Who do you think influenced your interest in art?
From the beginning it must have been my Great Grandfather, Sir William Russell Flint, as I grew up surrounded by his paintings. Later, my teacher, Ted Jacobs, and all the artists whose understanding he is trying to pass on.
And what are you most likely to hang in your own home?
The pictures I would like the most on my own walls would be landscapes, or would at least have landscapes incorporated in them. There is something magical about landscape paintings: the illusion of distance, temperature, the capturing forever of a fleeting light effect, even the historical documentary nature they might possess. The fact that you can be standing inside a room in a busy city, essentially just staring at an object hanging on a wall and be transported elsewhere, even giving you the feeling that you are seeing great distances, or that it is warm and breezy or about to rain, or that you are in the shade of a tree on a scorching summer day. They are like magical portholes through which you can enter a different place and time.
I also enjoy the artistic license of landscape painting. My style is very realistic and I am normally very faithful to nature in my figurative and still-life work so it is fun to be able to remove trees or houses or telegraph poles or whatever detracts from a good composition.
How do you create your work?
Normally, with landscapes, I do a small sketch and if I think it is successful, I will then start a full size one. With landscapes, the sketch is done on the spot and will then be taken into the studio where I then analyze it and see what compositional improvements can be made if I were to develop it into a larger picture. I then go back out and start the large version on the spot and return at the same time and conditions until it is completed.
With still life and figurative painting I normally start directly on the canvas with a detailed charcoal drawing, correcting up with a fine brush, then working through to the finished piece from thinned paints up until the final thicker oils.
I find using photographs more of a hindrance than a help and that a painting done completely on the spot has an extra something about it and is more appealing. Also, a photograph differs from the naked eye and will never be able to accurately capture the colour nor, importantly, the life.
Do you work on one picture at a time?
I work on a few pictures simultaneously. I try to have a landscape set in grey/cloudy conditions and one set in sunny conditions so that regardless of one, I can keep working. In addition, I tend to have a still-life on the go as well as a figurative piece. The changing from one to the other is also refreshing and complementary.
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