18 artistFebruary 2021 http://www.painters-online.co.uk
IN CONVERSATION
particular table or at a particular angle.
I’ll take photos of it for reference, or
sometimes I will just draw or paint
or collage elements of the still life
straight on to a support or into a
sketchbook. Depending on how I want
the composition to develop, I may add
other objects into the still life later.
I often work on a series of still-life
paintings at the same time, in rotation.
This keeps the pictures and the process
fresh for me.’
Exploring memories
‘Over the last ten years I have become
more interested in more narrative types
of painting. I’ve been making a series of
paintings based around recollections,
triggered by photos that celebrate and
explore memories of my childhood. In
this series I sometimes use some of my
mother’s discarded paintings on canvas
as a base for my own work. I roughly
scumble over the original paintings with
a thin skin of paint in a neutral colour,
allowing for elements of the original
painting to show through. This is a way
of somehow incorporating the past into
the present. I square-up the photos I
use as reference and paint the images
much larger, square by square, in more
or less detail, on to the recycled canvas.
This is the basis for a painting that then
will develop in a more metaphorical
and unpredictable way.
‘Feeding in to this are memories of
my mother taking me as a child to the
V&A to see The Raphael Cartoons;I remember the figures in these
paintings nearly filling the canvas
(the scale really impressed me), and
being quite dreamlike and often near
water. Additionally, having regularly
visited St Ives over the years I’m in
touch with various west-country artists
such as Naomi Frears, Lisa Wright and
Joy Wolfenden Brown, who work in a
narrative vein and whose work I really
admire.
‘This more recent large-scale,
more narrative work is much more
autobiographical. From a combination
of photographs, fabrics and book
illustrations that help me to make
associations, I try to crystallise
reflections from the past into ideas for
paintings that then will develop in a
more metaphorical and unpredictable
way.
‘I like to work on large pieces of canvas- sometimes recycled paintings – on
which I create a textured background
of some sort. I might mix fine sand or
texture material that you can often buy
in model-making shops with acrylic
paint to make a loose, coarse-grained
background on which to lay more
detailed work. I often use sandpaper
to rub down the surface before starting
on the more detailed painting that the
found reference has inspired.’
t Ken Loach, collage on canvas, 303/4 3 251/4in
(78 3 64cm).
‘When I asked Ken Loach if he would sit for his
portrait, he kindly agreed. Despite his kind
and gentle demeanour, I wanted to capture
Ken’s underlying slightly quizzical expression
and air of quiet determination. He sat for me
in one of his almost hallmark blue shirts ; it
was a lucky choice as the blue of the shirt
was a good contrast to the pinky-brown of
his complexion. My aim was to make the
portrait very detailed in parts and for other
areas to be just suggested or sketched in, to
give the picture a certain graphic strength,
so the eye would be drawn to the complexity
of the stratified collaged areas portraying
the texture of skin in contrast to the plain,
flat background. This contrast would
emphasise the characteristic shape of Ken’s
head and shoulders against the bare, white
canvas. I built up areas of the image using
thousands of slivers of paper cut and torn
from magazines and newspapers, that I glued
down like layers of membrane or epidermis,
enjoying the serendipity of the words and
letters that turned up randomly on the paper
fragments. Sometimes, by chance, these
words or phrases seemed to bear an odd
relevance to Ken’s life and times.’TA