On your website I was really drawn to your paintings and the sketchbook drawings. I was hoping you could explain a little bit about what drives or influences this kind of work ...
"My sketchbook work is very much about practice, in the more literal sense. It is what I turn to when I have little specifically to do. It's way to keep thinking about colour and composition within a quick, easy and constrained format. I've built up about 3 or 4 of these sketchbooks now and I don't feel that precious about them so I almost make decisions about the compositions without thinking. Sometimes sketches made in smaller notepads form the basis of the drawings. I often draw whilst watching films, pausing on interesting frames or drawing from books or the internet. A lot of my work is about redrawing and reworking earlier things and often the source is from some reference material. Through this drawing and redrawing I aim to separate the resulting image from it's starting point so it becomes something new but there is still this trace to something in the real world, that maybe only I am aware of. The paintings I have been making over the last year or two often reference these small sketchbook compositions directly or partly, in that I may like a colour combination or collection of forms. I have learned to try and take away as much chance for conscious decision making in my work as possible. By mixing colour in my sketchbook using coloured pencils I can simply put a colour down, react to that one in the next colour I put down, then put something on top of that to make a colour, so it's very reactive, I don't really sit and think about a palette beforehand. It is the same with painting, using slightly transparent acrylics from a fixed but varied colour choice in the first place I can react as the image develops, rather trying to plan it out. I try and be as unconscious and intuitive as possible. I don't necessarily use chance operations or things systems to help me make decisions but try to keep decision making to a minimum."
There is a real sense of balance and sometimes symmetry in the way the forms interact with each other - is this something you have consciously refined or is it more intuitive? Also, what are you trying to achieve as a practitioner or communicate to the viewer with these images?
"I like to make the distinction between creating a picture and creating an image. I am not aiming to make a picture. To me a picture is something that directly refers you to something else, it speaks to a specific thing, feeling or experience of the world. An image for me isn't bound by these responsibilities. What is lost by not being directly representational, is gained by its ambiguity. An image is itself and refers to itself only. A picture might reference another moment, but an image exists in that moment only. An image therefore should aim towards some kind of perfect balance between texture, form and colour and also between abstraction and figuration. My work does reference external sources but I aim to shroud these in abstraction to the point that they are only identifiable to myself. By titling works I can either uncover these allusions or further obscure them. A picture is a novel or piece of non fiction, an image is like a poem. In this way I don't seek to communicate anything specific to an audience, simply that there is a joy to be had with images, with seeing and noticing, and thinking. I like to leave a sufficient amount of space in the images so that the viewer can bring their own reading, ideas and thoughts to it, that will be influenced by their own history up that point. Everyone reads things in different ways based on everything they have seen or thought up to that point. This is the joy of images."
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