A short video discussing the inspiration for "New Year's Eve Berlin (After Whistler)", one of the large oil paintings I have been working on during my time here in Berlin.
I just walked by this large diptych in a Berlin underground station. I think it reflects that idea of art being all around us. Those gorgeous chocolate browns mixed with cappuccino greys sitting next to its silent neighbour, encased by a smoky green...
Being down the docks in a hot country is like being in a giant open air gallery. It's buzzing with art DNA, sun bleached surfaces, patinas of decay and man made linear marks that are right at home in an abstract painting.
It probably sounds a bit iffy when I say that something came to me in a dream but last night something did. When I walked passed my paintings this morning an image I dreamt about came back to me. I ran over, took up a dirty oil paint brush and sketched it on the back of a canvas. Later, over coffee, I sketched the motif a ...
This is the last of the herringbone linen I got from an old mill in Germany. I first used it in this series of small oil paintings in 2010. I have been wanting to stretch it up for years but somehow never got around to it so I brought it to Italy...
A few weeks ago I worked with Johnny Bugler to create a set of prints that I could paint on to. The idea came to me when I found some etching proofs I had worked on in 2007. I see these etchings as a background, an elaborate canvas. They are an attempt to create the essence of a bit of linen that was laying around the studio for while, picking up colour debris and studio DNA, before being stretched up and becoming a painting. Working on the etching plates...
Paintings are messers with minds of their own. You bring them somewhere, tell them to stay, and then they change direction and become something completely different. They can be stubborn, unhelpful, unyielding, sometimes shy, sometimes grandiose, often self-destructive. Listening to….
A short video discussing the inspiration for "New Year's Eve Berlin (After Whistler)", one of the large oil paintings I have been working on during my time here in Berlin.