Watching Painting

Painted in oils while still at school where I sold my first painting.The graphic design degree course at Middlesex University taught how to develop visual ideas and the attention to detail, by all means except oil painting. Worked as a designer and art director in-house and then freelance mainly on publishing projects where I would think of an idea and commission other creative people to execute or interpret. Also created own photomontages and collage illustrations for Shakespeare and Arthur Miller along with other notable writers. Exhibited in the ICA in London and in the Britain in Vienna exhibition. Wrote and illustrated my own graphic satirical book, using the Rorschach blot as device in The Inkspot Monologues (www.Inkspotmonologues.com). Prints from the exhibition were exhibited and sold at the Freud Gallery, London. Painted pictures in acrylic on paper in faux naïf style. Exhibited with the outsider specialist the Henry Boxer Gallery alongside luminaries George Grosz and Scotty Wilson. The surface finish of the acrylic painting bothered me and mounted the picture behind glass. Worked with several leading artists, including Gilbert and George, Allen Jones, and David Harrison. on their publications. Also worked on around 20 Old Master publications, including Boucher, Rubens, Vermeer and Van Eyck. Worked closely with the Schorr Collection, the largest private collection of Old Masters in Britain since WWII, designing two volume publication. Changed my style and planned the pictures more carefully, working in oil on canvas and linen. Usually put down a ground a first, and then building up layers, over period of time. The surface finish is flat and the colours glow and are much brighter and richer than on screen. The paintings explore the dichotomies of adulthood and childhood, the conscious and the unconscious, the seen and the unseen, and in various combinations. In attempting to archive this, mix the cartoonish with anthropomorphic imagery, elements from manga and parts which are more naturalistically treated. The colour palette is more modulated than in Pop Art. Each picture, whether landscape, figurative or slide life contains different aspects and emphasis of these elements.