August 2023
Q. What is your background / training and how influential has that been?
I didn’t go to art college until I was 27 having trained as a social worker before changing career. When I left school and went to university at Bradford I started drawing (art stopped at school when you were thirteen). At Middlesbrough while doing my social work training,I drew a lotmore,in pen and ink and pencil. I was particularly inspired by working at British Steel as a shift worker for three years after completing my social work training where the scale of the industrial landscape was truly vast, hard edged with a strong geometrical structure, I loved the landscape of Teeside, but I also loved the growing landscape and drew both. In Teeside whilst at British Steel I went to adult education art classes in print and drawing and my drawing tutor pushed me hard in observational drawing as I wanted to go to art college. At Loughborough on my BA. course I was told I was a sculptor though I was happy in print and painting and was disappointed that you had to choose. I learnt most from History of Art where the tutor made me think out of the usual channels more than the studio tutors did. I became influenced by the Constructivist and Futurists in the last 18 months. It was a conventional college and it wasn’t until the third year when I started thinking more for myself. The conventionality of the college however gave me something to kick against. I felt about college that I had to unlearn a lot, but it did open my eyes to abstraction. I remember seeing Matisse’s Snail for the first time and not being able to understand it at all but then I think college rather taught, that you had to understand rather than be excited by and Matisse’s Snail did excite.
The MA in Trent over two years was a good time I took on an allotment and made sculpture much of it out of plants and trees,that is where my growing sculpture began. In the last year I had this big abandoned hospital ward as a studio and made work out of huge piles of folded clothes in selected colours, large forms in thick layers of folded and coloured newsprint and pieces in coloured wire and woven and folded lead strips. These pieces feel more like drawing to me now and the current wax sculpture and drawing feel close to these early works. I had not drawn much since the BA course,I think it was the work in the hospital ward and meeting Pauline Burbidge whose work was intensely geometric at the time, encouraged me to think of drawing abstractly. College pushed the idea of observational drawing. I moved to Scotland in 1993 with my now wife Pauline Burbidge. My move to the Scottish Borders prompted me to start drawing again.
Q. What is the inspiration behind the specific works in the exhibition and how do they sit within the context of your work to date?
If I take the drawing and waxworks together,I would say it is a continuing exploration of the grid but in looser form sometimes only implied and the invisible underlying structure of things which I know are there. The structures under the earth the winds and air above they all have an effect on us and on me on my mood and on my direction of travel. In winter drawings tend to be mostly monochrome in autumn and spring the colours of the season creep into the work. It is no linear progression, but expanding rings of exploration. The most recent drawing as in the small drawing (42) have been emphasizing verticality which has run through several of this year’s drawings. Increasingly the vertical Allanbank with its trees which I see out of my studio widows has been influencing me. I don’t attempt to draw the Allanbank but try and include the feelings of it within the drawings. That is this year. What comes next? I will find out.
Q. How do the processes of drawing and sculpture relate to each other in your work?
The waxworks have a direct link, I see these as 3D versions of the drawing, though simpler. The sculpture and Growing Sculpture all have the link of growth all the pieces in the show have a tree as a starting point. With the drawing its more invisible structures and the sense of things growing, the sculpture deals more with the visible structures of the living world
Q. Could you discuss the environment concerns present in your work.
I am not an environmental campaigner in my work,the politics muddy vision. Trees have always fascinated me;I am drawn to them and I have been influenced by people like David Nash and Andy Goldsworthy. I like to be involved in growing things. I am interested in an art which is incomplete, which keep changing long after I am dead, that I am interested in and the combination of a tree and a rigid object and how one effects the other. Stone Cracker, will the tree break the stone as I think it will or will the stone keep the tree contained forcing the tree to flow over the top of the stone in its effort to grow. How does that affect how we view the tree and the stone.
Q. You have described your drawing to be more about the energy than any particular subject matter. Could you expand upon this?
The invisible energies of the root’s structures under the earth the coursing of sap through the ‘veins ‘of the trees and plants the energy contained in bulbs which suddenly burst forth in spring, the huge energies which drive the forces of wind sea sky and universe, it is miraculous still, despite what we know. The scientist can tell you how it all works but you can’t get past the wonder of it. I build up my own imaginary structures which appear in different forms on the paper and in sculpture too.
Q. I’m interested in the time frame of your work with drawings taking place every day. Do you feel there is a meditative quality to this process?
