Why do so many people think the things we create have to be instantly recognisable? Ideas that leave you curious, that get you interested, are far more memorable than those that demand no involvement beyond recognition of what they denote. Abstract painting, if we let it, kick-starts the imagination, and a train of thought that is ours alone.
If there is such a thing as a reference, it is not outside of the painting in some third thing called “the subject”, but is in the mind of the viewers themselves.
My paintings deal with the fractured nature of human character. By the use of duality - two personalities inside the picture - I’m often showing how the person we live with inside ourselves (the one nobody else sees) and the person we show to other people are in tension and sometimes in conflict with each other. This is not necessarily a dark or negative image, and in fact there is a great deal of joy in my pictures. It is simply a very odd thing about what it is to be a human being.
It starts with drawing. I see an object, observe something happen or hear something said. It could be litter on the floor, the shadow of something which I can’t even see, a woman with her children, an argument overheard.
I draw it immediately as an abstract and this in itself is relatively unusual. These drawings are like held notes in the air, or the moment when a dancer leaps and you hold your breath to see if they make it.
The drawing is executed at fantastic speed. I’m capturing the feeling - the essence of seeing the pile of fruit, the charm of how she’s handling her children, the angry voices. The kit I use to do this with is, of necessity, very portable. A few pencils (soft, hard, fat and thick) a few coloured crayons, a pot of black ink and very small notebooks.
These drawings can be pieces of work in their own right, but they also provide lines and marks and a point to embark from. If I develop them to make a painting, they provide the structure, to be turned into a composition that excites the eye.
The background is tremendously important. It’s an element in the composition rather than simply the basis on which to put marks. It holds all the disparate elements together and it’s where I create the initial depth. The background colour is pierced, so it’s seen as having something behind it. I try to produce a surface you feel you can dive into - so delicious you want to explore it, dance around within it, smell it, taste it.
I’ve worked with the materials I use long enough to have an element of predictability. I know that by bringing two liquids together they will form a puddle in a particular way. I know how a quill will create splatters or a feather will create a particular result if I spin it, draw it across one way, pull it the other, or drag it. But none of this is precise, control is never total, and it’s important to accommodate the chance and allow it to happen.
My ideal viewer, once I’ve captured their attention, will spend time with the painting and explore it, allow their mind to run and to make connections. And that they will understand that the title is not a description of a “subject” but it may connect them with something inside themselves.
Titles offer a signpost, not a description. “You might like to start from here”.
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