In 1958, Samuel Beckett found himself an unwilling traveller on a trip to Berne in Switzerland. According to biographer Anthony Cronin, the trip was enlivened by the chance to see one of Cézanne’s last portraits in a private collection. His head already full of thoughts of infirmity and death, Beckett felt the picture to be overwhelmingly sad. It was a picture of a blind, broken old man. Decrepit old men (or even decrepit young men) populate Beckett’s work in his search for a story form that could strip back the veil of deadening habit to get to that “thing” (maybe that nothingness) that lies behind.

When viewing Ken Currie’s work of the last 5 years, it is hard not to surmise that he has been on a parallel search behind this habitual shroud. Engaged in an attempt to capture ‘that’ pensive moment or to make a study of those whose job it is to literally get under the skin of humanity, cutting into it to reveal the inner workings. Like Beckett before him, Currie’s practice expresses this inner world with a surgeon’s scalpel but does so with a painter’s instinct.

Can you tell me a bit more about the dynamic between yourself and artists such as Peter Howson, Steven Campbell and Adrian Wisniewski at the Glasgow School of Art in the early Eighties?

I met Steven Campbell on my first day at Glasgow School of Art in 1978. Peter Howson was in the year above me and Adrian joined the Painting School in second year, transferring from Architecture. Steven and Adrian then left Painting in third year to join what was called the “Mixed Media” department. They were a truly formidable double act and two of the most interesting and creative students in the whole of the art school at that time but I was closer to Howson in terms of subject matter and influences. He had just returned to finish his degree at Glasgow after a stint in the Army. The central figure for all of us was the tutor Alexander (Sandy ) Moffat. He encouraged and supported us all equally and understood our desire to break away from the traditions of the Painting School at that time. Although there were broadly similar areas of interest, for example, the human figure and narrative imagery, the dynamic between us was mostly antagonistic and fiercely competitive. With hindsight it’s clear that the rivalry between us was one of the very things that helped motivate us as artists.

I should say that Steven Campbell died recently at the age of 54 – a great loss to Scottish art and contemporary painting.

Can you tell me a bit about how you typically begin a painting?

I fill sketchbooks with very small, very tentative pencil thumbnails of ideas. These ideas mostly come out of nowhere into my head, or come out of a train of thought, or something I’ve seen or read. Out of these sketches I firm up ideas for specific paintings. Occasionally I’ll make a larger preparatory sketch but usually I begin drawing directly onto the canvas with charcoal. These initial marks are crucial. If I over-revise the drawing I feel I’m killing the idea so I try to keep things as fresh as possible at all times. Once I’m happy with the drawing I then begin a lengthy process of building up a ground and when that’s ready I begin to paint – then anything can happen. This may all sound rather mechanical but really it feels quite frenetic and spontaneous when I’m doing it at the time.

As your work has developed, you appear to have abandoned a detailed rendering of space in favour of more minimal compositions often featuring a mass of darkness giving way to a single figurative element. These figures in sparse settings put me in mind of some of the plays of Samuel Beckett – such as “Rockaby”: where an old woman sits in a rocking chair on an empty stage – can you tell me a bit more about why you think your work has developed in this way?

Samuel Beckett is a major influence and always has been.I admire the economy and precision of his art, not only in terms of language but in his stage directions, lighting and the placement of props.The work you describe, where figures appear out of a void or darkened space have a theatrical quality about them that clearly shows the strength of Beckett’s influence on my work. But actually it’s often very difficult for painters to give definite reasons why their images appear as they do.I made the images in the way you describe because they instinctively felt right at that time.I should say I have already moved on from this phase and backgrounds have begun to appear again.

I believe that you originally wanted to be a filmmaker, what made you decide to switch to painting?

I’ve always thought film is an immensely powerful medium. When I was a student I was president of the Glasgow School of Art Film Society and we hired all the great and most influential films for our programmes – the works of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Fellini, Eisenstein – the usual names. I was so influenced by what I saw that I wanted to make films myself. I chose film as a secondary subject to painting, bought a Super 8 movie camera and as much black and white film stock as I could afford and started shooting and editing. I managed to put a couple of short films together.

