Liz Ainslie

               

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make oil paintings that begin with color relationships and develop spatial relationships between forms that become proxies that can move in and out of contexts.

What drives you to make work?

I’m driven by the want to see something new come from my hand. Over time I have developed parameters for working that allow me to be intuitive each time I paint. I need my work to surprise me.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

Mixing color is very important. As I lay out the paint on my palette, I begin to formulate the general outline of a painting in my mind. As I put down an under-painting, I decide which color to begin with and what form it will take. Since I work within a set of parameters (scale, form, action and material) I can let each decision lead to the next.

How long have you been working in that way?

I began working this way in grad school in 2004, though the paintings looked quite different. I’ve let my practice change slowly over time, but the basic elements remain.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

I love painters, of course- I still can’t get over the late Bonnard paintings that were shown at the Met in 2009. Gauguin was one of the first painters whose color really struck me. Paul Klee became a huge influence because of his seeming willingness to let one thing lead to the next. I’m always drawn to medieval paintings with the very shallow space the figures inhabit and the strange forms that you see in the background landscapes. I also like minimalist work from the 60’s and 70’s- Donald Judd and Sol Lewitt. I love the materiality of James Ensor. I like the rhythm of Guston’s marks and how he described objects with paint. Tomma Abts’ paintings really surprised me when I was able to see them in person. She makes clever decisions denying a view of some parts and revealing others.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

I appreciate the structure of music and how directly it can affect me. Growing up, there was always music playing on the stereo and I still cannot go long without some kind of background noise. My taste in music is eclectic, but that doesn’t mean it’s not specific. When I’m painting I could be listening to Charles Mingus, Outkast, Terry Riley, Gillian Welch or Jawbreaker, but I take time to choose the right music every day. I also like reading philosophy, but I wouldn’t say it directly relates to my work. I like it because some philosophers create their own logic that can spiral into an abstract series of relationships. Reading it can change the way I organize my thoughts.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

I like to think that paintings can be autonomous for at least that moment when you first view them. I hope people take advantage of their right to judge art. Too often we want to be told how to look at work. When I finish a piece and display it, I want it to exist outside of my intentions. Then we can argue about it!

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

I recently saw the Blinky Palermo retrospective at the Hirshhorn. I appreciate the way he just kept reworking the rectangles and yet each painting holds up as a striking object. Seeing them together also worked well because his attention to scale is so apparent. And the use of color is just so succinct and smart.

Patrick Howlett

                

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make paintings that I hope are novel in some way. I like the transformative nature of making a painting, and I am conscious of that idea when creating an image. I mostly make watercolours and temperas but I also experiment with gesso and stain on plywood.

What drives you to make work?

I would say it is a combination of the experience of seeing other painting and the experience of making work myself. Both are very rewarding activities for the most part. I get a lot out of looking at other art, but then I get something different from working in the studio - it generates new ideas and approaches that I would not have had otherwise. Surely there are other things too, some deeper, some more shallow. 

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

Day to day can really vary. It depends on what else I am doing, deadlines or lack thereof. I make my own gesso and egg tempera paint. The process can be a lot of labour and so I break it up into stages. I might be preparing a group of panels for a month or I might be working on a group of paintings or I might be reading and working on the computer. I like to be trying different things at the same time and generally I really like to sit with work for a while. I feel more than ever the need for a studio routine that can fend off other demands. If I am away from the studio for too long I can get a little lost, but on the other hand it can also help to have new approaches, because you sort of forget where you were.

How long have you been working in that way?

The last five years. It probably changed after I taught full-time for a few years. On the other hand, it's probably more similar to how I've always worked than it is different.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

This is actually a really hard question. Early on some painters that really interested me would have been Paul Klee, David Milne, Georgio Morandi, Philip Guston. More recently, what I was doing led me to look at particular artists such as Jean & Sophie Tauber-Arp, the Vorticists, Arthur Dove, Lawren Harris, Bertram Brooker, and Joseph and Annie Albers. In thinking about series of works and processes I have looked a lot at Sol Lewitt, Blinky Palermo, Robert Mangold, and Richard Tuttle.      

