I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Joana Alarcão for the online magazine Insights of an Eco Artist. I must admit that it was harder work than I expected. I’ve given a few interviews in the past and usually the questions are predictable, generic and a little boring. So I was a little surprised to be sent some more challenging questions specifically about my art practice.
I’m not sure how many people read these interviews, but I always find it a useful exercise trying to explain my art practice to someone. The interview can be found here.
Joana Alarcão is an interdisciplinary eco-artist and writer who works primarily within the concepts of social/environmental justice and culture. Her website is here.
A few years ago I gave an interview to the naturist magazine Clothes Free Life. Somehow I managed to delete the original blogpost about it. It was an interesting exercise as the questions were from a different perspective to your normal artist interview. So here is the link to the article:
The Painting I Couldn’t Let Go: Revisiting “Man and Woman” a Decade Later
Some paintings are finished the moment the last brushstroke is applied. Others take a little longer. For my painting, “Man and Woman,” it took over a decade of quiet dissatisfaction before I could finally call it complete.
This piece was always deeply personal. It was the last in a series I created to honour my late partner after she passed away from a long illness. I had planned the paintings while she was still with me—taking reference photos, making sketches—but her poor health meant the canvases remained blank. After she was gone, a surge of activity propelled me into the studio to bring them to life, to record our relationship in paint.
Yet, while the other paintings in the series felt resolved, “Man and Woman” never did. For ten years, it troubled me. While it was technically faithful to the photographs I had worked from, it had failed to capture a true likeness of her. Her spirit wasn’t there.
Finally, I decided I had to rework it. What started as a plan for a small amendment quickly became a complete repainting of the entire surface.
The challenge, of course, is that an artist doesn’t stand still. My technique has evolved significantly since 2009. My palette is brighter, I use different mediums, and my approach to glazes is more restrained. In many ways, I was a different painter confronting an old ghost.
Original painting on left, with umbers and ochre dominating the palette
Interestingly, the biggest change came from something I’d lost: the original reference photos. I had to paint my late partner’s face almost entirely from memory. This would have terrified me a decade ago, but my work has grown less beholden to photographic accuracy. I’ve learned to trust my memory and my hand. Paradoxically, by letting go of the exact reference, I believe I found a much truer likeness.
Looking at the two versions side-by-side, the changes might seem subtle to some. But for me, they are monumental. The revision is finally the painting I set out to create in 2009. It was a long road to get here, but it was worth every moment to finally do her memory justice. The nagging doubts are gone, and I feel happy to share it with the world.
Edit: “Man and Woman” has since been shortlisted for the LGC Art Prize 2023 A recent post about the competition can be found here: LGC Art Prize
A recent visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam compelled me to rework an old painting. It was the Rembrandts that did it. I painted my self-portrait “Halo” during a particularly difficult time in my life. I had become the carer for my terminally ill partner. People praised me for my fortitude, but I was aware of a disparity between how people saw me and how I truly felt. Deep down there was an awful darkness; a sense of despair. I tried to recreate this sense in a painting, but wasn’t completely successful.
detail from reworked painting
Anyway, fast forward to March this year, and I had a splendid time visiting Amsterdam and studying the Rembrandts at the Rijksmuseum. Although there’s a very good selection of Rembrandts to be seen in London, I was captivated by the examples in Amsterdam – some really fine late Rembrandts. I could stare at them for hours. I marvel at the detail he could suggest in the shadows, with such economy. And there was such a sadness in those eyes. In looking at these wonderful paintings by the great master of portraiture, I felt a desire to revisit one of my earlier self-portraits: “Halo”.
Halo, revised version
I didn’t undertake many changes. Basically I added a few more layers of glaze, but this time I was a bit looser in the application and removal. It is easy to fall into the trap of becoming too precious when applying glazes. It’s the final stage, and the underpainting might have taken many hours to complete, so there’s an obvious reluctance to mess it up with a sloppy final layers. But looking at those old Rembrandts, what struck me is the spontaneity of the most beautiful passages in his paintings. He wasn’t afraid of messing them up.
