PF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?
One time my younger brother told me I was the best drawer in the world. That’s kept me going for a pretty long time.
PF: Walk us through your creative process?
I like to work in series. I tend to get kind of hooked on a visual, whether it’s blondes or white horses or anything really. But all imagery has context to it, I like going through the process of researching what it means, or why it showed up in my mental bank. And then I draw a lot. Getting the linework right before painting is really important to me. With painting itself it actually goes quite quickly because I like to paint alla prima. Everything that leads up to it takes more time.
PF: What do you want people to feel or take away from your art?
Ouf big question. I mean right now i’m working on a series of carousels as a metaphor for repeating history. Obviously its rooted in a lot of historical and social context but it’s more about the feeling. What i’m trying to explore with myself is more optimism, even if these structures don’t work- realising it is a start, so we can imagine better ones.
PF: How important is the viewer’s interpretation versus your intention?
Very. External views are really helpful in not living in an echo chamber and really understanding the context my work is actually in. Its good to know when I’ve succeeded in what I was trying to do but also, sometimes I have blindspots. If someone interprets it differently to how I intended, its also interesting to me. If I didn’t care about how anyone reacts to my work.. well there’d be no point in showing it anywhere.
PF: If you could have dinner with any artist who would it be?
Berthe Morisot. The mother of Impressionism deserves to know that she is finally getting her flowers. And over a few glasses of wine maybe maybe ask if the rumours of her and Edouard Manet are true…. and if it’s not then we’d bitch about 18th century tabloid culture.