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Literature, philosophy and writing in general are important for me. They have suggested a lot of content, and influence ways that I approach making the work. For recent work I have been reading Henri Bergson. Music is really important too, for thinking through visual problems I often think of music - mostly because I really like working with it and it is almost always on. I was really into dance, but I haven't seen much of late. The internet and photoshop have also played a part. Oh, and cooking too.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

It don't really have an interest in prescribing how people should be looking. It is just nice if they take the time to look. I definitely appreciate that. I hope people can enjoy painting in way similar to how they might listen to music.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

I have seen a couple of Robert Mangold exhibits that really made me think about his work more: work from the mid-80's and more recent stuff.  I've run into a few Lara Owens paintings that were really charismatic. Also, a couple of shows by Amy Sillman that I keep thinking about. Last time I was in Berlin I was blown away by the hanging of two Chardin's on either side of a Watteau at the Gemäldegalerie. The Brice Marden retrospective a few years ago really surprised me and left an impression. There was a Thomas Nozkowski show last year at the National Gallery of Canada that was really great to see.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

The horizon is exciting. 

Vincent Hawkins

               

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I paint and draw with acrylic on canvas, cardboard and paper, and recently have begun making 3 dimensional pieces. I work in an improvisational way, never knowing from the outset how anything will turn out. At the moment I am pursuing a line of enquiry that goes against how I have set about working before.  A little dissatisfied with way the canvas "frames" or "windows", I am becoming more interested in the forms I produce as objects in their own right, bringing them into the immediate environment. It may be more a sculptor's sensibility but I still see it as painting. 

What drives you to make work?

 "What is painting?" would be one answer to that question. I seem to be not able to stop making work. Perhaps it comes out of the fact that it’s an activity on one's own terms, the one thing you might be able to control in life. It doesn't really matter if nobody likes what you do; it’s more the development of a "dialogue" and therein lays its success if that is what is happening, as I see it.

 There is a passage in the catalogue from the Late Braque exhibition that was on at  The Royal Academy at the end of the 90's  which has been quite influential for me; "The painted space can receive everything at once; past, present, future.  It can dilate and unroll into infinitesimal mental convolutions, or, alternatively, it can withdraw into the barest description". It suggests you can approach painting from opposite ends. I thought it was insightful and it appealed to me for its strength of possibilities to explore further. So what were, for me, rather image laden paintings of a couple of years ago, began to change and be more pared back, reducing.... to the point of liberating forms out of the paintings and into the world.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

I am working with primed cardboard boxes, on to which I draw, then cut out forms, and paint with acrylic colour, then pinning them to the studio wall with thumb tacks - adding and subtracting as I go along. This is how a piece develops. I may cut them up and repaint them. Play is part of the process, it’s where you discover through a kind of excavation. I move the forms around and reconfigure them, if needed. It is like drawing with physical forms in order to build structures: A very open and satisfying way of working. I am also looking around for other materials to use so it is not confined to cardboard, only. I enjoy the weights and measures of forms, colours and the different kinds of "energies" in painting, its state of flux, where they haven't committed themselves to description yet.

How long have you been working in that way? 

 The card board pieces have been a recent thing, within the last few months. I had been experimenting with folded drawings, and this has developed out of it. It links back to collage work I was making a few years ago, another part of what seems a continuous cycle of stuff returning having picked up further detritus along the way. There is something of the fragility in the cardboard that appeals. The impermanent, falling away, failing, deteriorating.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

Richard Diebenkorn, Kurt Schwitters, Guston, Motherwell and Peter Kinley, Roger Hilton, Paul Nash. Titian, Goya. Picasso. Tom Nozkowski, there are many.