The Painting That Fought Back: A Year-Long Journey to Create ‘The Gleaners’
Some paintings arrive easily, flowing from brush to canvas. This was not one of them. “The Gleaners” took over a year to complete, a journey of false starts, creative blocks, and one crucial breakthrough that transformed the entire piece. It’s a painting about social exclusion, but its creation taught me a lesson about collaboration.
Like many creative projects, it began with a collision of ideas. I wanted to create a contemporary version of Jean-François Millet’s famous painting, “The Gleaners,” to say something about modern inequality. The spark for my figures, however, came from a far stranger place: a still from the 1978 film “The Shout,” where actress Susannah York scurries across the floor like a primeval creature.
The unsettling, crawling pose felt right. It captured the desperate, overlooked nature of my subjects. I sketched it out, transferred it to canvas, and began to paint.
Early progress was good, but then I hit a wall. For months, the painting languished. I tweaked the composition, changed the colours, and in a moment of near-desperation, even added a SpaceX Starship launching in the background of a desolate wasteland. But nothing worked. The core of the painting—the foreground figures—felt lifeless and wrong. I couldn’t connect with them, and the entire project stalled.
Original sketch and first underpainting on canvas
The Breakthrough: A Secret Hidden in a Gainsborough
Just when I was ready to give up, a TV documentary changed everything. It was Waldemar Januszczak’s “The Art Mysteries,” exploring Thomas Gainsborough’s “Mr and Mrs Andrews.” Januszczak revealed how the painting subtly references the Enclosure Acts, which fenced off common land and pushed rural people into poverty.
The Incredible Story Behind Mr and Mrs Andrews (Waldemar Januszczak Documentary)
It was a lightbulb moment. Gainsborough’s composition, with its stark division between the landed gentry and their vast, controlled landscape, gave me the perfect stage for my own story of exclusion. I could fence off the lush green fields and bring the desolate wasteland right to the foreground, trapping my figures within it.
The background was solved. But the central problem remained.
The Final Piece: A Model’s Haunting Gaze
I finally admitted I couldn’t do it alone. My initial vision of emaciated, crawling figures wasn’t translating. I needed a real person.
I put out a call for a life model and found someone perfect for the project. From our first session, everything changed. Working with a real person, collaborating and responding to her presence, breathed life into the work.
We abandoned the original crawling pose. Instead, she offered something far more powerful: a haunting, direct, backward stare.
That stare became the new focal point of the painting. It was defiant, accusatory, and deeply human. The painting was no longer just my idea; it was a collaboration. The final weeks were a joy, and I finished just in time for its debut at the Cluster Contemporary Art Fair.
When I exhibited the painting, I watched as people were drawn in, not by the landscape or the concept, but by the arresting gaze of the foreground figure. It was a detail I had never planned, a gift born from collaboration. It’s a powerful reminder that when you put your easel in front of another person, the art you create is a conversation, not a monologue. And often, the result is something better than you could have imagined alone.
I had a difficult conversation about this painting at the recent Cluster Contemporary Art Fair. A Ukrainian woman approached me and asked me to explain it. I don’t think she was happy with what I said. First, I should make clear that I see only one aggressor in this war in Ukraine, and I admire the dignity and bravery of the Ukrainian people. But that is not what this painting is about.
details from Men Wrestling
Clearly I was mocking Putin, naked on his golden throne with rickety wooden legs. And having Macron with Boris Johnson wearing theatrical costumes is obviously questioning their motivation for their actions on the world stage. Biden cheering on from a distance is a comment on the US’s stance in this war. No, what puzzled this woman was the relevance of the naked men wrestling.
Many visitors who saw this painting at Cluster Contemporary spotted the reference to old photos of wrestlers by Eadweard Muybridge, and also to Francis Bacon’s Two Figures, which had used the Muybridge photos as a reference.
Two Figures by Francis Bacon, Two Men Wrestling by Eadweard Muybridge
This is not a noble painting about Ukrainian heroism. Instead it is a grubby little story about you and me: it’s about everyone cheering their chosen sides from the safety of their living room; it is about how a primal conflict to the death by two warring races has become an exciting spectacle for the rest of the world; it is about my shame in feeling any excitement at missiles raining down on Russian tanks and troops; it is about my sadness over what we have become.
