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Added on 16th of September 2011
Put your content here
717 views, (0) comments
Added on 16th of September 2011
Put your content here
726 views, (0) comments
Added on 16th of September 2011
Born 1964, London. Hyperrealist painter. M.A. Eng. Lit.B.A(hons) Fine art/ Philosophy
My paintings might be classed as hyperrealistic, though the boundaries between Hyperrealism, Photorealism and Exactitude (the new kid on the block) are vague, and there is much overlap. Certainly I can be classed as a contemporary representational artist; and perhaps these paintings do strive to be more real than reality – that's to say, hyper-real.
Like many artists working in this style, I use photographs extensively (note also that my paintings take several months to complete, no fruit would stay well behaved for that length of time). However, the photograph isn't the beginning and end. I don't seek to slavishly imitate the photograph with its pronounced croppings, blurrings and strange depths of field. If these elements appear, it is because the painting warrants it.
And yet I rely heavily on the photograph for my information. In fact little is imagined. (No doubt this is where the public's vitriol for photorealism etc stems from.) Though the original setting of the still life has to be first imagined. And even with the photograph as source, it is still all too easy to get it wrong, to not pull off the artifice... where the eye simply isn't convinced by what it sees. All the skills of a painter are still required to conjure a credible totality out of the thousands of brush strokes – so distinct from the photo which lazily grabs the entirety in less than a second. But meeting that challenge is so much part of the fascination and motivation – to make the image believable, such that the spectator ignores the technical virtuosity and enters the created world - suspends their disbelief.
I use the photograph because it provides the necessary detail the eye barely sees. The images are blown up to twice their actual size and printed, and here much is revealed which otherwise might remain hidden from the human eye. The detail isn't painted because the photo contains and dictates it. The photo is forced to contain this information, it is intentionally placed there when the image is taken. I ensure the camera has the capable resolution to yield this detail, sometimes creating many high resolution photos to create a montage of the one image so that there is the right amount of information.
Some might wonder where's the value in painting the image when the photo has already captured it. It's a perennial question. Part of the motivation is to show the subject anew, so the spectator sees what they never saw before, sees it afresh. Where the viewer would likely walk away from viewing the photograph after a few moments, the painting captivates, bewitches and absorbs the viewer. There is no wonderment in a photograph of fruit, but in the painting something almost magical takes place – the entire history of art is testament to this magical ability of paintings to mesmerise their spectators.
And where the photo is insufficient (as it invariably is), it has to be modified. From the camera it is digitally modified on the computer in a range of ways. Fruit may be extracted out of one vase and placed in another, which has, say, better reflections. Backgrounds are changed, fruit are added and deleted. As a jobbing graphic designer, digital modification is as intuitive as painting, and so there is complete freedom to alter the photograph as though I were using the flexibility of paint itself.
This process continues in the painting. Wherever the digitally modified photo comes up short, it is also modified in paint. If the balance isn't right, I may add, or remove elements according to the painting's needs – never the photographs'.
My subject matter loosely has classical roots in its use of the still life. Here there is no seeking a return to the past, but simply a nod to the likes Caravaggio, whom I greatly admire. If ever a classical photorealist could exist, it would be Caravaggio. In Supper at Emmaus the fruit is made to leap of the canvas plane into our laps. However my still life's are placed in contemporary shiny glass enclaves. Here I seek to update the motif.
In my depiction an idealisation is partly at work, a rendering of fruit into a condition of high vitality. The intent is to paint the most luscious, sensuous of fruits. And so perhaps this is where an association with hyperrealism appears.
Is it reasonable to say fruit are sexy? We think of the forbidden fruit and its associations with sexual awareness. Fruit can be very sensuous, it is to me, and this is why I choose the subject matter, this is what I seek to extract, what excites, and consequently what I seek to reveal to the spectator – though without resorting to overt imagery.
And perhaps my fruit are also forbidden, as they are offered up in all their sensuousness, yet seemingly unavailable, forbidden from consumption by their secretion within glass enclaves – in opposition to the fruit in the classical basket waiting to be plucked at any moment. In this instance, like the gluttonous child's hand in the sweet jar, attempt to take a fruit from the glass bowl, and you'll struggle to extract it.
This type of extreme realism provokes much antagonism from the mainstream art world, regarded as art that is outmoded, pointless, and offering no insight into the human condition. But it strikes me as counter-intuitive to give up depicting the very details around us, the details which make up our lives, be they banal or extravagant - certainly when they can still excite. If they excite me, then why not others, is the raison d'etre. These paintings are accessible to all, there is no exclusion. The Hirsts can deliver the intellectual stimulation, while painters like myself, with humbler motives, can simply bring a little beauty and wonderment into this world. For me, that seems motive enough.
Registered: 2010-04-26
Location: Highgate, London
