Luke Pelletier

Luke Pelletier

Luke Pelletier is a jack of all trades. He makes paintings, songs, sculptures, installations, runs a session channel called “Back in the Garage,” books and promotes concerts, designs graphics, and co-founded Soggy Anvil Records.

Luke was born in Tampa, Florida, the middle child, to Bernard and Beth Pelletier. His father is a ferrier/blacksmith and his mother is a nurse anesthetist. Luke grew up going from farm to farm, watching his dad shoe horses. On the weekends, his family would pack into a camper trailer and drive down to Lake Whales, where his father would enter bird dog hunting competitions. Those weekends were spent swimming in alligator filled ponds, riding ATVs, and looking for shade where he could find it.

Luke moved to western North Carolina when he was 7 years old. Not being from the continental south, Luke found himself feeling like an outsider. During the long Appalachian summers of his childhood, he found himself running around with a ragtag group of of friends, skateboarding, playing in punk bands, throwing house shows, going swimming in the forest, chasing girls, getting into fights, making art, and longing for something bigger and stranger than the small town he felt stuck in. He was expelled from school 2 weeks into his freshman year for spray painting penises all over the high school with his brother and two other friends. His stint in "alternative school" only cemented his feeling of being an outsider.

Luke Pelletier set off for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. It was here that he studied under Karl Wirsum and Alexander Valentine. He developed a deep appreciation for the Chicago Imagists and their approach to making art. Luke primarily made paintings, but hung out in the print department because he liked the conversations around distributing art in an accessible way. While he was in school, he wrote and recorded 7 albums, changing his band name with each project, trying on different hats. He graduated from SAIC in 2015.

Luke moved to Los Angeles right after school, where he started dating the painter, Kristen Liu-Wong. Luke has traveled the world exhibiting his art. He’s shown his paintings, sculptures, and photographs in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, New Orleans, Boston, Korea, Paris, Italy, and Germany. At some point in all the madness, Kristen married Luke.

In 2021, Luke started “Back in the Garage,” with his brother, Tristan Pelletier. The project is a video session channel that has grown into live showcases and a thriving community. From this session channel, “Soggy Anvil Records” was born, a Los Angeles based record label that supports visionary singer songwriters.

In his art, Luke Pelletier weaves personal anecdotes with fiction as he makes paintings and writes songs about drinking, love, crime, drugs, ambition, art, and mania.