out looking for cocaine at three in the morning? It was like the devil on my shoulder. I was painting throughout that time of addiction. I'd paint these sort of demonic images and I'd stuff 'em under my bed. I didn't really want to show them to anyone, but they depicted how I was feeling and how I saw people.
“I rejected the idea of AA and promised Denise when she came out of Big Brother I’d be sober and focus on my painting, and I did. I showed my works in public alongside a book launch I was working on and my mate David Sullivan, owner of West Ham came down to support me. It was good to have friends in high places at that time. That’s how I started to sell my work. It's evolved because I'm constantly working at marketing myself and doing as many things as I can to get myself on the global art market. I believe I’ve hit the price points for my work that I achieve now purely because art collectors collect artists, they don't collect art.
“I've currently got 7,855 collectors. I’m a salesman and if you've got that sort of knowledge, you can build a campaign around that. If I’m not painting, I’m promoting.
“That said, Denise and I have a great life. We are constantly on holiday. I mean, my son even said to me “You need a holiday from the holiday”. We travel a lot together. If I go and see collectors, Denise comes with me. We have a great time. She's my soulmate. We've built this whole thing together, and she means everything to me.
“Denise has been my biggest supporter and critic. Take Jim Carey, for instance. I painted Jim Carey for the Baftas and he told me “I don't want to be looking funny”. I mean, how the hell do you paint Jim Carey looking serious?! I asked Denise and she helped me get it just right.
“With Michael, it’s easy. I know him very well, we've had many talks, and he's been in so many films. I love the traditional Michael Caine with the glasses. That's why I've done so many different colourways of that image.”
Lincoln reveals his next project and to be fair, I’m pretty pumped to see it.
“I’ve not told anyone this, but the next exhibition I’m working on is Bonds,” he says. “I'm starting with more of Daniel Craig. I created a portrait of Daniel for the National Youth Theatre, a charity that I support and we sold three prints for them. Daniel's been filming and he's just done a campaign for a very big clothing brand. He originates from Chester, so he said when he gets time he'll come down and see me and have a picture with the piece and see it. I'm going to expand on that and my next project will be a James Bond collection. Roger Moore and Sean Connery are big ones for me, because they're probably the two most iconic Bonds from the old school. Then you've got Pierce Brosnan. Pierce is an artist himself. So Bonds will be my next show.
“I’m also gonna be painting more musicians and young sports stars. Predominantly, I’ll be working on David Bowie. I'm a huge Bowie fan and I've always found that an easy market to sell into.”
