Artist Statement.
Since early 2004 I have a had a great interest in Illustration and it's influence is clear in all my work. In 2006 I began oil painting, producing fairly large pieces of work all of which involve a narrative. My target audience is the public rather than the Art establishment and I have no interest in tricking them or producing work that needs a large amount of interpretation. To quote one of my biggest influences, “I paint real pictures for real people”.
More often than not I find that trying to produce clear, self-explanatory work is a much harder discipline than keeping anything from the viewer but I have great enjoyment in painting images that are capable of telling a complete story.
I focus my subject matter around themes that stem from American Illustration and Pop culture; themes of innocence, ambition and relationships portrayed through the situations that people find themselves in. It's not a naivety to the real world, and my work in the past has been misconstrued as Idealism, but this is wrong because the situations that I choose to illustrate do happen, they just seem to be often overlooked artistically in favour of more controversial topics.
Each piece requires my full attention so I normally work on one piece at a time and obsess over it. Rather than current artists or exhibitions, I get the bulk of my inspiration from films; especially the mainstream American Cinema. Steven Spielberg is a brilliant story teller and his films never fail to inspire me. The golden glow and nostalgia that Hollywood drench a lot of their films in to produce these epic movies is something I find incredibly influential.
There are, of course, a lot of 20th century artists that inspire me. Amongst them is Norman Rockwell who, in my opinion, was a genius when it came to his technical skill and story telling ability. I thoroughly enjoy the intensity in Walter Sickert's work and Edgar Degas who said, 'Art is not what you see, but what you make others see' is my favourite artist for his capability to do just that, creating compositions that were years ahead of his time.
It seems ridiculous to me that, within art circles, for an artist to sell is a taboo and I tend to ignore the negativity that shrouds commercial art. My ambition is to keep painting and keep selling so that I can make a living out of doing what I love.
The Paintings.
The Waiting Room was my first oil painting. The concept of which took weeks of planning and preparation. For my first painting I wanted to produce a piece that would be a success in both skill and subject matter. The idea of a Father sat with his son reminiscing for his childhood, represented by him leaving his newspaper to read the boys comic book, summed up all that I wanted to capture in the piece, whilst the newspaper, shoes, magazines and clothing presented challenges in skill - the results of which I was very happy with.
The execution of the painting was a labour of love and was a project that I obsessed over every day for at least a month. It underwent many alterations and looked quite different to the finished piece at different stages. The eye is drawn to the focal point of the man peering over his sons shoulder by a series of red objects in the painting; the floor, the gloves, the no-smoking sign, the flyer pinned to the wall and the comic book cover. The red forms a circle around the main characters and draws the eye in. The father and son are local friends and the half lady is my mum. The coat that the man is sitting on is 'borrowed' from a Norman Rockwell painting, forming one of two references to the artist in the this first painting of mine.
The boys who eventually posed for the piece are friends of the family; from the left, Jack, Dan, Thomas and Bertie. When I pose my models I give them the basic concept of the painting and some loose direction but then I usually let them adopt the poses themselves, making it much more natural. This paintings success is owed to the boys positioning being spot on.
Olympians. In 2008 I was asked to come on board as an Official Artist for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012. Its an incredible opportunity for which I am producing paintings that have the Olympic Subject matter applied. In trying to decide how I wanted to approach this rather daunting task of depicting the first Olympic Games in this country for 64 years, I quickly decided that I didn't want to 'state the obvious'. There are some incredible images of Athletes running through the finish line, receiving a Gold medal or running with the Olympic torch etc. These images are iconic and so I felt I didn't want to be reproducing what had been already done and couldn't really be improved upon. Instead I wanted to focus my subject matter on the more humble side in the grandeur that is the Olympic Games; to try and find the beauty that is in the mundane. The man who puts the finishing touches on the running track, or the the child getting the autograph, or quite simply the crowd that becomes a community of its own. By taking these moments and capturing them on the canvas, I hope the mundane then becomes as moving and as powerful in some cases as the Olympic stadium itself. The Olympic paintings are currently part of a touring exhibition around the country in support of young athletes.
