I can’t remember not making art - I feel frustrated if I spend too much time not making any – seeing paintings has always made me want to paint
2 What do you intend your work to convey to an audience?
I want to make pictures that people can inhabit, relate to, think about, question, embellish, react to and want to come back to – like any good book ,film ,music or painting – make a connection in some way
3 Why do you work in your chosen medium and format?
I have occasionally tried to vary my approach but generally my work is made with paint and I approach it in terms of painting i.e. when I made paper collages they were made initially to inform new paintings and were made to emulate the qualities of painting and in trying to do this possibly futile thing new painting techniques developed. – I am inspired by paintings and personally get more from painting than any other medium – scale wise I have made tiny pieces that draw the viewer in ( 9 x 10 cm) and large pieces ( 7 x 9 ft) that need both distance and closeness to view - I have played around with varying the physical experiences of viewing my work.
4 Technically speaking how do you go about constructing your work, that is the image or object itself? What devices do you employ?
My approach generally stems from photography – I take lots of photos as source usually places, people from my immediate environment – I use the photos as a starting point – images that I think will evoke certain feelings, sensations, memories then I’ll probably make drawings and quick paintings from the images or remembered images then move on to paintings that initially refer to both the photos and the drawings and then the painting takes over and it becomes about painting and other things enter like other paintings, literature, memories, films, music….
5 Which period(s)/artists/specific works of art are you influenced by and how directly? How does this manifest in your work?
Absolutely allsorts – it varies, I get obsessed by different paintings/artists for different periods of time – it changes but there are (the usual + obvious) consistencies for me – Munch, Delacroix,Goya,Velasquez,Guston,Fragonard,Gaugin,Rembrandt etc etc Munch definitely Munch – various contemporary artists (my friends ) and Dana Schutz, Peter Doig, others… often you paint in your own way then you may recognise it’s like something else, another painting so you look at that artist and it feels good so you do it more – like validation I suppose – it’s about making connections – and it’s an ego thing – sometimes you just go out to directly paint like someone else. Generally I just steal a bit from everyone.
6 What stimulates/informs your work from the world around you?
What I know, mainly my immediate environment, personal memories, stories, film, music again allsorts
7 What stimulates/informs your work from your own personal experience?
Day to day stuff - place, people, conversation etc
8 From where do you derive your other visual source material (i.e. non art historical) and how do you implement this material within your work?
Mainly my own photos (some found images) of places/things that I think will provide me with the source to make paintings that may somehow emulate some of that ‘essence’ that most of us experience – this is generally my starting point
9 What are the main problems that you face in making your work?
Myself! –Wanting each painting to contain everything! I constantly compare my own work to art that I think is amazing/timeless etc masterpieces so it’s hard to feel satisfied but that’s good in a way cus you keep trying to obtain something more
10 Where do you intend to take your work from here?
Each piece of work informs the next and it’s when I’m making a painting that I generally begin thinking about the next one – if I have an idea of a series of paintings or at least the next couple of paintings it always alters through the process of making them.