< TEA WITH ANDY >
Interview for the View Gallery exhibition: "IDENTITY"
Describe the first memory you have of being interested in art.
I was about 7 when I attempted to paint a rather large paint-by-numbers street scene. I very soon found myself disagreeing with the assigned colours. I therefor spent my time ignoring the instructions and mixings pigments together to create what I considered to be more appropriate hues though of course the pigment quality was pretty grim. I remember also the synthetic brush was so rubbish I went to the model shop and got one with a point so I could cut in the details!
Did you always know that you would become and artist?
Despite spending my childhood constantly drawing, painting and showing an obvious creative interest, art was not always the direction I thought I would pursue. I lived as a child in the house where my father had his GP surgery. My bedroom was above the waiting room. In fact all my extended family were in the medical profession. My mother was a social worker, my grandfather was an eye surgeon, my uncle and aunt consultants and others regional health officers, nurses, and more GP’s. I presumed that I too would follow in their footsteps and had an interview and decent offer from Guys in London. Sadly, I’ve always struggled with sequential memory and rote learning. Even though I would have been good stitching together minute vascular tubes, I may not have been so adept at knowing which ones! I’ve always considered myself above average intelligence but organising information is another matter; that has always been a struggle.
In fact it was only been very recently (and quite by accident) that I was tested and officially diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. That is a long and separate subject that informs my art but let’s skirt that for now.
Going back to my school; it was the type of place where one was expected to be in the army, the church or law. Cultural education was taken quite seriously but like sport it was more to finish one’s personality rather than start a career.
So how did you make the shift to art as a career?
It was only a few years after leaving school, on visiting a friend that my perspective completely changed. He was studying art and the allure and attraction of doing the same was instantaneous. Having never witnessed or experienced the atmosphere of an artistic establishment, this came as a welcome surprise. I had, until then, been rather a lost soul. I was a keen geologist and remember toying with the idea of blowing holes in the desert to look for oil. Unsure of which direction my life would lead me, I finally realised Fine Art was my calling. This required I took an A’level in art in 9 months at my local Tec in London whilst also working as a taxi driver to make ends meet.
Were your family supportive of this decision?
Yes, both my parents were supportive but it was largely the influence of my Welsh father Elvet that formed my enquiring mind and take my creative side more seriously. He was in fact an enormously cultured and well read man. He knew Elizabeth Frink and Laurie Lee as a student and would often invite artists and filmmakers to the suburbs for his famed “conversation lunches” which in later years I joined when my liver could stand it! These gatherings seemed quite normal to me. One of his best friends Jack Howells had won what I believe remains Wales’s only Oscar for a documentary on Dylan Thomas. I think my father’s experience as a doctor dealing with life and death gave him a respect not only for the fragility of life but the absurdity of so-called "safe" certainties. Although he was not backward in warning me about the risks of an artist’s career, he always supported my decision.
What was your first connection with Japan?
My association with Japan came quite by accident. The owner of the Corporate Art Consultancy I worked for in London used to be manager of graphic design company in the Far East. He had a lot of contacts in Tokyo. We were leafing through some top selling artist’s prints and I remember saying “I could do that”. He called my bluff and said “Go on then, I‘ll see if I can sell them”. To cut a long story short I rose to the challenge, made the editions and was taken up by the Sony gallery in Tokyo. He lost an employee but gained an artist. They were commercial landscapes but no less difficult having 25 to 30 colours in each edition. At the same time I was selling to major print publishers in London such as Christie’s Contemporary art in Dover Street. It was through Sony that I was invited to Japan on an exhibition tour.
What was your First Experience of Japan?
I first went there in 1989 and the gallery treated me rather like a rock star. I had a hotel suite at the Hilton and company Limos to whisk me home after dining with senior Sony executives at Maxims in the chic Ginza district. It was very much like the film “Lost in Translation” , the flowers, the lonliness, the jet lag drinks in the roof bar, oh..only no call girls or Scarlett Johansson! In visual terms I found Tokyo overwhelming and rather intimidating. It was in the middle of the Bubble Economy and the country was buzzing on a wave of outrageous optimism. I felt at times rather as a lost toddler in a loud country fayre.
Did the Japanese customs come easily to you?