There are two paintings in The Picasso Museum in Paris, head studies from 1907, from the time of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, that have been pivotal by seeing close up. There is evidence in the respective paintings of previous workings, he just re-used the canvases, I suspect, and painted anew over what was there. Whited over and used again. This under-painting, for me acts as a kind of armature onto which the newer forms are attached like a palimpsest . It reminded me of what I enjoyed about collage that it’s possible to still keep what you have seemingly destroyed for further inclusion in the work. Seeing these pieces helped to resolve some technical problems for me, to do with opacity and translucency, of editing and inclusion of motif, what to keep - what to let go of; ideas which I feel I have absorbed as a result. 

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Difficult to say as so much is visual. I am not that well read, but I enjoy poetry… it’s something that is helpful to me along with music. Some people have said how they think there is a sense of lyricism and musicality in my work. I do actually enjoy the ballet and modern dance, I find it quite inspirational. I am sure it’s to do with form, rhythm, movement, energy.

  

How would you like people to engage with your work?

They should bring something of their own experiences to art. I reject having everything worked out for you, pretending there are "answers".

Uncertainty and doubt are painting's life blood. Art is not science, although science may be part of it. It’s the realm of the perceptions and you need different antennae when looking at or "reading" paintings.

 Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

 Writer Jeanette Winterson from an article in The Guardian Newspaper in 2002, which I saw only recently - She wrote about Art and its relationship to the corporate world. There are some real goodies in the piece. How these two worlds are diametrically opposed, she said "it may be that capitalism will be as successful with art as it has been with religion, absorbing it to the point of neutrality." 

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

 A group show in May which I am looking forward to and I am scheduled to curate a drawing show next February at the Herbert Reed Gallery in Canterbury, all being well! And I have begun a kind of art on paper exchange, swapping art for art, which actually is something else Jeanette Winterson says in the article about the importance of the energy of art for art. If money ceased to exist, people would still make art.

Julian Wakelin

                 

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make oil paintings on canvas, sometimes on board, and I also make drawings.

What drives you to make work?

I’m interested to see how a painting’s going to turn out, and while I’m away from the studio I will have thoughts and ideas that may feed into what I’m presently making - so this keeps me coming back to the studio to try and see if what I had only imagined or briefly sketched out could in actuality fit in with what I am currently working on.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

I get to the studio early. I tidy up – it generally having got into a mess after the last working session – this is a tactic I employ to get me into doing some actual work because it involves moving around the numerous small paintings that I have on the go allowing me to make connections between various images and to kick start making decisions about what I may or may not do to each piece. The actual act of painting itself is one of trial and error – of addition and removal – an open-endedness whereby I can ask questions about the act of painting itself.

How long have you been working in that way?

I’ve been working this way for about the last 8 years. Before that I was making quite large paintings but came to realise my realise that my approach to making paintings is experimental and varied, so practically it made sense to start working on a smaller scale, say on 10 or 12 canvasses on which I could try out a variety of ideas and approaches.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

As a 17 year old working weekends at a gallery in Harrogate, we put on a show of Basil Beattie’s huge physical abstract paintings. I remember them coming in rolled up and the smell of the paint filling the room as he unfurled them and put them on to stretchers. I know that this had a profound effect on me wanting to make paintings. Other artists that I have admired and continue to do so are Raoul de Keyser, Walter Swennen, Philip Guston, Mary Heilman and Prunella Clough.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Walking and running somehow inform my practice. These give me the time to think clearly about what I might be struggling with in the studio. Bus rides can be good too.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

Slowly and patiently.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

A show I’ve seen recently was Simon Callery’s new work at Fold Space - it had a real handmade quality to it, stark and serious which I enjoyed very much. Also Walter Swennen at Domo Baal was extremely refreshing.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

I’m in a group painting show at 402 Gallery in May, another group painting show at Charlie Dutton’s in June, and also at APT in October. And the artist Ross Hansen has curated and put together a small catalogue of my paintings which will be self published this month.

Katrina Blannin

            

    

Can you briefly describe what you do?

Perhaps my work is closest to constructivism; gradually moving towards to a more systematic approach as time goes by. Within the ‘frame’ or ‘window’ of the canvas (piece of paper…..) I am searching for the best possible composition or arrangement of elements: balance – a truth, or simplicity. My paintings are initially planned quite carefully, with a starting point of a grid: the geometry is basic. However, sometimes change en route is necessary usually with regard to tone or colour nuance. Sometimes I discover new things through the process and slightly shift the approach. Recently the painted shapes have been applied in acrylic glazes – many layered/thick or left just thin and the material quality of the linen is allowed to play its part for tone. I have also found a way to make watercolours by cutting up the paper into shapes, painting them and then reassembling them like a jigsaw: I like this constructivist approach, which can be repeated. I am also constantly thinking about colour/tone: reaction, interaction and design: resonance and dissonance.

What drives you to make work?

The painting itself drives me along every day, every week. There is so much to do and often not enough time. The next step is important. (I was also thinking that it’s a bit like working in a dark room developing black and white prints and watching the images appear in the tray – after all that preparation it’s still always exciting to see the finished work – never quite what you imagined)

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

The good times are when I have no distractions (life) and I can just get on in a disciplined way. My studio is small but easy to get to and I make sure I have efficiently set it up with everything I need. In this chaotic world I depend on routine  - and if no one is around good music and time to think. When I am not teaching (part time) I am in the studio a few days a week. I have organised my practice so I can always pick up where I left off – pretty much.

How long have you been working in that way?

For about ten years. Before that I used to work hard but in a much more expressionistic, spontaneous, figurative way without as much preparation or planning and I think I disappointed myself too often with the final results. I am more often content that I am making progress now. When I finished my MA I went through a transition period and discovered that painting itself is beautiful and inspiring and has a fantastic language of its own – I didn’t want to be concerned anymore with what it was ‘about’. I became less concerned with narrative. I suppose I am interested in the abstract as a universal language.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

Over the last few years M Martin, K Martin, Heath, Hill, Wise et al (see Constructed Abstract Art in England by Grieve). The De Stijl movement: Von Doesburg/Mondrian. Scandinavian Concrete eg. Ib Gertsen. Robyn Denny, Maija Isola (Marimekko), Jeremy Moon, Sonia Delaunay, Paul Nash, Jeffrey Steele, Anni Albers. Josef Albers, Walker Evans, Niki de Saint Phalle, Ben Nicholson, Sybille Berger and more. And anything in the National Gallery.

(In her essay, ‘The Writings of Mary Martin’ 1990, Hilary Lane discusses Mary Martin’s idea that all ‘words’ or information needed to describe the artworks should be embedded in the work itself; that written language cannot always express or explain the processes and decisions made during their construction. Mary Martin wanted the story of how her work was made to be clear to the person when looking at it. And although proportion, rhythm and measurement were key she wanted to emphasise the unexpected and a need to remain inventive. Of the process of construction itself Martin wrote that it is: ‘a thinking making process, not necessarily in three dimensions. Internal logic is the key. The success of such a process is wholly dependent on a right choice of symbols. The choice is based on intuition and experience.’)

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

The North Norfolk coast, swimming outside: sea/lidos, walking, plants, quilting, stained glass windows, buildings, music, film….

How would you like people to engage with your work?

I am not sure. Perhaps with some knowledge of art. I know I wish my art history education had been better.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

I was lucky enough to go to a cold grey Paris recently: it was lit up by the small stained glass windows in the shape of sunbursts and crosses in the tombs of the Pere Lachaise cemetery, Theo Von Doesburg’s stained glass windows in the Pompidou show and the windows of the Notre Dame.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

Arranging a group show at Charlie Dutton Gallery.