PF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?
The last painting that influenced me was Danny Fox’s ‘Bathers’, the brush strokes were so brave, as well as the colour choices in the bodies. Alexandre Cabanel’s ‘Birth of Venus’ influenced me to make my own less submissive paintings of women bathing. I get a surge of passion for art when I go and see paintings by Rothko and Peter Doig. I’m not sure what the driving force is that makes me paint, it’s just that I have to do it, and I’m unsettled if I go for
a few days without painting.
PF: Walk us through your creative process?
I have an idea, then arrange photo shoot. I use my phone for photos as the image I want tends to be the split second before the photo is taken, and I can see that image on live photos unlike on a camera still. I then meticulously go through all the photos and sometimes collage two together to get the right composition, which I am quite obsessive about. I paint in sections, like Lucian Freud starting with the most challenging parts, like the eyes. I then start noticing the colours in people’s skin, and lean into that.
PF: What do you want people to feel or take away from your art?
One of my earliest memories was a feeling I had when looking at a painting in a gallery, like an overwhelming excitement and need to get home and create, so I would love my paintings to make someone else feel that way. I’d also like people to feel the emotion of the person I’ve captured in my painting or the scene that they are in, or course we all have different memories that we relate to.
PF: If you could have dinner with any artist who would it be?
Peter Doig…. I have heard that he is such a lovely person. I know we’d have a really interesting conversation about colour. I heard him on a podcast recently talking about how he gets through the ‘boring’ parts of a painting, and I loved how honest he was about that. I always felt like I was missing something in myself as most artists talk about how passionate they are about the process…. so I related to Doig’s admission, because there are boring parts especially in very large scale paintings.