Having been to Japan over 25 times, I have been asked this question a lot and the best analogy I can think of is learning chess. One may master the basic moves quite quickly and gain a measure of competence in months but then looking forward a huge cliff face of ineptitude rises up and it is the same with Japanese culture. On a first visit it seems very strange and the second strange but essentially Western. On the third and beyond one realises everything you know about the country is but a chimera that becomes more surreal and fascinating each visit.
To go to Japan is to make a number of Faux Pas. My particular favourite was thinking I had perfected the art of bowing, only to discover that I had placed my hands to the front which is what women do. Imagine a Japanese man coming into a U.K business meeting and curtsying. Nobody mentioned this to me in 25 years! Actually that’s just the hands. One also has to consider the depth of one’s bow in relation to the status of your opposite. That stuff is a minefield of tears and hilarity for another time maybe.
Was there a particular first impression that stood out
My first impression was coming into Tokyo on the freeway from Narita airport. These “new” roads are built directly above the old streets and snake their way through the high rise building for miles like a roller coaster. There seemed a fantastical futurism to it and yet as I’ve just implied I soon discovered there exists a tension between tradition and this unbridled modernity. I think the shock of the opening of Japan by force in the mid-19th century after centuries of isolation cannot be underestimated.
Very soon I realised Japan was a nation fraught with fascinating contradictions, themes I suppose that permeate this series of paintings and my attitudes to making art in general. I’d be the first to say my views are not without fault and where I’m critical I intend respect and artistic honesty and where I’m trivial I am intrigued and where I am simply decorative I intend, well just decoration!
What is the relevance of the geisha in your paintings?
What drew me to the Geisha was their ability to invert reality. By this I mean a real embodiment of the past that inhabits the present. It was the signals from this contradiction that fascinated me. Seen in a temple one feels a time traveller observing the past. Seen in a modern crowd the effect is reversed. I though this schism from past to present made for a wonderful muse that one may argue is unique in its racial totality for an advanced nation.
Actually, although the geisha acts as a focal point to my paintings, my interest lies more in what the geisha’s Kimono symbolised in modern Japan and how this has informed my creative process. If I’m honest this series started life as simply a decorative jamboree. I’ve always been attracted to patternity, to colour and I had in mind some sort of painterly exotic Klimt thing. But then the more I uncovered about geishas, kimonos and their position within Japanese society and culture, the more I started to consider the narrative possibilities in making social commentary interwoven with my own experiences. In that sense they are a social diary melded with aesthetic ideas on painting.
My “cracking open” of the Kimono has within it an intentional symbolism, a kind of “Narnia wardrobe” idea to that culture beyond the façade; the hidden story.
Are there other themes that run through your paintings, other than the contradiction between past and present?
Absolutely; yes many! In a way the Japanese series deals with a lot of stuff that isn’t directly about Japan but exist in all of us, for example the complex dislocations between us as individuals and the collective. As it happens I found this tension particularly fascinating in Japan, a capitalist country of individualist consumerism (with all the inherent liberalism that implies) over layered by a tribal Huxleyanism with quite strong collective traits.
So as well as that past/present thing the Kimono also manifests as a living conformity in which the individual may be themselves and not exhibit the anxiety of being overly individualistic. This seeming duality is wonderfully described by Donald Richie in his book “The Image Factory”.
My first work “Tokyo Time” really brokered archetypal experiences from Japan such as Pachinko, dazzling neon and blossom etc. As I went through the series the narratives become more personal, complex and was concerned with the creative processes of painting.
Describe the first memory you have of being interested in art.
I was about 7 when I attempted to paint a rather large paint-by-numbers street scene. I very soon found myself disagreeing with the assigned colours. I therefor spent my time ignoring the instructions and mixings pigments together to create what I considered to be more appropriate hues though of course the pigment quality was pretty grim. I remember also the synthetic brush was so rubbish I went to the model shop and got one with a point so I could cut in the details!
Did you always know that you would become and artist?
