Lauren Sohre shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Good morning Lauren, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Integrity for sure, especially nowadays. I think integrity is closely tied to authenticity, which I feel many people are craving right now from creators, friends, and even family. I would follow that up with saying energy is second, and then intelligence. Anyone can learn anything if they have the honesty and drive.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Lauren, (known as “Larn” online), and I’m a concept artist from the upper Midwest. I was trained in animation and worked at studios in LA for a while. During that time I started to develop my current personal project: Sky Cowboys. It’s definitely a niche thing – cowboys who ride flying horses in a non-magical wild west alternate earth – but it’s found a decent following and was born directly from my personal interests. I’ve been riding horses for 20+ years and I adore the freedom of hiking and camping in the wilderness. Sky Cowboys encompasses all of it – horses, an untouched rugged wilderness, and what I find to be the ultimate expression of freedom: flight. I wrap all of that up in my personal art and narrative style.
I’m often told “wow I’ve NEVER seen this kind of thing before!” whenever I table at cons/expos. A more memorable example from this year: someone looked at my table and said, with relief, “Oh, thank heavens, it’s not dragons!!!” Then they bought two prints and a copy of the art book. I Kickstarted that artbook back in 2024 and am now working on a free-to-read action/adventure 10-chapter web comic set in the Sky Cowboys world. I’m planning on getting those printed, too, and then doing an artbook volume 2.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What relationship most shaped how you see yourself?
Learning from my horse trainer, Wilson, (sorry dad!). It’s been a “let’s train you so you can work better with these horses” situation, rather than “I’ll just train your horse for you”. Wilson’s distinct blend of practical ranch skills, ethical handling/physical mechanics, and understanding equine psychology, (without all of the woo-woo stuff), taught me more about work ethic and self control than I ever could have hoped to learn from anyone else. And there was never any pressure to get into the show ring and compete. He has always been respectful and positive, building much-needed confidence in who was a confused teenager when we first met. I was strong-headed but very unsure of myself, which was frustrating. Wilson was always patient and always figured out how to explain or show to me how to correct what I was doing. And he never backed down on his standards. If I wanted to learn what he knew, I had to work at it to achieve it.
I credit Wilson for shaping how I act as an adult. I still have the instinct to be impatient and hard on myself, but he taught me that horses are a mirror and will reflect back what you throw at them. In order to do right by the animal, I HAD to become a better person. So I used that as my filter and now it’s second nature. I don’t consider myself to be an absolutely stellar rider – I could never waltz into a show ring and bring home first place – but I have a lot of confidence in my horse and in the foundations of riding.
I don’t even think he did it deliberately. He didn’t see any special skills in me or decide I needed help. He’s just a good person with excellent horsemanship and is a fantastic teacher – a rare combination in the equestrian world, (usually it’s a “pick two” thing). I still keep my horse at his humble ranch and take lessons.
When did you last change your mind about something important?
When I worked in animation, I was so sure I wanted to be a character or prop designer, or a concept artist. I was in production at DreamWorks and then production at Warner Brothers. I was always hustling to get that coveted artist position – I’d moved out to LA for it, and it would prove to everyone back home that I achieved my dreams. And then I did some freelance character & prop design for Warner Bros. and some show pitches at Nickelodeon. The validation I got from that was fantastic and I wanted more. Yet, I never seemed to be quite good enough to get into the actual artist ranks. I was constantly told “wow your work is great, you’d be perfect for blah blah blah!” yet I would never actually get hired full time. That combined with the industry being squeezed hard by strikes, failing films and shows, and record low greenlights meant even seasoned pros were left without work for months at a time.
