I enjoy it, there's nothing I want to do as much as make work. It's so
deeply engrained in me to be creative, and painting has the biggest
pull to me, it's like a magnet. I've always been an observer, I like
to paint the world around me, the world that I in particular live in,
that there is a truth in that.
2 What do you intend your work to convey to an audience?
An honesty of my own experience of the world, hopefully beauty, an
emotional pull, and that the work is open enough to allow in the
viewer their own interpretation regardless of my own.
3 Why do you work in your chosen medium and format?
It's flexible, direct, hand-made, immediate, each bunch of
ingredients, makes/types of paint/mediums etc, have such huge
variations of flexibility, aesthetics. I can be solitary, I like to be
alone often, I like to see how far my own creative process can go. I
like collaboration too, as in making a film, or being in a band, but I
also love to push myself to the hilt, in my own time, painting is
perfect for that.
4 Technically speaking how do you go about constructing your work,
that is the image or object itself? What devices do you employ?
I usually have an image in my hand, an image of something I feel
compelled to paint.
5 Which period(s)/artists/specific works of art are you influenced by
and how directly? How does this manifest in your work?
It's really all eras, there are so many artists from the past and
present I find interesting, and from so many fields of creativity.
It's hard to pick a few out and not others, but big magnets to me for
as far back as I can recall being really aware, say early teens, are
Willem De Kooning, Picasso, Gainsborough, Balthus, Goya & Warhol. Two
of my favourite paintings in the world are 'Girl Reading at a Table'
by Picasso and The Mountain by Balthus.
6 What stimulates/informs your work from the world around you?
It's often something I will have an emotional response to, from a wide
range of emotions.
7 What stimulates/informs your work from your own personal experience?
I guess in particular sadness with a dash of hope.
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?
Newspapers, magazines, cinema, tv, music, poetry...
9 What are the main problems that you face in making your work?
Summoning up the confidence.
10 Where do you intend to take your work from here?
Don't know really, like to leave that open for it to be whatever it will be.