Despite spending my childhood constantly drawing, painting and showing an obvious creative interest, art was not always the direction I thought I would pursue. I lived as a child in the house where my father had his GP surgery. My mother was a social worker. My bedroom was above the waiting room. In fact all my extended family were in the medical profession. My grandfather was an eye surgeon, my uncle and aunt consultants and others regional health officers, nurses, and more GP’s. I presumed that I too would follow in their footsteps and had an interview and decent offer from Guys in London. Sadly, I’ve always struggled with sequential memory and rote learning and even though I would have been good stitching together minute vascular tubes, I may not have been so adept at knowing which ones! I’ve always considered myself above average intelligence but organising information is another matter; that has always been a struggle.
In fact it was only been very recently (and quite by accident) that I was tested and officially diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. That is a long and separate subject that informs my art but let’s skirt that for now.
Going back to my school; it was the type of place where one was expected to be in the army, the church or law. Cultural education was taken quite seriously but like sport it was more to finish one’s personality rather than start a career.
So how did you make the shift to art as a career?
It was only a few years after leaving school, on visiting a friend that my perspective completely changed. He was studying art and the allure and attraction of doing the same was instantaneous. Having never witnessed or experienced the atmosphere of an artistic establishment, this came as a welcome surprise. I had, until then, been rather a lost soul. I was a keen geologist and remember toying with the idea of blowing holes in the desert to look for oil. Unsure of which direction my life would lead me I finally realised Fine Art was my calling. This required I took an A’level in art in 9 months at my local Tec in London whilst also working as a taxi driver to make ends meet.
Were your family supportive of this decision?
Yes, both my parents were supportive but it was largely the influence of my Welsh father Elvet that formed my enquiring mind and take my creative side more seriously. As a GP he was in fact an enormously cultured and well read. He knew Elizabeth Frink and Laurie Lee as a student and would often invite artists and filmmakers to the suburbs for his famed “conversation lunches” which in later years I joined when my liver could stand it! These gatherings seemed quite normal to me. One of his best friends Jack Howells had won what I believe remains Wales’s only Oscar for a documentary on Dylan Thomas. I think my father’s experience as a doctor dealing with life and death gave him a respect not only for the fragility of life but the absurdity of "certainties". Although he was not backward in warning me about the risks of an artist’s career, he always supported my decision.
What was your first connection with Japan?
My association with Japan came quite by accident. The owner of the Corporate Art Consultancy I worked for in London used to be manager of graphic design products in the Far East. He had a lot of contacts in Tokyo. We were leafing through some top selling artist’s prints and I remember saying “I could do that”. He called my bluff and said “Go on then, I‘ll see if I can sell them”. To cut a long story short I rose to the challenge, made the editions and was taken up by the Sony gallery in Tokyo. They were commercial landscapes but no less difficult having 25 to 30 colours in each edition. At the same time I was selling to major print publishers in London such as Christie’s Contemporary art in Dover Street. It was through Sony that I was invited to Japan on an exhibition tour.
What was your First Experience of Japan?
I first went there in 1989 and the gallery treated me rather like a rock star, a hotel suite at the Hilton and company Limos to whisk me home after dining with senior Sony executives at Maxims in Ginza. It was very much like the film “Lost in Translation” only sadly without Scarlett Johansson! In visual terms I found Tokyo overwhelming and rather intimidating. It was in the middle of the Bubble Economy and the country was buzzing on a wave of outrageous optimism. I felt at times rather as a lost toddler in a loud country fayre.
Did the Japanese customs come easily to you?
Having been to Japan over 25 times, I have been asked this question a lot and the best analogy I can think of is learning chess. One may master the basic moves quite quickly and gain a measure of competence in months but then looking forward a huge cliff face of ineptitude rises up and it is the same with Japanese culture. On a first visit it seems very strange and the second strange but essentially Western. On the third and beyond one realises everything you know about the country is but a chimera that becomes more surreal and fascinating each visit.
To go to Japan is to expect to make a number of Faux Pas. My particular favourite was thinking I had perfected the art of bowing, only to discover that I had placed my hands to the front which is what women do. Imagine a Japanese man coming into a U.K business meeting and curtsying. Nobody mentioned this to me in 25 years! Actually that’s just the hands. One also has to consider the depth of one’s bow in relation to the status of your opposite. That stuff is a minefield of tears and hilarity for another time maybe.
