ABOUT DRAWING

Sometimes I find it a paradox that many of my paintings that take me days to do, maybe weeks, come from or are launched by simple charcoal, pencil or coloured chalk drawings, mostly done very quickly.  I see those drawings as my bedrock.  I also see more of me in them than in many of my paintings. 

I don’t altogether like this.  I seem to be able to get wit and truth into drawings, not so often into paintings.  The drawings are the real me, I identify with them, they are stripped bare, not built up.  I wish one were judged by drawings, not by exhibitions of paintings, which can become pretentious and remote.  Paintings sell for a lot more, but they are not often as pristine.

Mark you (as Taki in the Spectator would say, nine times out of ten) in my heart of hearts although I admire paintings I could live without them. We don’t have many paintings hanging up at home.  Apart from one or two of Bryan Ingham’s, those we do have are soft watercolours by a godparent’s mother, my sister Michelle’s theatre designs, my brother David’s painting of my father, 19th century paintings on glass and so on: sort of wall-paper pictures, inoffensive, not there to inspire, let alone impress, but a congenial and maybe nostalgic background that catches one’s eye when nothing else does.

And if one of the gods were to offer me any paintings I liked for our house I certainly wouldn’t want modern masterpieces.  Hung on a domestic wall they are formidable, boasts, ego boosters.  They make too much noise and I like silence.  I would choose small old masters, heavily varnished dark ones probably, Russian icons, watercolours, drawings, children’s art.  They needn’t be Sotheby’s quality, just interesting and comfortable.  And I must not find them boring after six months.  A good picture will go on revealing itself and feeding the viewer for a long time.  If it starts to be a drag, change it, it is no good.

I used to admire white walls with an emphatic painting well placed, making a statement, so to speak.  Now I prefer lots of smallish and definitely non-statement-making pictures, placed close together like the Victorians used to hang them.  Or textiles.  Textiles are soft and comfortable and are more balm to the soul than powerful work. 

Power paintings, who needs them? A Bedouin tent or a carpet-hung yurt has got to be a more pleasant place to find oneself than a minimalist three-quarter empty penthouse with a large Picasso on one wall and a Bridget Riley or Bernard Newman on the others.  But don’t let me put you off!