Shortly afterwards he visited the US. As Laing said: “The Pop Art movement had not been defined in America and its individual practitioners there were virtually unknown in Britain. Indeed, their work had scarcely been seen in America. I certainly had not heard of the four artists to whom (I had been given) introductions and I had no idea that within a year or two they would be acknowledged as the leaders of the American Pop Art movement. They were Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana and James Rosenquist.” He decided to move to America and worked in Indiana’s studio.

Laing used images from newspapers and magazines and was inspired by pictures from popular culture. He experimented with screen-printing and created a number of works using female film stars and models capturing the energy and sexual liberation of the 1960s. Laing then turned to imagery of skydivers and astronauts as subjects and eventually his work became more abstract and sculptural.

He became disillusioned with the so-called ‘American dream’ and left New York in 1969 to live in the Highlands of Scotland. This inspired him to use more substantial forms and rugged materials, modelling in clay and casting in bronze. 

From then on he shifted his practice towards sculpture. Like Eduardo Paolozzi he produced a number of high-profile public commissions including the ‘line out’ statue outside Twickenham Stadium, the cricketer outside Lords cricket ground, Sherlock in Picardy Place, Edinburgh and the bronze bas-relief twin dragons at each of the five exits of Bank under-ground station in London. 

In the seven years before his death in 2011 he returned to painting and his pop art style. He used it to make political statements about the war crimes in Iraq and once again depicted famous people in contemporary media such as Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse and Victoria Beckham.

Buy his artwork from mainstream galleries here.