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Manchester, So Much to Answer for...
Because people invariably ask me why I paint in the particular style I do, especially what the extreme agitated distortion of many of the buildings is all about, I am presuming that anyone perusing this online gallery will wonder likewise, and so I have taken it upon myself to try and answer that here. Whenever I walk around Manchester I get so excited by many of the buildings, streets and skylines I see, that I at least want to photograph them, but more specifically crave to capture some of that emotionally stimulating impression in paint where I can represent more of it and less of the physical actuality the camera records.
As a part of this process I put any reproduced scene through interesting forms of derangement expressed via colour, brushwork, proportionality, shapes, perspective, innate harmonious relationships, energy, and an eclectic juxtaposition of styles. Basically, everything short of throwing in the kitchen sink! Sometimes, I am specifically trying to convey existentially disorientating feelings through these techniques and other times just a general sensual vibrancy.
History and Techniques
The unique style of my paintings is not something that happened overnight, but is the distillation of a long and protracted history which involves encounters and experimentation with various artistic influences. My earliest paintings are simply an attempt to reproduce what I saw, as though I was a human camera; yet as I became more interested in all different kinds of post-impressionist painting, I began to play around and experiment, which I found I enjoyed a lot more than painting just what I saw, as anyone with any sense probably would. During this period, I guess decisions were made on a kind of subconscious level which mixed all of these different influences and things I'd been exposed to. Mostly, I enjoyed painting expressionist type paintings in which I was more concerned with emotional catharsis and swirling paint around in a kind of adventurous delight than anything else; yet there was still a part of my brain hooked into this data bank of influences that was rather tenuously managing, or sometimes merely trying to manage, the whole process. This whole history is relived again in each painting I do, in that, my natural instinct is to start painting what I see, but then whenever I catch myself doing this, I go off on a rebellious tangent and allow myself a more interesting, Dr Seuss-cat-in-the-hat-type derangement instead, whilst still, now almost subconsciously, certainly at least subliminally, making directorial decisions about the process that tap into the influences and emotional experiences alluded to above. After laying down the groundwork in this way, I then return to the painting after leaving it a while and then get into the next stage which means changing parts of it and working on its final veneer, in an altogether more consciously studious manner. Sometimes this business can go on for a long time, and I may not return to a painting until months later.
Below is an experimental painting I did in 1995, which was seminal in the discovery of my present style, in accordance with this description of how it developed.
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Manchester On Prozac (40x50cm Acrylic on paper.)
The Animus Ingredient.
As well as an organisation of colour, shapes, angles, proportion, and techniques, I am interested in an elusive quality I call nervous energy, which I believe can be conveyed by any given artist through brushwork. I have sometimes been intrigued by graphology (the study of handwriting) in that it amazes me how people’s scribbling of the letters of the alphabet varies, and in ways that somehow reveal much about the psychological make-up of their author. Even without practised analysis, a glance at someone’s unique handwriting can give an immediate impression of character, so charged is it with some mysterious personal energy! An idea occurs in the brain, which through complex nervous circuitry, moves the muscles of the hand to reproduce glyphs upon a page, yet somehow during this process, subtleties regarding that nervous circuitry conveys itself to the lines, as though imbuing them with a unique spirit. It’s a pretty incredible thing, if one stops and thinks about it. I believe the same energy can be conveyed through brushwork and this is one aspect of painting that I am presently interested in exploring.
More recently, I have become preoccupied with the act of painting in its own right and therefore am not so much painting whatever scene I see, but more painting an actual painting of that scene, as though the art work itself and not the subject matter, were the crucial thing. Thus, visible brushwork may not necessarily be an attempt to paint any given thing, but may be an attempt to draw attention to brushwork and references to the art of painting itself.
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