Eating Mushrooms in a Cemetery |
Where do you get your picture ideas from?
Basically I just sit and scribble. If I'm in the right frame of mind, I'll find myself covering sheet after sheet in tiny sketches. It's not a case of consciously thinking of something and then setting it down on paper. The ideas just pop up from some dark and shadowy part of my mind. They're often as much a surprise to me as to anyone else.
You obviously choose your picture titles very carefully...
Well the titles often add an extra dimension to the work. But I wouldn't say I choose the titles any more than I choose the picture ideas. Once again it's my subconscious mind that's doing all the hard work here.
So which comes first, the title or the image?
Usually they both appear at the same time. Sometimes the title, like the picture, will change slightly during the painting process - titles usually get shorter, and pictures get simpler. But I seldom work on a picture without having a title in mind.
Would you say that each of your pictures has a story behind it?
No, I wouldn't say that - despite the fact that I called one of my shows 'Short Stories'! As far as I'm concerned, each image is complete in itself, there is no 'before' or 'after'. In fact my pictures are actually remarkably static. Even when something appears to be happening - an object falling, say - there's a kind of timelessness, a sense of it being a frozen moment.
And that's very deliberate. There's a particular kind of ambiguity that I aim for. Which is why you won't get a very satisfactory answer if you come up to me at a private view and ask me what a particular picture means. I'm in the business of creating mysteries, not solving them.
For me, a successful painting almost by definition won't have a precise meaning the way a shopping list, for example, has a specific meaning. The same goes for a good poem, film, novel or whatever. There's an ambiguity at the heart of it that makes it seem subtly different every time you encounter it.
Do you deliberately choose certain themes to explore?
No, it's the themes that choose me. It's often only after I've finished a series of paintings that someone will point out to me that all of them are about loss, instability, deceit, death or whatever. I can be working away on the individual pictures and not notice the overall pattern.
Can you say something about the role humour plays in your work?
I guess it allows me to tackle disturbing subjects, like the ones I just mentioned, without upsetting too many people. Or myself, for that matter.
Where there's humour in my work, it's always dark humour. There's a certain bittersweet quality that I find very appealing. Most of my paintings are on an edge, a boundary - finely balanced between funny and sad, day and night, autumn and winter.
Which artists or art movements have had the biggest influence on your work?
Recently I was looking back at some of the stuff I drew and painted as a kid - before I knew anything much about art at all - and what amazed me was that it was all so eerily similar to what I do nowadays. So in some ways I think I was always destined to turn out the way I am today.
That said, discovering the work of Paul Klee when I was a teenager was really liberating. I love the small scale of his work, and his restless energy. And he was the first 'respectable' artist I came across who clearly felt that it was possible to be funny and serious at the same time. Surprisingly, there are people even today who don't seem to have grasped that.
And what about influences outside of art?
If I had to pick one thing, I'd say travel. Someone once wrote that "traveling is the ruin of all happiness". And ruined happiness is always a good way to kick-start the creative process.
You have a Doctorate in Philosophy, which must be a rare thing amongst professional artists. How do you think that has affected your work?
Well my work is arguably quite thoughtful and reflective. But I guess the reason I started studying Philosophy in the first place was the same reason that I paint today, which is that I find the world, life... everything, really... completely baffling. Philosophy didn't solve the problem for me. And I don't expect that painting will either. But it's a whole lot more fun than sweating over Kant and Wittgenstein.
Germs |
Would you call your work 'modern art'?
I don't know. Does that term even mean anything these days? In some respects my work is unashamedly non-modern. Painting is rather unfashionable in some circles these days. But then I'm not especially keen to move in circles.
So you're not interested in working in, say, digital media?
Quite the opposite. Actually a large part of my very first solo show was about digital image manipulation. And I was one of the first artists to stage an interactive art event on the web. Currently I spend a lot of time tinkering with computer-generated sound. And if I can find the time I'm keen to do more work with video. But whilst I'm happy to embrace new media, I see no compelling reason to dump the old ones.
How do you achieve those amazing enamel-like effects in your paintings?
With lots and lots of layers of translucent glaze, working on top of heavy, rough watercolour paper. It's a laborious, time-consuming process.
What kind of paints do you use?
Watercolours and acrylics mainly, but often there are other media in there too, with touches of pencil, pastel, oil colour, inks... All sorts, really.
And what about painting tools?
I do some slightly nonstandard things, for example using hog bristle brushes - which are normally used for oils - with water-based media. And for that matter, sable watercolour brushes with thick acrylic. I also work with pretty much anything that comes to hand, including scalpel blades, etching tools, sandpaper, cotton buds and fingers and thumbs.
How did you come up with these techniques?
Just by playing around, really. And having a few lucky accidents. It's a style that I've developed and refined over the last ten years or so. Like anything, you need to develop an intuitive feel for it to get good results, and that only comes with time.
How long does a single painting take to complete?
You wouldn't believe how often I get asked that question. And no, I still don't know the answer.
I work on several pictures simultaneously, otherwise I would never get anything done. There's a long sequence of processes involved, and paintings need to dry out thoroughly between them. If I only painted one at a time I would be forever sitting and waiting. So a painting takes ages to finish. And maybe an even longer time to get started.
Do you have a fixed work routine?
As regards what I do each day, that's fairly irregular. I tend to work in a cyclical way - I'll spend a week or two fiddling with drawings, then a week or two painting up the best of them. But even if I don't have a fixed regime I do have some fixed requirements, including a hi-fi system and large quantities of tea.
Do you find painting relaxing?
No. I never relax.
Do you have a favourite picture?
Usually it's the one I'm working on at the time. Mind you, I'm not very keen on parting with any of them. And there are some pictures that I absolutely refuse to let go of. I don't paint to sell, I sell so that I can afford to carry on painting.
Where do you see yourself and your work in ten years time?
I can't even think ten days ahead, let alone ten years. And I don't plan where my work is going, it just evolves according to its own mysterious laws.
What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?
Don't take advice. In fact, don't even ask for it.
Morsel |