And to top it off, I slowly started to see the animation industry for what it was: a meat grinder. Artists burned out and unable to work on their own projects after drawing for hours and hours each day, extremely tight TV schedules to keep budgets down, studios outsourcing design more and more to overseas, and a constant game of boot-licking to make sure you were the one an art director chose for a show. Talent/style mattered some, but with hundreds of thousands of artists available via the industry AND Instagram, you had to get really good at licking boots. Or at least doing mega networking. I was never good at that. I don’t remember names well and I have a great resting B face. I could be super professional – working in production gave me awesome office and organization skills that I still use – but I finally realized I would never make the cut as an artist when I was on Creature Commandos at Warner.
That was so painful, but it allowed me see “the dream” for what it was: I wasn’t doing it for the art or the passion, I was doing it for the ego boost. I was putting my self-worth in the hands of ADs and the lottery-style chances of getting a job in an industry famous for over-working people. All of a sudden it didn’t look so great. So I left animation and moved back to the Midwest. I found a job at a mascot company where I design and craft fun mascots and physical props. I’m more near family and I can work on my own projects, like Sky Cowboys, as vigorously as I want to. Which usually means I go pretty ham on it because why not?
I still get the little dopamine boost when my art gets a lot of likes, but I’m drawing pegasi and stuff because I want to. And because I like the stuff I’ve been making with it, like the books and posters. If Sky Cowboys turns into something more down the line like a game or show, great, but I know now that my personal projects are worth investing my time into simply because I think they’re cool.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
That art can be objectively judged. Yes, there is a subjective side to art where taste and opinion matter, and those are different for everyone. But I think that art has an objective side, too – “rules” that you can learn that tells you if the art is poorly made or is high quality.
I took a painting class taught by Chris Oatley where the he pushed the skill of “what’s the best way to communicate your idea to the audience?” And by “best” he meant “efficient” or “cohesive”. He argued that art is only as good as it can communicate what it’s about. Some art invites you to think deeply, some does not, but both can be objectively high quality if it communicates to the audience what they are about.
This is more obvious for stories – like movies and books. They absolutely must have some amount of A to B to C logic for the plot and stakes to make sense. When they don’t have that, the story and characters feel flat or unsatisfactory, (Lookin’ at you, Star Wars sequels!). It feels like logical plot happens intuitively for most stories so that many people don’t understand the mechanics behind it, but those mechanics are extremely important. Current day films are a very clear example of the folks behind the cameras not knowing what those mechanics are and making extremely strange decisions with their scripts. That sounds harsh, but I don’t mean it as a dig. It’s just how it is right now and I can’t see where the pipeline is breaking down.
The current state of the entertainment industry aside, I also think visual art can also be objectively judged. Paintings have mechanics to learn, too: composition, lighting, and values make up the majority. Color theory, in my opinion, is in the secondary tier. And by that token, you don’t need high fidelity for art to be well-crafted. In that same painting class, Chris introduced us to “brush economy” and to the “10 stroke face”. More brush strokes, (more “rendering”) doesn’t necessarily make your art better. And can you paint a human face in just 1o brush strokes? Art doesn’t need to be photo-realistic to be objectively well-crafted. More pixels isn’t equal to “better”. I could write a whole essay right now about the animated live action remakes and why they directly prove my point. I would sum it up as “efficiency”. You can have an opulent, flowery, decadent painting or a brutalist set of shapes, but as long as they efficiently communicate what they’re each about, that’s high quality art.
Overall, judging art objectively is an important skill that I’m afraid is waning. The ability to pick out objective problems (such as “the value structure is making the composition muddy.” or “The hand anatomy is incorrect.”) and then critique and/or defend your points is CRITICAL to both painting and writing.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. Could you give everything your best, even if no one ever praised you for it?
For equestrian work, absolutely. I don’t compete so riding is between me and the horse, not for anyone else. But for art, that would be more difficult. Part of my drive is making stuff I know other people will be excited for, That’s not the entire reason, but it’s fun when people are as excited about your new book as you are. Getting stuff made for just me would be a challenge.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lmattsonart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barnlarn/
- Twitter: https://x.com/BarnLarn
- Other: https://www.skycowboyscomic.com/
