July 2023
Q. What is your background / training and how influential has that been?
Foundation course in bath mid 80’s and the degree in Manchester where I moved to modernism. It was not until a further two years of pursuing this post art college that I eventually realised it was not for me, stopping painting for a year until I decided to start charcoal drawings inspired by the streets of Bath initially.
Q. Your work brings to mind the work of other en plein air artists who have painted London – Sickert, Whistler, Monet etc. Who are your painting mentors and inspirations?
I have an array of painters in my head. It is not so much a painter’s whole body of work though. I have individual paintings in my head: Caillebotte’s ‘Floor Scrapers’, Stanhope Forbes’ ‘A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach’, Manet’s ‘Bar at the Folies-Bergère’ and his beautiful portrait of ‘Stephane Mallarmé’, Constable’s Weymouth bay studies, John Sell Cotman’s remarkable watercolour landscapes, Joaquín Sorolla’s ‘Sewing the Sail’. I guess a big influence on me is Sickert and closer to home of course Ken Howard who I painted with and whose work I was always looking at. He underlined the importance of tone and colour.
Q. What specifically draws you to a particular scene for painting?
I guess it is something that tickles me. Very often it is something architectural. I am looking for a quirkiness. I am after a sense of place. I talk about the everyday in subject matter but of course when I see a vast alpine vista it is impossible not to paint that. Anything that takes your breath away has to be painted but to just paint those scenes as if on a constant grand tour is not real life and that’s what I am interested in mostly.
Q. How often do you return to the same location and, if so, why?
Rarely I do it alla prima – only if it is something transient like lowering sun, snow… etc…
I usually return to make sure, get it closer to amend my first guess or approximation to something closer to the reality which involves changing errors and looking further in to the scene for more information. Very often it is three or four sittings.
Q. Do different cities inspire you in different ways?
Of course. I want to get to know them. I am intrigued by Glasgow at the moment.
Q. I am intrigued by your reference to the use of memory in your work – what role does this have?
You realise you use your memory so much more than you think. It often gets in the way – prevents from seeing what is there but particularly with figures it is crucial in trying to capture the feel of a stance or a movement. I say I do ‘see and put’ but I think there is a bit more going on maybe?
Q. Acute observational focus is central to your work. With this in mind, can you reflect and expand on the role of drawing in your practice?
To draw as you paint is one of my ambitions. To lay it down in the right place in the right way as opposed to mapping it out and filling it in. So, the drawing for me should be the same as painting. Drawing is a way we begin to understand, a landscape or architecture. In a way it is the structure on which we can lay the impression. I am always disappointed with my drawing.
Q. What significance do journal notations have in your working process?
I read notes made on the back of a board. When eventually I decipher my awful paint brush writing it jogs a memory – something that happened, someone I met and for me it adds colour and helps me remember those sittings and people. I have an appalling memory for events and people. Thank God I paint.
Q. What do you see as the relationship between your paintings?
I guess they all are parts of a story of an old man wandering around and seeing things that appeal to him. I guess as a whole they say something about me, but I do not set out to do this. I simply think I am recording bits of the world in the way I know best.
Q. How do you manage working in public places and the curiosity of people passing by?
I love it really. There’s lots of noise – people saying the same thing / joke. I reply sometimes registering, sometimes not. Sometimes someone says something interesting and I am happy to enter their world for a bit until I return to mine. Meeting people and being amongst people is the best place to be because as I always bang on about people are basically nice and all really like making each other happier.
Q. Do your own emotions affect the scene you are painting?
I don’t think so really. When I am stressed with painting often it means I paint better though.
Q. How do different seasons and weathers conditions impact on you work?
Well as you’d imagine. You paint more impressions, less detail in the freezing cold and the opposite when the weather is more comfortable. Wind is the hardest to paint in – basically trying to make contact with the board.
Q. Do you ever continue the work in a studio situation?
Well, I do every now and then – straighten the odd line add a missing limb but I question whether it ever really improves the paintings!
Q. Your preference is for using oil paint – why?
It is the richness of it. And the fact you go backwards and forwards – dark to light to dark. I would LOVE to be able to paint watercolour like Cotman, but I cannot.
Q. You work on both small and larger format – how does this transition of scale affect the work?
Love to fiddle in the boards – to see all the marks, to scratch, to wipe… painting on canvas you get less of that, and you have to be bolder.
Q. Can you tell me how this latest body of work relates to previous?
I am doing kind of what I have always done – just painting stuff that tickles and things I think I must paint. I do not work to a theme; it does not suit me. I work on whatever tickles me at any point, so it is hard to parcel this body of work up.
Q. Where do you position yourself within the contemporary art world?
Oh, I think there is a mutual agreement between me and the contemporary art world that we operate separately! Well, it would be mutual if the contemporary art world had any idea of my existence. I prefer to position myself in the public domain. That’s where I want to be judged. And there is no better compliment to me than if I were to hear someone say, “I have lived here all my life pal and you have captured this place to a ‘T’.”
Q. What do you see as your defining moment now that you have stepped down after serving five years as president of The New English Arts Club?
I am still a member. It took me three years to realise what I should be doing, and I think by the end I had nearly sorted how to try and address the fact that most of our talent is never seen or realised in the vast majority of young people who cannot afford to pursue art. We did four good things at the NEAC in those five years – we started to officially address our equality and diversity within the club, we overhauled our election to membership procedure to an open and inclusive system giving equal opportunity to all, we held our first ever contested election for my successor and the best of all we launched a new £5,000 annual scholarship with a view to addressing that economic in balance and the results were amazing – 300 applicants and 30 long listed, any one of whom we would have been proud of as a scholar. It was so heartening to see the quality of figurative painting out there at grass roots and the obvious ned for support. The successful candidate said the award was ‘life changing’.
