D You’ve talked about various periods of the past coming into some of this work here. Illuminated manuscripts, dropped capitals, and that sort of thing. I was pretty curious because it’s quite a jump, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a very different aesthetic and time period, but it’s so implicated in the order and history of graphic design. In a way, it’s the naissance of so many ideas in typography. Obviously, those are some of the most beautiful books that we’ve ever seen. I would love to hear your take on how that became a part of this series.
H I went to art school in York to become a graphic artist. I loved the way art and graphics were leapfrogging off each other, if that’s the right visual image. Pop artists were influenced by advertising, and advertising would then be influenced by Pop artists. It wasn’t necessarily just about selling stuff…I think advertising is in a shocking state now. But anyway, at art school, I took a course called the History of Lettering. I learnt the entire history all the way back to Boustrophedonic script. People would write from right to left and then drop down and write from left to right. What I loved in the book, what stood out for me, and what I chose to do for my practical exam, was the first letter of a page in an illuminated manuscript.” I made a big, blown up version of it. That was basically a Pop Art thing – you take something small in graphics and blow it up. I think it really does come from that period in time, when I thought I could give these mediaeval manuscripts Pop Art makeovers.
D How do you technique wise achieve these kinds of works? Is it screen print and paint applied by hand, or a whole mix of different things?
H I just paint them freehand. They started out as studies for the tighter works. The graphic, hard-edged works begin as pencil on canvas. I draw them and then work the paint in. Some of the letter paintings have a sense of being translucent when one letter is laid upon another. It was always a difficult thing to make them painterly and create that visual illusion that you’re seeing through a painting. I wasn’t talking about technique…it’s probably boring.
D To an extent, but I think when it’s trompe l’oeil, when something is not what it seems, then that’s when it’s interesting. That’s what I’m understanding from even these studies, which I’m glad made it to become works, because I think they show a lot of that thought process.
H I like when a painting will start and take what happens next rather than having a plan for the painting, cause then you’re just executing it, you’re just a technician. For example, let’s start with a “C.” You would dictate that the C is blue and layer it over with an “A” in yellow, and it becomes green. It might work, it might look off. These studies are a way in which we’ve departed from the strictures of this technique. I always read into formal colour relationships. So even if blue and yellow make green, I’m going to have to paint it red, otherwise it’s just not going to work. That’s why these paintings have this colour work in them, different colours and different paintings in each of the sketches.
D What do you mean by your interest in formal colour work in that sense?
H Well, does that blue go well next to that yellow? And if it doesn’t, is that also interesting? Is that jarring enough to work? I like to rescue work. I have a painting called “Colour Scheme For A Fucking Fiasco,” from when I was trying to make paintings with colour schemes as jarring as possible, but maybe somehow work. I was actually very inspired by Yves Saint Laurent because my wife has a lot of foulards with impossible colours.
D It’s a perfect segue way into the title of the show, “The French Letter Paintings.”
H These entendres…I was writing the press release and there were these letter paintings in the show, and because the show was going to be in France, I’d like to use French letter paintings. And I thought, that is what they are. They are French letter paintings. And I know “French letters” are preservatifs. Condoms, as we call them. It’s an unlovely word if ever there was one.
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