Was there a particular first impression that stood out
My first impression was coming into Tokyo on the freeway from Narita airport. These “new” roads are built directly above the old streets and snake their way through the high rise building for miles like a roller coaster. There seemed a fantastical futurism to it and yet as I’ve just implied I soon discovered there exists a tension between tradition and unbridled modernity. I think the shock of the opening of Japan by force in the mid-19th century after centuries of isolation cannot be underestimated.
Very soon I realised Japan was a nation fraught with fascinating contradictions, themes I suppose that permeate this series of paintings and my attitudes to making art in general. I’d be the first to say my views are not without fault and where I’m critical I intend respect and artistic honesty and where I’m trivial I am intrigued and where I am simply decorative I intend, well just decoration!
What is the relevance of the geisha in your paintings?
What drew me to the Geisha was their ability to invert reality. By this I mean a real embodiment of the past that inhabits the present. It was the signals from this contradiction that fascinated me. Seen in a temple one feels a time traveller to the past. Seen in a modern crowd the effect is reversed. I though this schism from past to present made for a wonderful muse that one may argue is unique in its racial totality for an advanced nation.
Actually, although the geisha acts as a focal point to my paintings, my interest lies more in what the geisha’s Kimono symbolised in modern Japan and how this has informed my creative process. If I’m honest this series started life as simply a decorative jamboree. I’ve always been attracted to patternity, to colour and I had in mind some sort of painterly exotic Klimt thing. But then the more I uncovered about geishas, kimonos and their position within Japanese society and culture, the more I started to consider the narrative possibilities in making social commentary interwoven with my own experiences. In that sense they are a social diary melded with aesthetic ideas on painting.
My “cracking open” of the Kimono has within it an intentional symbolism, a kind of “Narnia wardrobe” idea to that culture beyond the façade; the hidden story.
Are there other themes that run through your paintings, other than the contradiction between past and present?
Absolutely; yes many! In a way the Japanese series deals with a lot of stuff that isn’t directly about Japan but exist in all of us, for example the complex dislocations between us as individuals and the collective. As it happens I found this tension particularly fascinating in Japan, a capitalist country of individualist consumerism (with all the inherent liberalism that implies) over layered by a tribal Huxleyanism with quite strong collective traits.
So as well as that past/present thing the Kimono also manifests as a living conformity in which the individual may be themselves and not exhibit the anxiety of being overly individualistic. This seeming duality is wonderfully described by Donald Richie in his book “The Image Factory”.
My first work “Tokyo Time” really brokered archetypal experiences from Japan such as Pachinko, dazzling neon and blossom etc. As I went through the series the narratives become more personal, complex and was concerned with the creative processes of painting.
Describe you creative process.
Although my work is mostly figurative now, I come from an abstract background and so the “abstracted” composition of my work still features strongly. By this I mean how the structure and picture plane reads, how the basic forms are organised, at least at the start.
I have a note book and deposit a lot of ideas. I also make photo collages which I work into the painting. If you look at the stages films I’ve made you can see that many areas are completely altered as the mood and ideas evolve.
Although there are distinct themes in each painting, every work has a different approach. In one for example I may be playing with the painterly nature of rain and neon, in another trompe l’oeil illusions with a social narrative.
I have as I mentioned earlier; Attention Deficit Disorder. This affects how my works are ordered sequentially. A fast moving mind creates many disparate ideas and so I’ve sought working methods to digitize and order them often with surprising results. One of them is that I ironically lean towards a meditative and mindful approach where segmented thoughts can be cohesively combined in one work. These fractured combinations often combine to create unusual artworks. Perhaps this is the “spontaneous” side to my art rather than say a painterly gesture.
I like to tell stories but I also love the pure majestic pleasure of the complex cityscape. The source is photographic but the outcome quite different. In places there are quite loose marks in the brushing, stencilling, sponging etc. They are less photorealist and more micro expressionist. We talk of cities having “personalities” and I suppose that’s my aim, to make my cityscapes more like portraits and with such works they preserve the "moment" of the subject, the face reflecting their dark and light natures; the shabby, grand and mysterious.
Finally I like art that reconnects with historical processes and archetypal themes, art who meaning builds over time, art made by the artist, with moderation and above all, devotion. These may seem opposites to today's interests but then again, what could be more modern than that!