HOW I PAINT
Socttish painter, even the Glasgow
Boys to a certain extent; their work is
vigorous, representational stuff. My
biggest influence was spending a lot
of time working and painting from life.
In the life room, short poses don’t
allow for polished paintings, so there’s
a dynamism to making a picture.
A big part of drawing is about using
your eyes rather than your brain –
trying to draw what you see, not what
you know. Anatomy is important,
however. Having an understanding
of what’s going on underneath the
surface is quite enabling. It frees me
up to get involved in things like colour
and mark making instead.
There was a prejudice around that
studying anatomy would lead to a
certain kind of work: quite refined and
detailed, a Victorian, academic feel.
That is a possibility, but it also can
be used in the way that Egon Schiele
obviously understood his anatomy:
to liberate the work. People looking at
a picture are not necessarily going to
know anatomy, but if it’s working in
the wrong way, it undermines it a little
bit. Understanding anatomy is quite
freeing, I find. And if your subject is
the figure, which mine is, then you’re
learning about yourself as well.PAINTING FROM LIFE
When I’m making a painting from life,
time is key. The first thing to capture
is the flow or the movement of a pose,
especially if it’s a two-minute pose.
A short pose is likely to have a strong,
dynamic movement to it. After that,
it’s about creating the form with light
and shade. Again, if we’re talking
about a pose of five minutes or so,
getting the lights coming forward and
the shadows receding back is about
all there is time to do.RIGHT Nicci, oil on
panel, 80x60cm
BELOW After
Rembrandt, oil on
panel 30x25cm
BELOW RIGHT
After Portrait of
Carpeaux, oil on
panel, 21x15cm