By the time I finished art school in 1983 after a post-graduate year I had more or less abandoned painting and then went to work at, what you could describe as, a community arts project, in the east end of Glasgow. My role there was to make films with young unemployed people, pass on some technical skills and ask them to start looking and thinking about their immediate environment in a new way, through the lens of a camera. We got significant funding for our projects and eventually made a full scale, broadcast standard documentary film about social and industrial change in Glasgow. Following that I was keen to more or less become a full-time filmmaker and began work on a script for a “feature” film set in Glasgow. This involved collaborating with a writer, meeting production managers, talking about budgets, locations, casting, etc. This was a completely dispiriting experience. I suddenly understood why it was called a film “industry”. I could see the purity and integrity of ideas being mangled in the budget driven production process. The whole thing was about as far away from what you might call “art’ as you can imagine.

I decided that the kinds of films I wanted to make would probably never get off the ground or end up becoming a mere shadow of the original vision. I went back to painting, where creative control is always total. Having said that, since then, I have continued to shoot in Super 8 and now have a large archive of film material. I still love the qualities of film, the projected and enlarged moving image, the beauty of the close-up, the softness of the light. Unfortunately digital imaging is sweeping all that away.

You have held the Visiting Professorship at the Glasgow School of Art since around 2002, when you took up the position you stated that you were particularly interested in engaging in the debate about the future of painting as it competes with a plethora of other powerful image making technologies. Five years on, what are your thoughts on the current state of this debate?

This is a huge debate complicated by the fact that there has been a remarkable market driven revival of interest in contemporary painting in the last few years. There are a number of painters around at the moment whose work is deeply fashionable and influential – John Currin, Peter Doig, Luc Tuymans, Marlene Dumas, Neo Rauch, Gerhard Richter, to name but a few. Interestingly, most of this work is figurative as well and is somehow acceptable to the powerful neo-Duchampian orthodoxy of the international art world, with its overwhelming emphasis on video, installation and conceptualist strategies. I think the feeling is that painting is now simply one of a number of viable options for contemporary artists providing, however, that it stays within certain strict parameters such as – that acceptable works should present an attitude of ironic detachment delivered with dead pan painterly sloppiness. So only certain “kinds” of painting are allowed, as it were.

I often hear fellow painters tub-thumping about how painting will go on so long as human beings are around but when I look at children today I’m not so sure. Children nowadays are living virtually their entire lives through a screen of some kind – TV, computer, mobile. It is how they predominantly relate to and interact with the world. A generation may eventually emerge in the future for whom painting will be, in a total sense, archaic and barely comprehensible. However, when I occasionally talk to students, many of whom have grown up with computers and play stations, there is a strong desire to get away from the essential sterility and passivity of the interactive screen, to get their hands dirty, draw, manually create images, actualize what’s going on in their heads through one of the most eternally subtle, allusive, beautiful and sophisticated mediums of communication ever invented. Then my faith in the future is restored.

I should also note that my Visiting Professorship at Glasgow School of Art is now at an end.

Do you see your work as being concerned with the various struggles of the working classes, whether it is a large-scale struggle for union rights in the history paintings or the more private struggle against disease in your more recent work?

You’ve described two phases in my work, one associated with the Eighties and the other more recent. I hadn’t considered the possibility that my work could be generally read in the way you’ve described but it’s a good way of putting it. The early work could be said to depict images of mass action for social and political change. The later work focuses on the individual and attempts to depict the effects of capitalism on the individual bodies of “workers”. Disease could be seen as a metaphor for the ravaging effects of unfettered free-market capitalism on their lives.

In 2002, you painted a picture entitled “Three Oncologists”. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at this picture and I’m fascinated by the ambiguity that I find in it. The surgeons appear to be almost startled by the intrusion into their work, on the other hand, I am sure that I can detect a slightly guilty sheepishness, a sense that they may feel that they’re doing something a little bit naughty but then also a straightforward professionalism. Were you interested in the tension between the different facets of the surgeon’s role?

You’re absolutely right to use the word ambiguity. I want ambiguity to be the central, defining feature of my work, where there is no easy pinning down of the meaning of the image for the individual viewer. The “Three Oncologists” painting is meant to have ambiguities and work on the viewer in different ways. As a group portrait commission I had to get to know the sitters and understand why they were regarded as significant enough to be included in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

In the case of two of the surgeons, I had to watch them at work in the operating theatre. Rather than being the stomach-churning sight I expected, I found myself completely mesmerized whilst observing the surgical process. Although what was happening was profoundly technical and skilled and of course, medical – I thought the whole process deeply mysterious. The strangeness of the wounding and cutting open of the body in order to heal it. There is something slightly obscene about it all- a disgraceful intrusion into someone’s innards, into those parts of the body that always remain hidden. One of the surgeons replayed me a video taken inside an old lady’s body during keyhole surgery, in amongst her internal organs and rib cage. He projected it on a huge screen in a special darkened viewing room. It was like peering into another universe. I felt the nausea of the sublime.

Image Above: “Room with Two Windows” Ken Currie (Courtesy of Flowers East, London and New York). Ken has an exhibition coming up at Flowers East in May 2008. Click here to view more images by Ken Currie or go to his page at the Flowers East website: www.flowerseast.com

Kathryn Ensall’s paints from such an aerial perspective and although she doesn’t depict war – well not of the large scale military kind anyway – she does seek to express the subtler tensions that can be seen to be marked on the bodies of her figures from above and captures the internal battles between intimacy and alienation that arise when people are thrown into relation with one another.

Many of your works depict reality as seen from above rather than from a traditional human eye view, can you tell us a bit about why you chose to do this is or how it came about?

I suspect I’m probably a bit of a voyeur and looking down on people from above is a safe and anonymous viewpoint. No one ever thinks of looking up to check whether they are being watched. It also means that I have to focus on body language for clues, as facial expressions are usually concealed, so the slight twist of the neck or the clenched hand can say so much from this angle. I began looking at people from above many years ago, for a long time I was interested in how people related to each other as small figures in fairly large spaces as in ‘Treasure Hunter 2000′ or ‘Pond’ 2001. Recently my figures are larger and I have focused on the unspoken tension that can be evident in the detail of body language.

If we compare how you treated figure and space in earlier pictures such as “Boy and Girl” (2000) and “Girl with Red Blouse” (2000) with the space in a painting such as “Fishpond” (2002), we find that they exhibit the same bands of flat colour spatially but it is the different orientation of the figures to their environment that leaves us almost eavesdropping on them in “Fishpond”, whereas in the first two they stare right out at us. Do you deliberately flatten your space to throw the form of the figure into relief?

I hardly ever paint figures that stare at you now, my earlier work was far more confrontational and I played upon the challenge created by the stare. It’s the subtleties of tension I relish now, and I purposefully avoid eyes. In my view this doesn’t make the work any less uncomfortable, in fact the opposite is probably true, there can be something very unsettling in the tacit friction between people. Yes I agree the space around my figures is deliberately flat and will often contain a reflection or shadow that complements the narrative and echoes and emphasises the action. The paint surface itself is not flat and is built up in layers of colour and texture.

Do you seek to capture the figure in a posture rather than the expression of the face? In many paintings the face is often hidden by the perspective or by a kiss or the figure is turned away. If so, has this been a deliberate intention?

Most adults know how to disguise their feelings in their facial expressions, it’s our innate body language that gives us away. For this reason I increasingly find the face less interesting and almost always avoid it nowadays, An averted gaze can be far more poignant. The process of painting allows me to explore this interaction in a way that a camera never could and I’m fascinated by the way that the shape and folds of familiar clothing can tell a story about the body underneath. In this way a back can be far more revealing than a face. I build up the paint to create fabric and flesh in fairly dense layers which allows the opportunity to search for the precise point of tension in the posture and interaction of my figures. We unconsciously recognise the tension in body language, and as you say I am drawn to embracing couples, as the face is hidden and eyes are closed in a mutual affirmation of affection but the body sends its own messages.

I’m interested in your use of foreshortening in the pictures that exhibit a top down perspective. For me, this creates a tension between the claustrophobic rendering of the figures trapped inside their own bodies and their poses, which are often relaxed. Would you agree with this or not?

No I’m not sure I would entirely agree with that. I think if you look carefully the apparent relaxation is deceptive, and it’s here that the tension is created. I agree that my figures may appear trapped, and the top down view can deliberately emphasise that, but their bodies express their frustration with that in many ways. Look for instance at ‘Bowl of Oranges’ the figure on the right may at first appear to be relaxed but the clenched right hand and crossed legs in conjunction with the averted gaze portray an underlying tension and unease.

Can you tell us a bit about your working process? How do you begin a painting?

A painting will usually start with an observation, places like airports or hotels are great for looking down from above and taking note, or anywhere with a balcony. I don’t photograph strangers though, well not usually. My kids (now young adults) make the best models as by now they understand what it is I’m after and are reasonably uninhibited. They act out a role until something clicks and they have endless patience. I even rope in their friends and partners. I then allow the painting to take shape directly onto the canvas and alter figures and space until it works. I can’t plan a painting beforehand, it never works when I do it that way, it has to take shape on the canvas, and the series of changes and corrections adds to the richness of the surface.

Are you concerned with the dramatic situations depicted by your paintings or would you consider this secondary to the formal puzzle of working out the compositions, colour schemes, etc?

I suppose there are a range of factors to consider when creating a painting and at any one point a particular consideration will be uppermost. So yes obviously the drama or narrative is essential, sometimes this is blatantly evident as in ‘Before the Storm 2007′ for instance, and at other times the narrative is more restrained. The ‘formal puzzles’ as you call them are also highly significant as they need to work in the context of the drama or narrative, so the colour and space in a painting becomes symbolic and creates a meaning or mood as does the presence of shadow and the interplay of light and dark.

Would you say that your paintings depict an interplay between intimacy and alienation?

Yes definitely. This can be very obvious in paintings such as ‘Bowl of Lemons’ which is one of several that explores the acute loneliness of exclusion or rejection. But even where this theme is more understated it is still there in some form in most of my paintings, and the intimacy portrayed is barbed, and never cosy. The two recent ‘Lovers with Mirror/Lamp’ paintings in which a couple kiss, are ridden with subtle tension. In the first for instance the male figure holds back with one hand in pocket and the other indifferently draped around his partner’s shoulders, while the female figure reaches up, head tilted submissively, craving for a more affectionate response.

Image above: “Swimmer” Kathryn Ensall (Courtesy of Jill George Gallery, London & J Cacciola Gallery, New York).

I’m interested in how you might balance a desire to create a world of your own with that of reflecting the world around us? I’m thinking of the Falstaff painting in particular here. Whilst the figures are dressed up as the contemporary shibboleth of the “Hoodie” they also appear torn from the expected landscape of British inner city and placed into an altogether different world.

Whilst I want my paintings to have a contemporary relevance, I do not see my work as social realism and hopefully the strange landscapes ensure there is room for the construction of different narratives and meanings.

Today the “Hoodie” has particular connotations, but in a different century it is the garb of Franciscan monks or the mythical Robin Hood of Sherwood. So, although the viewer may identify with the dress code of the figures, the world they inhabit is deliberately alien, maybe causing us to rethink the stereotypes. Also the role the figures are acting seems ambiguous – are they a threatening band of thugs or good Samaritans? Around them reality has clouded over, yet underneath the distorted colours of the skies, remain the solitary tower blocks and barren parkland of this world. The protection of the world we know has perhaps been withdrawn, isolating the youthful protagonists not only with their alienation but also with their choices.

I’m also intrigued by how you choose to wear your various influences/references on your sleeve. Northern Soul, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, David Lynch, Gus Van Sant, Goya, Munch can all be fairly easily detected in one way or another in various paintings but it never collapses into any kind of hero worship. Is it a conscious thing to try and deploy these reference points with a lightness of touch? This is interesting to me as it is something that I strive for in my own work. To me, it’s like an artist such as Bob Dylan who has played with surrealism, old American unionism, cowboys and all sorts but all mixed up together and yet overall he still remains Bob Dylan first and foremost.

Bob Dylan is a prime example of an artist who has continued to reinvent himself and his sureness of touch, despite open hostility at times, is at the heart of his greatness. I don’t seek such a metamorphosis through my varied influences but use them as another signifier of the melancholic mood of my work. You are right though that I try to ensure the influence is moderated to avoid falling into the trap of the work becoming a(n) homage to the more established artist.

These references can be in composition, style, colour and subject but probably most powerful of all, the title. The only verbal supplement I can give the work is its title and I try to use this to control the interpretation of the piece and draw in those who know the reference. I am also interested in conflicts between these and other levels of content in my work e.g. the use of Venetian glazes to simulate a cinematic projection and think this is a rich area for future investigation.

The method you use to construct your compositions from studies, photographs and found images, enhances for me the feelings of melancholia in your work. I think this is because it seems to me to encourage an idea of life as fragmentary, would you agree with this at all?

Yes that is exactly how I see it. In effect I am constructing a work about loss and the fragments are part of my own interpretation of what has been lost. At the heart of melancholia is always a loss of something; that may be loss by bereavement, but could for example be a relationship or a religious belief. Consequently we cling to memories of the thing that we have lost and these are inevitably fragmentary. Freud argues in his essay on Mourning and Melancholia that while the mourner knows more or less what has been lost, this is not obvious to the melancholic. The melancholic person thus pursues continuously disappointing adventures or else retreats into a state of inactivity (pretending to be dead). My current body of work examines the notion of narcolepsy (My Private Idaho – the River Phoenix character has a narcoleptic fit whenever he is reminded of his lost mother) and combines this idea with more personal elements.

Can you explain the importance of speed in your process? You talk of developing methods so that you can finish a painting in a day? The late Steven Campbell painted at a similarly fast pace and did so in order to generate mistakes as a kind of pivot point through which to find rather than plan his compositions, does this ring true for you or are there different reasons for it?

There are two factors that dictate that the paintings are done at speed. One is that the process means that corrections, although not impossible, are very difficult once the paint has dried. The other is that I rely on working directly onto the white primer for the radiance and luminosity of the paintings. So apart from additional glazes to darken tone or alter hue I work wet on wet and for a large painting start early and finish late!

Although I do explore an idea through preliminary drawings and small paintings, I often change things in the midst of a large work. Consequently I have to accept that mistakes will be made and if not corrected at the time are there to stay. So whilst I don’t deliberately generate mistakes, they do happen and often result in the most successful work. The biggest challenge for me is to be able to paint as freely on a large scale as I do for small works. Perhaps I need to refine the process such that I can complete a large painting in an hour rather than a day!

You make swatches of colour from stills from well-known films. What are your reasons for doing this and can you tell us a bit more about the cinematic influence in your work?

I have a love of escapism and going to the movies provides the ultimate environment for escape. You are in the dark and your attention is devoted to the narrative plot, the visual images and the soundtrack for 90minutes or so. The use of film stills is an attempt to access and reference this experience. However, painting an iconic scene from a film is too direct and has little interest for me. Instead I focus on one aspect of the scene, namely the mood the colour evokes and transfer this into my work. I do this by colour sampling a screen still and then trying to match the colours with transparent oil colour. My aim is for the transparency of the painting to simulate a projected image and indirectly refers to the mood of the film, although the actual image is not from the film.

I could list numerous directors whose films have influenced me, but if I was to narrow it down to three; a European, an Asian and an American, I would chose Kryzysztof Kieslowski, Wong Kar-Wai, and David Lynch. They each make films that deal with loss, and use of colour is a strong element of their cinematography. So the sickly yellows of Kieslowski’s early films, the strong shadows of post war Hong Kong and the Kodachrome glow of Lynch’s America have all played a part in my palette.

Mike Newton is represented by The Nettie Horn Gallery 25b Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG,  http://www.nettiehorn.com info@nettiehorn.com

All images courtesy of Mike Newton/Nettie Horn Gallery, London

“The subject does not pre-exist. It emerges out of the interaction between the artist and the medium.” – Robert Motherwell, A Process of Painting 1964. Would you say that this is a true statement with regards to your own approach to painting?

Yes, that’s true of the more abstract work. With the large-scale monoprints sometimes I begin with the basic shape of a body simply as a starting point. On the whole though the work is made with no premeditated thought and the image evolves during the process. It’s important to let the materials lead and to see what they’ll bring. One can then shift and change their direction by altering the direction or texture of the paint and then something else altogether happens. It’s about existing in the marks that one’s making and being open to the unexpected and also engaging with the process. If one knew where one would end up before beginning the work, there wouldn’t be a need to make the piece. The subject is therefore found and not described.

In the same essay as the above quote, Motherwell describes the importance of ‘getting used to a room’ in which to work, you have described your style as fluid and immediate, what circumstances or situations are needed for this fluidity and immediacy to occur?

I agree with this, the more familiar I am with the space the easier it is to begin and work freely. Preparation is important. Time is spent gathering materials, placing them, making sure everything’s readily available for the various stages of the larger works. I work with fast drying materials and approach the paper from all directions. I’m working through the images and making more than one at a time so it’s vital not to stop mid-process. Space is key as paint is poured and printed and there must be no sense of having to be concerned with the surroundings, no distraction from the paint itself.

Once a work is finished can you, with hindsight, isolate a starting-point for that work? I’m thinking about your works on found paper and pages from books do the pages signal to you in some way as to how to proceed with the work?

Yes with the book work. I’m responding to the existing page. The worn surfaces invite a kind of intimacy in the making. For example the medical texts I took apart in China, the pages were thin and delicate and therefore a delicate line was applied. The collages are made several at once as with the larger pieces. I surround myself with the pages and draw image and text together; I’m entirely present and working with the materials letting the images form themselves. I tear the words out with my fingers or with a blunt knife, the torn edge is significant, all of my work addresses human presence, the life within and how best this can be represented through the materials. I’ve written for many years, documented my thoughts in short sentences and words come to mind in the first instance, a line or fragment to work with and I’ll cut out the text accordingly and piece the images together. Knots and Splices, made from an old shipping manual are psychological works exploring the existing image on found paper in relationship to the newly printed image on the page.

The word fluid conjures the image of something continually changing and moving are your paintings a split-second of this fluidity captured and recorded, like a film still cut from a reel? Is your work about time in this way?

Yes, this is essentially what it is and it’s what I mean when I say I’m moving through the images. In some respects I’m not considering the end result, the piece as a whole but the fluidity of the process and being fully and actively engaged in the materials and in a moment in time. Paint is a medium for expression and it’s about existing freely in the material in order for it to capture something of the force of life and as the artist I am striving to convey some kind of truth, otherwise I wouldn’t be making images.

How do you understand the term ‘abstract’ with relation to the trajectory of your own body of work? I know that you studied portraiture very closely and the ‘Heads’ series seem slightly less abstract than the black paintings; if all paintings are a certain degree of abstraction do you feel your art is freer if it is of a higher degree of abstraction?

I’ve always had a greater interest in the marks that make up the piece then the subject itself. When I went to China, I made a conscious decision to make a series of images that were exploring the diversity of marks that a brush could make when pulled across a surface. After reading about Motherwell’s approach to his Reconciliation Elegy paintings, around this time I bought a large Japanese horse-hair brush. Motherwell described making these paintings as “mopping a ship’s deck under a black starry sky”, I was so taken by the image of the dark and an awakening of the surface through the mind and material. My trip to China showed me the parallels between the Eastern approach to Calligraphy painting and Abstract Expressionism, both approaches have the same pulling back or holding of energy before bringing it forward onto the page. So abstraction is more about sensation. Monoprinting is unexpected in that you are working relatively blindly – it goes back to the idea of working in the dark – much of my work is made in a ‘non-seeing’ state (being very close to the materials) and is looked at periodically during the process. With the Heads Series the Head is the vehicle for abstraction within the painting. I use the head to explore colour and line and a kind of mapping of the psyche through the materials. But yes the more abstract the painting, the freer one can be with the marks as one is only involved in the medium itself.

In the BBC4 program ‘Where is Modern Art Now?’ we saw you at work using your hands to push paint and imprint it onto large sheets of paper – have you abandoned the brush altogether?

Not at all but the large monoprints are physical works, almost sculptural, impressions where the paint is drawn into and poured on before printed one from the other. I use my hands and the back of brushes, sticks, any tools that are lying around in the studio to redraw into the surface once the first impression has been made. And often the brush is used after the pouring to extend the paint creating texture in the paint if moved quickly and if the paint dries then light is introduced into the black through the spaces in between. I use the brushes in different ways. If you let the brush dry out a little with the paint in it, you can print with it. Again it’s about being open to the materials and what they can yield. I pour and use tools more than brushes though on the whole. Using my hands is a way of connecting with the work almost like making sculpture.

Recently a quote from David Sylvester struck me in relation to my own painting… “The meanings, all of them, lie in the paint and they are in the paint not latently but in the impact of the paint upon our senses, on our nerves. Nothing in these paintings is more eloquent than the paint itself.” How does this statement relate to your own work and your understanding of painting?

It’s relevant and applies directly to the A Foundation show I’ve just had of the large-scale black monoprints. Something happens in the process of the printing of these images by hand and varying degrees of texture can be achieved in the paint. Marks appear in the black that I couldn’t have imagined. The paint takes on the appearance of human blood vessels or fish bones that become their own fragments within the piece itself. And yes particularly in the making I get a sense of the paint having an active play on the mind inviting an opening of the senses during the process and this is the dialogue, the mind affects the direction of the paint and in reverse the paint takes on its own direction in response to the mind. David Sylvester’s interviews with the American painters have been a large part of my teaching.

You asked about figurative versus abstraction earlier, you only have to look at a single brush stroke in a figurative painting as early as a Delacroix painting and single it out to understand the impact on the senses that a mark of paint can make if applied with emotion.

What’s next for you? Have you any exhibitions coming up?

Lots in discussion so let’s see. I’m working collaboratively with a writer on a project that’s been ongoing for several years and we’re hoping to exhibit it this year. I’m currently working with text and found objects.

Click here to visit Whitney’s site

Debbie Lawson’s sculptures are an uncanny mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar, in her recent work she has given everyday household objects quite unexpected qualities. Her tables collapse, her books fly away, her rugs explode and her doors have panels which are inlaid with scenes of packs of wolves and copulating couples from the pages of The Joy of Sex. Here she talks to Ferdinand about her influences, working process and her love-hate relationship with mediocrity

Who or what were you main influences when you began making art?

Ana Mendieta, Bill Woodrow, Brian Griffiths, Fischli and Weiss, early Mondrian and a particular painting by Cezanne called The Cardplayers.

Can you describe your working process?

It usually starts with me messing around with materials, or walking around town, and I’m gripped by an idea and want to start making it immediately. Process is a very important part of my work and often the making of one piece leads to the idea for the next. I seem to spend a hell of a lot of time sticking stuff on top of other stuff and can be quite impulsive and impatient. I have tried less direct ways of making work and they drove me mad. There is always a point when I stand back and reassess what I’m doing, trying to put someone else’s head on.

Do your sculptures communicate a narrative in any way? It was the panel inlays that first made me think about this possibility but would you also consider your work in this way?

I used to be anti-narrative, and coming from a literature background I would still prefer to make work with a lyrical rather than a narrative edge. The perfect balance for me would be work that is laid out like a picaresque tale along the lines of Candide: a loose narrative landscape punctuated by dramatic moments. I think Mike Nelson does this really well.

Can you tell me more about the wolves and the copulating couples, populating the laminate landscapes?

When I was seven or eight I spent a lot of time waiting in the panelled hallway outside the office of my mum’s shrink. The magazines were boring so I made my own entertainment by imagining images in the woodwork. A few years later I discovered The Joy of Sex and started making my own drawings of copulating couples, though I didn’t really know what they were doing! The wolves came out of my interest in the psychoanalysis of dreams: especially those of teenage girls, where the ‘threat’ of sexuality is often represented by the wolf. Wolves, incidentally, are remarkably similar in their social behaviour to humans, so in my panels humans and wolves are in some ways interchangeable. It seems more effective to convey insecurity, aggression or existential angst using images of wolves rather than humans. I think the panels represent something quite innocent and even banal.

One of the things that I am interested in, in my own work is the drama of the domestic, or more exactly the potential of drama, and I was drawn to your work because of it; one thing that struck me about the sculptures is the sense of the mediocre, or indeed the lack of it, is this because you want to draw attention to these mediocre objects or because you would like to remove the sense of mediocrity from the everyday altogether?

Both, probably. Like all teenagers I loathed mediocrity and felt I was above it. Now it’s a love-hate relationship. There is something deeply comforting about embracing mediocrity – it feels like a British thing, like supporting the underdog. There is an innate nobility in some everyday objects and I like to heighten it, as if they are trying to throw off their mediocrity and aspiring to be the greatest possible version of themselves. I think it’s important to still believe you can change the world, but of course there is always the possibility (even probability) of failure, and the drama comes out of the tension between those two states of mind. I enjoy seeing certain objects and pieces of furniture as quite pompous and grandiose, but tinged with humility or utter boredom.

I am intrigued by your inclusion of Cezanne’s ‘The Cardplayers’ amongst the people and works that have influenced you. Can you tell me a bit more about how and why this particular painting interested you so much?

The painting depicts two working men in a wood-panelled bar, playing cards at a small table. They are both completely absorbed by the game, so much so that the reflective silence between them is palpable. It’s a very sculptural painting; the two men have a solid, architectural presence that heightens the space between them, which is punctuated by a glistening bottle of wine, right smack in the middle. The colours are muted and understated. I love the ad-hoc feeling of the painting, and although it is probably quite considered it looks like it was knocked up in the space of an afternoon.

I think it was Jean Luc Godard or Jean Cocteau (I’m sorry I can’t remember which, probably both) who talked about the surprise of finding yourself suddenly facing your own name as if it belonged to someone else, seeing its form and hearing the sound of the syllables, without the blind and deaf habit which a long intimacy provides. Do you see your work as being an attempt to defeat this deadening nature of habit?

I’m not sure if I understand it fully, but I don’t think I make work to reaffirm to myself my own existence, though it certainly always surprises me that I begin the process of making something with a very particular idea of why, and how it will turn out; and in the end the finished work is quite shocking, and more revealing than I would have liked. It sounds a bit romantic but I’m often amazed at how the work reflects something quite hidden in my mind so that, for example, a piece I thought would be quite light hearted appears to other people as melancholic or even slightly malevolent!

Debbie Lawson is represented by The Nettie Horn Gallery 25b Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG, 
 http://www.nettiehorn.com info@nettiehorn.com

All images courtesy of Debbie Lawson/Nettie Horn Gallery, London

He was sitting cross-legged in front of the window’s column of eyelids. They blinked orange sherbert onto his shoulders.

I’d gone to church with daddy that morning, and after the service, as we were walking to the truck, the sun had made me keep my head down and close my eyes. To keep from falling, I had to hold the sleeve of daddy’s suit jacket, which he occasionally shook. “Just walk!” he said. Later, in the truck, I concluded that I dislike it when the leather on the door is hot: it feels like it has a fever, and it gives me headaches. Daddy said that after we eat lunch we have to go to Brother James’s house. I asked if I had to go, and he said that I did.

For lunch we had roast with potatoes and carrots. The carrots smelled like the sun, so I refused to eat them. Mama was very angry. I told her that they smell like the sun and that the liquid in the pot they’re in is like a lake with a headache, which made her laugh. I laughed, too. I ate very quickly, so as to escape the carrots, but when I attempted to run, I had trouble sliding my chair away from the table. Mama laughed again. She screamed at me as I ran, “If you eat one little ol’ carrot, I’ll let you have some sherbert.” I walked hesitantly to the table. The thought of eating a carrot terrified me. I stuck my fork into one and looked at it. Mama said it’s just a carrot.

Once we arrived at Brother James’s house, Brother James’s wife said hello to me, and I told her that I had eaten orange sherbert. “Oh, really?” she asked. I told her yes, and that I had even eaten a carrot. She agreed with me that eating carrots is very serious. I felt manly.

Brother James’s entire house was brown, like roast. Several people were there, but I could not tolerate being around them. I went into a room on the other side of the house. The room was hotter than the others. There was a leather chair and it was fascinating. I stared at it and walked in circles for it.

The sound of creaking boards disturbed me. Then Brother James seesawed into the room on legs that were like creaking boards. I was embarrassed that he had seen me walking in circles and was mortified when he sat down into the leather chair. I remembered the leather in the truck and I looked at the light coming from the window, which somehow seemed like the liquid in the pot. My head began to hurt, and the smell of carrots was everywhere. He sat cross-legged in front of the window’s column of eyelids. They blinked orange sherbert onto his shoulders. He – like a terrible, amoral god – blinked at me.