Big Heads

Chuck Close, 'Self Portrait', oil on canvas, 240 x180cms, 2006

I finally completed reading ‘The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close Interviews 27 of His Subjects’ the other evening and am left feeling rather bereft now. It has been such a great companiable read over the last couple of months but also an education and inspiration, offering much needed food for thought which is certainly influencing my thinking in the studio at the moment.

For those who are not familiar with his work, Chuck Close, now 69, is one of the world’s most well-known painters, who in a career spanning over forty years is recognised for his multitude of different ways to ‘skin the same cat’ in his large scale  portraits.  His subjects over the years, as well as featuring various close family members, have always been his friends. These friends however,   happen to make up some of the most important and interesting artists in the New York art world where he lives and works. Hence this book makes a fascinating read with a wide range of interviews with some of them.

'Alex', oil on canvas, 1988

So we have artists as diverse as Richard Serra, Elizabeth Murray, Eric Fischl, Judy Pfaff, Roy Lichtenstein, John Chamberlain, Richard Artswager, Janet Fish, Lorna Simpson, Joel Shapiro, Alex Katz, Mark Greenwold, Philip Glass, and many others all discussing an equally diverse range of art-related topics, from working with galleries and dealers, the 70’s women’s movement, race and gender, learning disabilities and education, public and audience, materials and concepts, and the contextual influences of the day. I enjoy reading stuff like this much more than fiction, and am fascinated in reading about other’s creativity and lives, especially when told by the artists themselves. Close’s paintings are viewed as an important ‘portrait’ of the New York art scene, and this book is a perfect complement to them. When it was first published in 1998 (I think) a copy was placed in every public library across America.of the most original, challenging, creative and important artists in the post-war period.







'Mark', watercolour on canvas, 240 x 180cms, 1971

In relation to my own work, I’ve become again interested In Close’s assertion that it is very liberating to place limits on your work and to explore your ideas within these. I say again, as it was when I first became a fan of Close (who incidently is a quadroplegic after the collapse of a spinal artery in 1988, an tragedy he calls 'The Event') after visiting his retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in 1999 and reading the accompanying catalogue that I became exposed to some of these ideas of imposing limitations, getting rid of the hand in the work, presenting subject matter in a very flat-footed and even way, instead of more expressively, and  began looking at minimalist painters such as Ad Reinhart etc. It is no less a thing to say that exhibition changed my life, and offered up a route away from all the expressionist excess of my work at the time and lead me to soon after to start making my own flat-footed, coolly painted portraits which I made for about ten years. Close’s limitations became where he only used black acrylic applied with an airbrush for those early photo-realist works, throwing away all his brushes and evidence of his hand, and working incrementally, square after square by using a grid to transfer his photos to the canvas. I’ve never been able to do something as radical, but did impose certain limitations: for a long time all my paintings were a deliberately banal A1 standard size, all the heads presented frontally, and I tried to reduce the amount of marks I would use and paint in a deliberately unexpressive way.

'Big Self Portrait', acrylic on canvas, 270 x210cms, 1969

It is only since developing away  from this in the last five years as other interests have naturally took hold, and I’ve moved away from portraiture, that older more expressive and my more  impetuous tendencies have returned as I’ve sought to seek some sort of footing in making landscape inspired work. The recent motorway paintings though have helped me ground things again, and re-connecting with Close and some of his peers by way of this book, it has helped me think more clearly about the importance of striving to always be tough with the work, and more importantly, original (and how being influenced by others doesn’t necessarily get in the way of this). 

So, I’m taking things more slowly in the studio at the moment….









Studio Visit: Andrew Tift

Andrew Tift, 'Self Portrait', charcoal on paper

Andrew Tift, BP Portrait Prize winning artist, visited the studio yesterday to critique my recent work. I originally approached Andrew to support my grant application to Arts Council, asking whether he would act as a ‘mentor’ and offer more critical support, anticipating that I would be trying to develop some new portraits during my two years. This hasn’t yet materialized, but I do have a few ideas floating around. I’m just waiting for the right opportunity to present itself.

 'Tony Benn', acrylic on canvas, 160 x 168cms,1998

'Harry Coleman (You Know Not The Day Nor The Hour',  160 x 168cms, acrylic on canvas,

Andrew is a very perceptive and committed artist. He is easy to talk to and was also very direct and honest in his responses to my motorway paintings and Scandinavian studies. I sensed that he initially found it difficult to ‘key in’ to looking at my landscapes, as he is just so devoted and singularly committed to portraiture, which we discussed in some detail, but it wasn’t long before we taking the paintings apart, and talking at length about lots of related topics and shared enthusiasms, which included Chuck Close at the Hayward Gallery in 1999 (an exhibition that changed my life! I’m currently reading Close’s ‘The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in conservation with 27 of his subjects’- an amazing read if, like me, you are interested in the New York Art scene from the 1950-1980’s and all the great ideas about painting during this period); Alfred Munnings; the use of photography as a tool; Bill Brandt; and Pierro Della Francesca’s ‘Baptism of Christ’, which was coincidentally one of our mutual favourite paintings. For many years I’ve held this as my own ‘desert island painting’, and often run up the stairs at the National Gallery when In London to spend some time with just this one work in that room on the first floor. Andrew’s deep passion and enduring conviction in portrait painting was very inspiring when we got onto the subject, and I really enjoyed the couple of hours we spent.

Chuck Close, 'Self Portrait', 180 x 150cms, oil on canvas, 2004

Piero Della Francesca, 'The Baptism of Christ', egg on poplar, 1450s

One of the lingering thoughts I was left with was when we talked about Scandinavia, and how the trip was connected to a desire I had to try working abroad. Andrew wanted to know straight away how I had found this, as he himself has made numerous trips overseas to make work, from New Mexico to Japan, but never found it that satisfying an experience. He explained how he always felt like an outsider and that despite his best efforts always felt that the work he made had a ‘tourist’ quality to it. He said that for him the most satisfying work he has made was when he was able to spend long periods of times with the sitter, but also when he looked closer to home for inspiration, particularly his native Black Country. This view confirmed some of my own feelings about the Scandinavian work compared to the motorways made from places ‘in my own backyard’, so to speak. That’s not to say the contrasts aren’t interesting, but by the evening I found myself excitedly working on some new drawings based on my recent photographs taken underneath the M5 again.

But for me this is a strange and new position, as for the last ten years I have striven to maintain a ‘distance’ from my subject, and keen not to ascribe one as being more important than another. I’m trying to develop new work though, and it is important to maintain an openness to where the work may take you to try and find an honest place with it.

 Andrew Tift, 'Tsukijo Fish Market,' acrylic on canvas,122 x 46cms

Andrew Tift, 'Bandana', charcoal on paper

Andrew Tift, 'Steel Workers', acrylic on canvas

Andrew Tift, 'Absorb', charcoal on paper

Andrew Tift, 'Peace, Love, Hope and Faith (Ken), charcoal on paper

I share Andrew’s views about his own work, and do really enjoy his powerful portraits of Black Country steel workers, and local bikers etc. Our techniques are a million miles apart, but we share many of the same passions in our subject matter (it has been said that his paintings owe as much to the art of Super Realists as to the films of Ken Loach). The imaginative intensity he brings to his portraits (as seen in this portrait of ‘Ken’ which I’ve posted before) is something I really feel I could learn a lot from if I am to develop any new portrait work in the future….It was a great privilege to have Andrew visit the studio.

www.andrewtift.co.uk/