MY TECHNIQUE

In art as in life, my preference is for simplicity.   I don’t feel the need to overcomplicate things.   When I’m painting, although I am after precision, I don’t try to be precise.  I choose brushes that are larger than I need for a particular stroke, I don’t try to draw straight lines, I paint near enough to edges without worrying too much if I stop short or go over, and I prefer to use too much paint than too little.

I like to see ‘history’ in my paintings, by which I mean the evidence of the whole process that led to the final image.  Bumps, dents, splashes and scratches are fine with me, and I would find it very hard to start work on a smooth white canvas.     Most of my work is painted on art board, and I tend to have several boards lying under the painting I am currently working on.  By the time I am ready to paint on them they have usually accumulated stains from mugs, pencilled notes, splashes and strokes of paint, and scars from scalpels.  I like this.

I always paint with the boards lying flat on a huge table that is covered with my paints and brushes.  Resting on the far end of the table is a large easel with a frame in it, and I often place my paintings in that when I want to see how they look upright and framed.  The first thing I do with a new board is to add some Cadmium Orange and Cobalt Teal, which I apply roughly and randomly, in thick strokes or long thin splashes so that it gives texture later.  When this is dry I’ll paint the board white, very roughly, using a big brush and thick paint so that the strokes are still very evident when it is dry.  Depending on the painting, sometimes the white will be applied in blocks, leaving a thin rough gap between the blocks, which allows the orange and blue to show through. And at some point, whether early on or very late in the process, I might reveal other bits of the orange and blue by sandpapering through the white.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I think paintings need to be given time between when I first work on them to when I’ve looked at them enough to decide they are right.  This can take months, and if I can’t get them right then I don’t hesitate to paint them white and start all over again, perhaps with something entirely different, because this means there is more history under the surface and it makes them more interesting.  At least to me, anyway.

My paintings often look simple, but people who come to paint with me take far longer than they expect to work out the basic technical aspects of the painting, let alone the art.  My paintings can consist of just two or three blocks of colour and some whites, and perhaps a few black charcoal lines – I am thinking of the Road to Jerusalem series – but the sanding, scratching, washes, layers, other whites, paint thickness, stroke directions, proportions, edges and spacing make that white area alone far more complicated than at first appears, and far more time-consuming too.  But it also makes it richer and more interesting because of this: if I had simply painted the area off-white it wouldn’t work.  It would be boring.

As for the black lines, which are usually charcoal, I tend to draw those with a large piece and turn the charcoal as I draw the line, so that it is irregular.  It’s more pleasing to the eye.   If I am drawing the line between blocks of colour or white that I have painted so that their edges come fairly close to each other, then the black will also have a background of orange or blue.  However, if I have drawn over a block of paint, then I’ll paint up to the edges of the line afterwards so that sometimes it is over and sometimes under the edge it defines.  The charcoal is set with hairspray, and this of course tends to scatter charcoal dust, cause drips, and add its own sheen or shade.  More history.

When I use colour, I find that I get greater depth and interest if I add a small amount of a very similar colour on top of it: thus a large area of dark blue will be relieved and improved by a small stroke of a slightly lighter blue along an edge, for example.  It just works.  And I find that having some red, somewhere on the painting, makes a big difference.  I don’t always do this, but I do it more often than one might expect.  Red is great.

So if you were too come into the studio now and catch me at work you’d see me surrounded by dozens of large brushes, open pots of the colours I’m using, sandpapers of various grades, scalpels and knives, charcoal sticks of all sizes, sponges and wipes, bits of printed paper, hairspray, mugs of tea, and probably one of the cats.  I’ll be bent over one end of the table working on the painting, and when I spot you I might unlock the easel at the other end of the table and slide the painting into the frame, to see what you think of it.

And at the end of the day I’ll tidy up, a bit, and make sure I leave one thing unfinished on the painting so that tomorrow morning when I start work I immediately have something that I know needs to be done.  And that kicks the day off.

Simple really.