Star of Navigation, 2020
HOW
All the paintings begin with a title. That’s the seed and the anchor, without a title they always become lost and fail. I usually come up with the title myself, but on occasion I will take it from a poem, or a book, or just something I hear or see that connects with what I’m interested in. I will start a piece by creating a watercolor painting that is usually quite tight and realistic.
Once this underpainting is finished, I apply to it layers of tissue paper tinted with watercolor paint. These act as a sort of glaze, allowing the pigment that is suspended with in them to be infiltrated with light in a way that it wouldn’t be if the paint was simply lying on a flat surface. This is why the colors in my paintings can look so rich and luminous. The number of layers of tissue that I use depends on how the piece progresses. Sometimes they can be so numerous that they completely obscure the underpainting so that it becomes an invisible foundation. At other times I use them quite sparingly so that the brushstrokes of the underpainting can be discerned. In addition to adding another dimension to the quality of the color, the technique also introduces an element of unpredictably to the work. This can be incredibly frustrating at times but can also generate interesting surprises and take the picture in unexpected directions. In this way, the paintings are a blend of the controlled and the uncontrolled.
Ultimately, I know a picture is finished when it gives me a “kick”. That is to say I look at it and just know, instantly, that it is right. If I have to persuade myself that’s it’s right, then it isn’t. It’s not finished until I get that kick.
WHY?
David Bowie once said that he didn’t believe that it was a good idea for creative people to delve too deeply into the reasons why they do what they do. He thought that too much analysis of the creative spirit could result in it’s dissolution, or sterilization. I tend to agree with him on this; if your work is going well, it’s probably best to let sleeping dogs lie. That said, I feel having some understanding of the reasons why an artist does what they do within their own creative domain is probably beneficial (why anybody is creative per se remains a total mystery to me). So here I go, tip toeing past the sleeping dogs…
I never really felt like I was born in the right time (place yes, time no). Growing up in 1970’s England, the past always seemed to make more sense to me than the present ( I feel this even more so these days now that so much of what we perceive as reality is nothing more than silicon and light waves). As a child, I was never interested in reading fiction, it bored me, but anything about Vikings, Romans, The Samurai, Spartans, and so on certainly got my attention. This interest in the past also manifested itself in an attraction to medieval paintings, particularly those of the Dutch artist Bruegel the Elder.
I found all his paintings fascinating (I vividly remember becoming morbidly obsessed with the horrors displayed in “The Triumph of Death”). But the one I responded to the most was “The Hunters in the Snow”. The world it depicted, the frozen landscape, the trudging weary hunters, the souls gathered around a roaring fire, all seemed so natural to me. It was a time that made more sense; that I would have been at ease in.
The Hunters in the Snow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565. Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna, Austria
This is without question a romantic vision of the past (my father, being a craftsman, once told me that he would often wish for a workshop in Renaissance Florence, but then the reality of sixteenth century dentistry would quickly make him reconsider). But I would say that this sense of a personal displacement in time is at the root of my attraction to the past, and this in turn has become the focus of my art.
To this end, when I create a painting I usually employ symbolic motifs of the timeless and the primal; fire, the sea, the moon, sun and stars, the worship of God (or gods). I will usually combine these motifs with an imagined landscape, or in some cases abstract forms that hopefully accentuate what I’m trying to get across.
The technique that I use, watercolor collage, is particularly suited to helping me achieve what I am attempting to do as it tends to add an ethereal, slightly dreamlike quality to the pictures, which is I think the way that most people envision the past, or even memories of distant events in their own lives.
Ultimately, I don’t know why I have never felt at home in the modern age, but I definitely see this dissonance as more blessing than curse. Without this peculiarity of spirit, I doubt I would have got as much out of being here as I have, or would ever have had within me what is necessary to become an artist.
There, I said it and the dogs are still sleeping, I think I’m ok.
To this end, when I create a painting I usually employ symbolic motifs of the timeless and the primal; fire, the sea, the moon, sun and stars, the worship of God (or gods). I will usually combine these motifs with an imagined landscape, or in some cases abstract forms that hopefully accentuate what I’m trying to get across.
The technique that I use, watercolor collage, is particularly suited to helping me achieve what I am attempting to do as it tends to add an ethereal, slightly dreamlike quality to the pictures, which is I think the way that most people envision the past, or even memories of distant events in their own lives.
Ultimately, I don’t know why I have never felt at home in the modern age, but I definitely see this dissonance as more blessing than curse. Without this peculiarity of spirit, I doubt I would have got as much out of being here as I have, or would ever have had within me what is necessary to become an artist.
There, I said it and the dogs are still sleeping, I think I’m ok.
Dog at Rest, Gerrit Dou, 1650, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA