‘Looking Back : Over My Shoulder’

 

 

Q. I thought we could start by asking about your early years. Where did the interest in art come from?

 

A. At school I liked a lot of subjects – geography, history, English literature, but especially art. I wanted to draw all the time, but I had a problem finishing things. My art teacher at school discouraged me and didn’t want me in the art room; nevertheless my one idea was to apply to the local art-school (Canterbury) and see if they thought I was good enough. I wanted to look at art – any opportunity to go to London was an opportunity to go to the Tate Gallery or the National Gallery.

 

Q. I am interested in your early career and the move from studying art in Birmingham to setting up studio in London.

 

A. Being a student in Birmingham gave me a lot. I was able to try out a lot of different possibilities. I spent a lot of time with photography – taking pictures and learning how to print in the dark room. Whatever I tried – painting and drawing kept pulling me back. I was troubled by the thought that painting by its nature is unique and therefore expensive and therefore only for the few. So it was not without a sense of socialist guilt that I pursued painting.

I had spent 4 years altogether at the Birmingham School of Art and it just seemed inevitable that the next step was to move to London and set up studio.

 

Q. Why do you rarely speak about your early work?

 

A. I don’t often talk about my past work because it always seems more pressing to talk about the present. This could be changing now as I find that I am interested in re-examining some key works from the past such as ‘By The Hand’ from 1989, how in retrospect a work like this belongs to a changing world coinciding with the end of the cold war and the tearing down of the Berlin wall.

 

Q So there has never been a kind of nostalgic looking back?

 

A. No. Meanwhile you can see underlying connections between earlier work and current work, even if it is not always so obvious. Nostalgia is different from historical analysis that aims to illuminate the present.

 

Q. There seems to be a kind of to-ing and fro-ing between abstraction and figuration in your work over time. What do you think abstraction offers you?

 

A. Abstraction offers the possibility of clarifying or simplifying complex questions. There is an assumption of something pre-existing my work; something that exists but that I haven’t made myself such as the form and layout of the newspaper in works such as ‘Clinton Scrambles B52s’ from 1996. This is a work that comes on as an abstract painting but depends on a recognisable structure from the everyday world.

Abstraction offers the possibility of exploring the process of painting itself for the maker and for the viewer. The title of the work anchors the otherwise timeless abstract painting in the real and reported world of the day.

 

Q. What prompts the kind of to-ing and fro-ing between abstraction and figuration in your work?

 

A. While abstraction may offer the potential of clarifying or simplifying complex questions, there are also limitations. Besides it is misleading to talk about abstraction and figuration as if these were two entirely separate categories. Often, instead, what I see in my work is the appearance and reappearance of thresholds. This could be the threshold between looking and reading; the threshold between inside and outside; the threshold between private and public; the threshold between serious and ridiculous; the threshold between abstract and figurative.

 

Q. Can we talk about artistic crisis in relation to these shifts?

 

A. There are two different kinds of crisis to explore here. One where there is a crisis in the world order such as in 1989 with the end of the cold war and the demolition of the Berlin wall. Or where the pandemic from 2020 onwards dictates change. Here I as an artist must respond consciously and practically in my work to these seismic changes. The second is where without any external pressure an artist experiences an individual existential crisis which may lead to major change or to stopping working altogether. I don’t know that crisis is the best way of describing changes in my work. It is more like changes are prompted by the work itself which is probably in about equal measure the feeling of excitement to explore something new or from a different angle coupled with a feeling that the previous body of work has run its course. These changes have never led me to want to disown a previous body of work. When I have destroyed pieces of my own work – it has generally been because I don’t think it is very good.

 

Q. You referred earlier on to your socialist alignment, can you talk more about how political concerns inform your work?

 

A. It is true to say that I am a lifelong socialist. Ever since I was a teenager reading George Orwell and some of Karl Marx and others, I became convinced that it was the job of governments to intervene and make for a fairer, more equitable society.

How these convictions get played out in art practice is a more vexed question. I have never been able to put these questions to bed or to say very much that helps me or helps others.

 

Q. Do you think that what shaped you in your formative years informs your work today?

 

A. It forms a part. At the same time, I think that my current work is very much shaped by events in the world today. When I have been asked to speak formally about my work, on each occasion I have juxtaposed pieces of my work with events that are occurring in the world – the Covid pandemic – the end of the cold war – climate change and so on. I would do this in lectures but not necessarily in exhibitions.

 

Q. You are a prolific artist. Can you say something about the need to create so much?

 

A. It is not so much that I have choice in the matter. Actually I am more likely to criticise myself for overproduction. In the past I might have believed it was necessary to do a lot in order to do anything good. This doesn’t apply so much any more.

 

Q. Could we talk about your most recent works, such as appear on your website under the heading ‘Painting In The 2nd Year of the Pandemic’?

 

A. As you can see from 2020 onwards, I have pretty much concentrated on modest scale painting and drawing, often using watercolour on watercolour paper. This was not a decision I made in 2020, but is no doubt a response to circumstances I currently find myself in. It also relates to wanting to be an artist with a low impact on the earth’s resources. There are also several practical advantages to working in this way and I think I have come a long way from equating large scale with artistic ambition. For example - ’12 Horizontal Overlays’ from 2021 is entirely a work in its own realisation, while also offering the possibility of suggesting something expansive and immersive.

 

Q. Could we talk about resilience? It seems you are able to push through periods of doubt, change and being overlooked and still find a way to produce work.

 

A. I don’t know that I can make any very meaningful comment about that. If I was being asked to give advice to a young artist starting out – I would probably say – just keep going and don’t give up.

 

 

Stephen Carter   London   November   2023

 

*This is not a conventional interview.

The questions are an amalgam of questions I have received on various occasions.