Beginning at Shepperton Studios during the halcyon days of the 70's taught me it wasn't the idea, it was absolute fidelity to the idea that mattered. Some 15 years ago I acquired some vintage powder pigments completely relearning the meaning of fidelity to my art.
Shepperton Studios
During the 1970's Shepperton saw the emergence of a new wave of directors. Ridley and Tony Scott, Hugh Hudson, Lester Bookbinder, Howard Guard to name a few. Commercials like Cadbury's Smash Martians, P G Tips Chimpanzees, Henekin, Frys Turkish Delight along with films like Alien and Flash Gordon. The Who leased the Old House playing in one of the sound stages or recording studios.
Below: Fry's Turkish Delight. Director: Howard Guard. A Stage Shepperton Studios.
What does working with pigments mean?
The real question is how to make your art unique. The answer is to make it your personal voice, not someone else's. That is why stripping everything down back to basics then rebuilding. I now source from my personal experiences, make my own paint and choose and stretch my own canvases.
Pigment is the colour in paint and the most expensive part. Working with single-colour pigments is like working with the purity of single musical notes. Each colour has personality not just colour but chemical composition.
Vision
Over the years there have been m any adventures. Camping, walking and climbing in the Lake District, my birthplace; sailing, motorcycling and helicopter flying. Pre dawns, rain, clouds, mists, seas, moods beyond legion. All ideas come from personal experiences neither daylight nor dream light and each unforgettable.
Method
Like watercolour, painting with these pigments is about the conversation and setting conditions for the next layers. I make a move, the pigment reacts, I respond and the work evolves; steps become autotelic, extending from the subconscious and beyond technique.
Materials
The paint is made for each session from pure powder pigments, some of which are extremely rare dating back to the 1870's to 1960's. Each pigment behaves differently and with each colour made with a single pigment, the intensity with the translucency adds a multi-dimensionality to the work not available using ready-made artist paints. The canvas is initially primed with distemper so keeping the tooth and a subtle undertone and patina causing it to behave differently from its more clinical ready to use canvases. The final work is pure matt with no shine absorbing light giving true colour changing with the ambient light.
The prussian blue is more muted than contemporary prusian blues, having an amorphous nature. It's many shifting subtle moods and liquidity in distant half tones, after some years, led me to an understanding of where my work needed to be.
Lastly
I would like to thank my parents, everyone who worked at BBRK Shepperton Studios and Sir Graham Sydney for his critique and the inspiration and confidence he gave.
'It is not necessary to understand in order to create, but it is necessary to create in order to understand."
Cecil Collins 1974
Represented by Exhibitions Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand