Andrew Maughan

                

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make paintings.

What drives you to make work?

The feeling that I haven’t done enough! I’m still a believer in paint and excited by its possibilities.

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

I’m in the studio from mid-day till 11.30pm. In one corner of my studio I have a stack of paintings which are finished and have been photographed and the paintings I’m working on or not sure about are lined up along two walls. I spend a lot of time looking at them/not looking at them, working out if they’re even interesting. They tend to have several layers of paint on them, I never scrape anything off, I always keep adding more.

I try to create paintings with no references to the ‘real’ world so I’m not sure they are exactly abstract, more non-objective. I don’t keep a sketch book so all my working out and playing around is done on the canvas. The trick is to not get attached to any of the paintings until they feel right, then I stop. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a keeper, it might be kicking around the studio for months and one day I’ll decide it’s crap and add something more to it or obliterate it completely.

How long have you been working in that way?

My studio practice is still evolving but has been similar to this since I graduated from Northumbria University in 2009. I’ve always had a tendency to play around with paint, just to see what happens.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

Dana Schutz, Richard Aldrich, Joe Bradley, Mary Heilmann, Philip Guston, Georg Baselitz, Martin Kippenberger, Thomas Houseago, Aaron Curry, Chris Martin, Rachel Harrison, Franz West, Blinky Palermo, Vincent Van Gogh, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Edvard Munch, Howard Hodgkin, De Kooning, Gerhard Richter and many more!

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Not much outside of art, that’s sort of the point, although I was listening to a Paul Buchanan song called ‘Wedding Party’ recently and was struck by the economy of word. I’ve been trying to figure out a way of translating that into my practice, being more economical, leaving things unsaid, with paint. It might creep in there soon.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

I don’t mind, it’s up to them.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

Paula Rego’s drawing ‘The Wide Sargasso Sea’ at the Laing in Newcastle is pretty sweet. 

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

Yes, lots of shows coming up and I am part CAVE art fair at the Liverpool Biennial in September. Plus it’s always exiting to make new work!

Robert Linsley

           

                  

Can you briefly describe what you do?

In my Island paintings I pour commercial polyurethane enamel paint onto the canvas, then lift and tip it to make the paint flow into a shape. The canvas lies flat on the floor while the shape dries, then I pour another one. Most of the work goes on between pours. Lately been making watercolours, which means back to brushes, but try to apply what I've learned from the pours about letting the image produce itself.

What drives you to make work?

As it happens, I could never have answered this question until very recently. Because the work is ongoing, flowing and momentary, I think I'm really trying to unify my life and my art. Strange that I never had such an intention and normally would never think in those terms, but the evidence seems to be there. I don't want time to pass, but to be lived through, if that makes sense.

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

As above. Since each pour is unrepeatable, a day without painting is a painting that will never be.

How long have you been working in that way?

Since 1998

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

On a deep level my work is possessed by Jackson Pollock, but Picasso might be below that, and what I see as the Poussin-Cézanne axis is perhaps even more fundamental still. I look at Tiepolo a lot. Over the last few years been looking at many great and insufficiently acknowledged abstractionists - as it happens mostly women - Gego, Joan Mitchell, Marisa Merz, Carla Accardi, Helen Frankenthaler, Mary Heilman, Mira Schendel, Lygia Pape, Bridget Riley, R.H.Quaytman. None of these people are unknown, but their importance is yet unmeasured.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

A few years ago theoretical physics had a big impact on me. There is an important research institute in my town, and I've spent a lot of time there and met many very interesting scientists. P.G.Wodehouse

How would you like people to engage with your work?

However they feel, but not through concepts.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

Nowadays I am really in love with Frank Stella's Moby Dick series. Can't get enough of it.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

Planning a print edition.

Hugh Delap

               

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make small abstract paintings on paper and canvas.

What drives you to make work?

I am interested in how I can visually articulate my experiences using an abstract language. For a long time I have been fascinated by how a painting is made. What drives me is the challenge of using the basic principles of painting (form, line and colour) to create a painting which reflects something interesting to me.

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

I paint every day. At the moment I am working flat out for an exhibition at the end of March. I have been working mostly on a heavy fabriano paper in oils and a small number of canvases. It takes me a long time to make a painting so I tend to have a lot of work on the go at the same time.

 

 How long have you been working in that way?

 I try not to make drastic changes, instead I try introduce new methods, techniques or ideas gradually. I started working in this way about five years ago and it is has been about three years since I started working on paper. 

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

Tomma Abts, Thomas Nozkowski, Phillip Allen, Tal R, Thomas Scheibitz, Robert Bordo, Raoul De Keyser, Ronnie Hughes, Paul Doran and Mark Swords come to mind initially. To me these artists speak a similar language influenced by the Bauhaus and geometric abstraction.  Early on as a painter I felt an affinity for this vernacular.

What outside of visual art informs your practice?

I think many things impact how I work without directly informing my practice. The space I am working in, the time of year, books, movies, TV series, everything really. If I find something interesting I will try to make a painting about it.  

How would you like people to engage with your work?

When somebody looks at my work I hope they can interpret it using their own experiences. My work has no single meaning, instead I hope the viewer will make their own associations and allow their own meaning to emerge.   

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

I recently re-read an essay by Jan Verwoert ‘The Beauty and Politics of Latency: On the Work of Tomma Abts’. I reckon it is a must read for abstract painters. I am also looking forward to Paul Doran next solo show in the Green on Red Gallery in Dublin, in March.  I hope it will make an impression.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

I am preparing for a one man show in MonsterTruck, Dublin opening on the 30^th of March.

Emmanuel Ballange

                           

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I am a French painter and I live in the southwest of France, in Bordeaux. I work on canvas (oil) or on paper (gouache) from preliminary, predetermined geometrical drawings (circles, triangles, trapeziums, peculiar shapes). My paintings are neither illusionistic nor demonstrative.

And, how long that you been doing that?

I have been painting series for the last 12 years.

What drives you to make work?

Shape is Thought. Pictures, paintings are the expression of Poetry which could shake the meaning of the world. An unprejudiced, and as much as possible - undetermined expression. Pissaro said: ‘my conscience became free as did my eyes.’

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

I work in series. I do not work every day since I teach in an Art School to earn my living. When I am in my studio I first work systematically on my drawings and then paint accordingly. Regularity and discipline are very important to me.

They prevent any romantic and/or sentimental drifts: one should paint even if one doesn't feed in the mood...

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

Morandi, Bram and Matisse.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Roland Barthes (1915-1980) writer and art critic who wrote: ‘one must not seek to express the inexpressible, but to un-express the expressible.’

How would you like people to engage with your work?

I expect the viewer to feel free, tolerant and open to any visual experience.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

The Franois Morellet reinstallations exhibition at the Modern Art Centre (Centre Pompidou, Paris) in 2010 and most exhibits at the Jordan contemporary art Gallery in Paris.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

A large series of gouaches which I hope to exhibit shortly.

Matthew R. Murphy

                           

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I am a painter. Canvas and oil are a primary mode. However, I work with a variety of media. The constructions inherently express similar things differently. Depending on the necessities of the idea or my curiosities in material or presentation the work will take different forms. I find my work caught between the world of illusion and the object with no clear way to resolve this. I find some ideas must be objects posing as paintings and sometimes paintings posing as objects, while still other times paintings are simply paintings.

What drives you to make work?

I suppose there are a lot of reasons to make work. One may be simple curiosity, another may be a need to express something or perhaps to draw some meaning out of a particular kind of organization. Much of it is simply sorting through and organizing ideas.

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

I struggle for a concise answer to this question. It is difficult to find time for any consistency in a working process while trying to balance “real-life” and other responsibilities. So trying to cope with a fractured working sequence can disrupt the feeling of the day-to-day. Most days work begins with prepping surfaces. This could mean priming, sanding or wiping so that paint will stick. Sometimes it is shaping pieces for painting this can require a lot of plotting and measuring. Very practical things. At some point painting will happen so this means mixing colors, applying them, scraping and wiping them away and mixing again. Somedays work is simply drawing or collaging, or otherwise working toward generating ideas. I am usually searching for something that is hard to point to. It could be an idea or combination of ideas about color, composition, materials, or perhaps something I have read about or listened to or have seen.
 
How long have you been working in that way?

I am not certain.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

William Turner, Arshile Gorky, Blinky Palermo, Philip Guston and Chaim Soutine to isolate a few.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Many things. Teaching informs my practice.   The carpentry/craftsman work I do provides encounters with new ideas and new materials that can set off or inspire new ideas in the studio. I read a lot and listen to a lot of music - these things help. I do a lot of thinking while riding a bicycle or riding a train. Mostly, I try and keep my eyes open wherever I am.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

This is an interesting question I sometimes think about. I feel that one cannot dictate to the viewer how to engage with a piece. People bring what they bring. But one can direct the viewer. After all we engage with an El Greco differently than we do with a Pollock. So I suppose I would like the viewer to slow down and look closely. I would like them to be actively engaged but receptive.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

Imi Knoebel's shaped panels for Blinky Palermo.  

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

Whatever it is I'm not ready.

William Bradley

                             

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make paintings about abstraction. More specifically I’m concerned with how meaning is produced within abstract painting. To this end I move in and around various positions, combining many elements from within its history with external visual sources and quotations.

What drives you to make work?

A need to better understand what it is that fascinates me about painting.

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

I work in distinct stages. I will spend a few months developing ideas through drawing in ink and watercolour. I then select those I feel will develop into the most interesting paintings and transcribe the designs on to flat colour grounds. This marks the beginning of a few months putting together a group of paintings.

How long have you been working in that way?

For a few years, the move towards a kind of design process was a major turning point in my work.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

There are so many. Growing up close to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park meant that Hepworth, Moore and Caro made a lasting impression but it was an exhibition of the work of Eduardo Chillida which first moved me toward abstraction. I adore his sculpture but it was his work on paper and his ‘gravitations’ which sparked my first steps down this path. American Abstract Expressionism obviously has had a huge affect and I continue to react to their arguments as well as their imagery. British painters like Sandra Blow, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, John Hoyland and more recently Dan Perfect, Philip Allen, Danny Rolph and Stuart Cumberland. Probably the greatest impact has been made by Thomas Scheibitz. His approach of generating images from a vast number of sources has proved incredibly important in my practice.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Everything is fair game and there is no hierarchy in my approach. I am filtering many elements from things such as graphic design, advertising, cartoons, architecture, anything that I find useful.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

In their own way. I purposefully try to set up ‘ways in’ for the viewer. Some people can respond to a painting in a purely visceral way, others look for clues for interpretation or the familiar. I load my paintings with cues and quotations, alluding to the familiar in an attempt to set up a situation where the viewer utilises their own experience as a means of deriving meaning.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

Some work by Sally Taylor. It wasn’t at all what I expected from the images I had seen and was, in the flesh, quite beautiful. Loved the work of Neil Ayling. The Sparrowhawk in the back garden, not uncommon but beautiful.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

The new body of work I’m developing, it’s the most excited I’ve been about a group of paintings in a while. Beyond that 2012 looks like it should be a good year.

Guy Yanai

                  

Can you briefly describe what you do? 

I make works of art in projects. I want to change the world. It’s that simple really. I want my works to change the visual culture that we know. I want to create a new lexicon of visual processes.

What drives you to make work? 

Anger, anxiety, more anxiety. Not creating and not working drive me into a very, very quick oblivion. Happy people do not make art, so I guess that is what drives me.  It’s really a burning sensation that never leaves. Not very pleasant, but no other way, and it’s the only thing that makes life somewhat possible.

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

I wake up very early. I have two kids, Romy and Ava. I am in the studio all day every day.  Usually in the morning I try to avoid working at any cost, knowing that I will soon be facing all my weaknesses is very scary, at some point I begin, sometimes as late as 12, sometimes as early as 9, it depends.  Emails really help me feel that I am doing something ‘productive’.  I only work in groups of works, near the end I will work 12 - 14 hours a day, in the beginning less so.

How long have you been working in that way? 

Before I had kids I wasted a lot of time and somehow got a lot less done. Having children gave me a renewed sense of urgency, so it’s been about four years of working like this. The more I work the more I feel that I don’t work enough.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work? 

All of the really good painters. I love them all. Piero della Francesca is still one of my favorites, same with Paulo Uccello. There are so many good artists working today as well. Really exciting; I like artists that have a real freedom to what they do, like Tal R.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice? 

EVERYTHING. I consume it all, and in massive amounts, much more than I look at painting now. Films, music, magazines, women, internet, vimeo, youtube, etc.  In some ways, I have started indexing all of these ‘sources’. Looking at all of this is very crucial for me. I like the way there are moving images everywhere now. On a plane now, from Newark to Chicago, I saw on TV that some restaurants have iPads as menus; that is a challenge for us, one more layer to be aware of and defeat.

 How would you like people to engage with your work? 

I guess that I would like the first engagement, those first few seconds, to be an emotional response, something beyond cognitive thought.  Then after you can go and understand it, the quotations etc. I just started a large work called Therapy, and with this work I would really love for people to look at it and just get very emotional and feel all of their personal baggage, to really confront their subconscious. 

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression? 

Last thing that really blew me away, and has not left in ANY way is Michel Houellebecq’s latest book, The Map and the Territory. I read it in Hebrew, it comes out in English Jan 3, 2012, and I’ll read it in English as well.  The book changed me. 

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon? 

Yeah, 2012 is going to be great. I have a solo project at The George Maciunas Foundation in NYC, Noam Segal is curating something of mine at Yafo 23 in Jerusalem, with a large “re-mix” of Uccello’s Battle of San Romano and a lot of sculptures. I am also curating a show in Tel Aviv, at the Spaceship at Hayarkon 70 of international artists.