The drawing takes place daily if I can manage. In winter it is often all day as the distractions of the big sculpture project,the garden and woods are much. Most of the drawing happens late autumn winter and early spring. If I am lucky, I keep going into the summer, however a break from drawing is good, it forces a re-think on return. The rhythm of daily work in the same space and the same environment is meditative helped by listening to music which calms me (mostly classical chamber works). I get into a zone where I am surrounded only by the drawing. In the spring and summer,I tend to be moving around different places and being with people more.
Q. You consistently use the geometry of the square format for your drawings –could you enlarge on the significance of this format?
Before 2010 I was using the rectangle but when I chose in 2010 to go to a bigger scale I decided on the square. This of course could change.The square is an avoidance. The rectangle has its associations with landscape or portrait the square does not. There are too many choices the square is one decisionless. The constraints of the square force me to think harder about what I am doing; it is a very strong structure which I am constantly trying to break out of.
Q. Your drawings range from 10” sketches to 5ft large-scale pieces. What is the significance of scale in your work?
In 2010 I started to focus almost entirely on drawing,my sculpture felt it was in complete limbo. I wanted to see what scale did to a drawing. I thought it just might feel -well bigger. It didn’t,it changed the dynamic, instead of drawing from the wrist you use the whole arm even the whole body. The drawings now seem to enclose the vision. The small 30cm sketches are a convenient small size as I use the end role of the paper, I buy for the big drawings which breaks down to this dimension. The size keeps the drawing as sketch,only potential for a big work. The small size enables me to get through a lot of ideas quickly when trying to find what might work on the big scale. Most of the sketches are rejected,though I will look back at them perhaps months later and recognise an opportunity missed. In the early days of the large scale works I used to have two intermediary sizes but I found drawing these just felt like a scaling up, the big drawing became too fixed. By moving from small sketch to large you have to interpret far more as the sketch doesn’t tell you enough just to upscale.
Q. Clearly your sculptural practice involves a diverse range of materials. Can you talk about your reasons and preferences for the materials you use?
I do like variety but different ideas demand different materials. With the Growing Sculpture the idea often dictates the material used and for that matter the type of tree. when making the Living Bridges at Marchmont which are planted over a stream I choose Alder, a riverside tree. Oak for Skyboat as being the strongest of trees, the choice of a wooden boat because it felt right to have wood with wood and the advice was it would probably survive longer than boats made of other materials. I used lead sheet a lot in earlier work and that was constant but the object wrapped in lead changed according to the idea e.g.: shovels, a branch of a tree or a stone. I choose lead because it is a very sensuous material, few can avoid touching it when in its new dark grey with slight sheenstate. Lead is a very amenable material which readily takes the shape of other things. Trees as a material because of their scale their strength and their ability to be transformed by training and pruning.
Q. Who or what have been your greatest influences as an artist? Which artists most inspire you?
Incredibly wide range of artists. I enjoy looking most at more ‘conventional’ work of landscape and portrait the sketch of a room a person or landscape I love to see and yet have no real wish to emulate. I gather something undefinable from this looking. These days I prefer not to look at work which might influence,I don’t need any more influence,I am saturated by influences. Every time I see something new,I see possible new directions for myself with in it. I have direction I don’t need anymore. My first real influence was the De Vinci cartoon which was bought I think for the National Gallery in London in the 60’s? I saw this drawing and was so amazed by it. Since then, I have often preferred the drawing to the finished painting there is so much more economy of means, brevity, life and immediacy of expression. I was hooked on drawing after that, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. College. I went for the Constructivists and Futurists and then to Abstract Expressionism: Jackson, Krasner Rothko and the Minimalists –Sol Le Witt for his drawing and Agnes Martin. But then again when I look at the Impressionists, I am so excited by the marks say Seuratort Monet makes to build up an image or further back in time Turner and his late watercolours. I don’t really know any more what my influences are. Sculpture I have said Nash, Goldsworthy. For thes tudio work. I would say Sierra and his lead work particularly and Gormley for his lead work.
Q. How do you see your work relating to traditional and contemporary art practice?
I hope the work relates to traditional and contemporary, I want the work to feel out of time.
Q. What are the latest developments in your work?
I am not sure sometimes what part of this expanding circle I am on at anyone time or is it a circle that is ever contracting. I don’t know what is ahead,is my answer to developments.I am looking for greater simplicity but don’t quite know what that might look like. In the growing sculpture I am trying to create things which when begun goes as much as possible its own way to whatever is at the end. Stone Cracker should need nothing else doing to it. The drawing the same. The most recent drawing (as in the small drawing 42in your list) have been emphasizing verticality which runs through several of this year’s drawings. Increasingly the vertical Allanbank with its trees seen out of my studio widows has been influencing me. I don’t attempt to draw the Allanbank but try and include the feelings of it within the drawings. What comes next? I will find out.
