Associate member of Magdalen Road Studios working in oil and watercolours with interdisciplinary background in bookbinding and video, working as a camera operator, set building, rigging and editing.
Between all mod cons, grey streets and Oxford’s idyllic settings many experience the Querelle des Anciens et Modernes on a personal level, I want to find a continuity between the past and the present in my art. Since moving to Oxford in 2010 I’ve participated in photography and painting exhibitions at Jericho Art, the OAS open, and Magdalen Road Studios for Artweeks. I’m always inspired by the discipline and sacrifice I see in those around me as much as the epic journeys one finds in the realms of higher gossip, retrospectives, and the lives of great artists.
Dialogue
My first experience of modern art was in Paris at the state exhibition of Picasso’s private collection at the Pompidou Centre shortly after his death. If that wasn’t a wake up call then it should be now, how does one compile a comprehensive dialogue for the purposes of explaining and developing one’s own art without dying and hoping someone else will do it for you. How and what should art reflect in terms of theory, imagination, and sense perception?
Reason, the Senses, and Creativity
I don’t want my art to be merely a self help therapy session, yes it’s good to find satisfaction in what one does but who says the subconscious holds the key to well being? In terms of wholeness we have to consider other aspects of our consciousness.
Over the years my collection of sketchbooks record three main interests, the
visual world, the
inner cartoon like world of the imagination and thirdly an unusual notation of the
theoretical world of concepts and aesthetics which together foster a desire to build interfaces between each part. I hope by the process of note taking and painting to embody those links which are worth keeping and thereby explore theory, imagination, and a record of sense perception.
The good times and the bad times will slowly infiltrate my art, hopefully without negating an active role in the here and now, the shifting places and impressions of news will merge with reflections and personal notations. The images and materials even in the intuitive world of art will thus embed themselves in each other’s realms.
Retain & Contain
As a visual artist I enjoy questions within the art itself, can oil paintings retain the simplicity captured in sketchbooks and build on the initial idea without becoming over complicated? Yes the more materials and equipment the better but I’m inspired by those who can profoundly challenge our creative views using just brush and ink, a graphite stick or monochrome. That being said my 10 x 8 studio pushes management skills to the limit, economy of space dictates how much I can have on the go at any one time.
I very much centre my art around the need to discover and preserve ideas that are contained in the medium rather than illusion. There is no need for the visual arts to be subservient to other art forms even if complementary links exist such as between sculpture and architecture, music and film, dance and music, costumes and characters; painting is not an offshoot of poetry or illusion. Primarily there have to be complementary links between the subject, the paint, and the surface for starters, anything that shares that space lives by common rules. Even if the nature of art has shared influences between each discipline the one quality that all share is art itself.
Ancient and Modern
I’d quite like to get as far away from any direct influences as possible but it’s not, we build on the cultural development of others and hope the novelty doesn’t wear thin. The world rests halfway between two extremes of ancient and modern crafts, likewise I’ll happily potter about using watercolour and oil paints keeping both an electronic record and cross referencing ideas in sketchbooks from series to series. However, at the end of the day an artwork succeeds or fails by its ability to be complete in and of itself, and this hints at a challenge: how do we remain or indeed become whole, complete, content within ourselves? I’d like to believe there can be peace in our artistic struggles before, during and after we paint.
