My Story
The son of French bourgeois mother and English father, I was raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy and wanted to become a priest, but at 15, exposed to the 60’s counterculture and a naïve Marxism, I rejected religion, arguing rather badly with my parents against the injustices of the world and the privileges our family enjoyed.
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At the monastic school I attended art was my refuge – I would disappear to the art-room at weekends to be alone and create. I wanted to study art, but concerned about social appearances, my mother packed me off to architecture school. I was obedient and went through with it, all the while reading Marx, Hegel, the French post-structuralists, the Frankfurt School critical theorists, and also about the looming ecological crisis.
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Years later, working in an architect’s office, my life felt devoid of moral meaning. One day I just left, joined a radical environmental group and my life changed forever. I worked for 30 years on environmental issues – everything from nuclear war to nature conservation. I travelled the world. Much to my surprise, one day in 1991 I was asked to join Deloitte Consulting to help set up their Environmental Services in the UK then the USA. It all felt important. I raised a family, became a partner, and I again had all the privileges I had grown up with. But I felt pessimistic. Aged 60, I realised that, after 30 years of hearing the science, the world had not really listened to a word. Our work seemed not to make a jot of difference. Nothing had changed. In fact things were getting worse and it was getting too late.
All in a short period I retired from corporate life, divorced and my mother, father and brother died, the latter by suicide. In Paris with a new partner I started painting again, initially to block the pain and forget, but soon all the joy of creation flooded back, and I started painting to remember and remind. My early art under the tutelage of Thierry Cauwett was unthinking, free from fear, bursting with colour and new-found techniques. I started exhibiting.
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Returning to London, an evening class teacher from the Royal College of Art suggested I go back to school. I enrolled at Central Saint Martin’s MAFA, where I was deconstructed and forced to think about my art. The West, as I knew it, seemed to be spiralling into what Guy Debord (1967) termed the ‘collapse of politics into entertainment and spectacle’ - Syria, Trump, Brexit, post-truth (about which I wrote my thesis), climate denial. I began to crave a moral purpose again. If the world would not listen to science, maybe it would listen to art. My art darkened. Inspired by Anselm Kiefer and William Kentridge I began using monochromatic mono-printing techniques to tell stories, initially on political issues of despair and hopelessness, then trying to show hope by envisioning new Deleuzian futures. I became fascinated by the markmaking anachronisms of mono-printing, and the challenge of controlling its' imperfections.
Covid interrupted my studies (I am diabetic). My MAFA cohort asked me to help them in their isolation. Sarah, my partner, and I set up Slash Arts, initially to sell works on-line, then to hold shows and residencies. Its work over three years has exploded, focused on emerging artists doing socially or environmentally engaged art, particularly experimental work, in all media. This is now a very substantial workload, and important and meaningful for us.
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Finally returning to Chelsea to complete my MA I am exploring the use of mono-printing techniques to create sculptural forms in an attempt to create a new syntax that dispels narrative in my art in favour of immediacy of impact. My partner has advanced cancer. I want to be positive. My final show is about dance and music.
Controlling imperfections:
Why and how I mono-print
My art reflects how I am – spontaneous. I monoprint without a press, on canvas and paper, working quickly, creating deliberate but unknown imperfections which surprise and intrigue. One day, under Thierry Cauwett’s tutelage in Paris, I discovered monoprinting and was smitten. I loved the mark-making and in-exactitude. I am not a patient person whether I'm cooking or painting. I once did an etching residency in Venice. It is a beautiful place, but a frustrating experience – all too precise. When cooking, I often prefer to make Ottolenghi dishes – I hear people say the recipes are too complex, but I only follow the spirit, not the letter.
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It is not that I am lazy but I am impulsive - happier getting something wrong five times and right the sixth, rather than slaving over it. With mono-printing I can work quickly, and differently. Patience is not a virtue here – spontaneity is. I love the accidental imperfections. The mark-making is quite different and impossible to achieve by simply applying a brush or palette knife directly. The unpredictable marks that occur are what create the magic. My artist friend, Harry, asked me how I made a particular mark on a painting. It was, I said, a simple brushstroke, like the ones he makes all the time, but mine was mono-printed, creating the distinctive imperfections. I’ve learnt to create that effect, and I have learnt to control the accidents to a degree.
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Many of my early monoprints were large, on canvas with oil, and often political. From a recognized position of privilege (like Kentridge) I speak as a citizen disgusted at injustices wreaked by the state, or capitalism on people and the environment. In some cases (eg Windrush) unlike John Akomfra, I may not be of the race to whom the injustice was done, but am free to express my dismay at my government, and hope to help others feel the same, In others such as Covid or my environmental works, I have been directly involved and deeply affected.
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The process involves transmitting images onto a second surface. I apply paint to a substrate, using acrylics for smaller prints, oils for larger pieces, as it gives me more time to work before it dries. I work fast (the paint must be wet when I make the print), and I make marks with a wide variety of objects such as rubbers, brushes, palette knives, bits of metal and fingers. I often draw limbically, almost without thought, with a rubber. I am constantly trying to understand how the final print will look, yet I am always surprised. I do not use a press as it reduces imperfections.
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The majority of my works never see the light of day. I look at the piece time and again. If I like it immediately, I will often grow tired of it. If I don’t like it at first, I may come back and grow to do so. Sometimes I will only like half of it and recompose to make that part the whole. Beauty is not the goal. Often, my pieces are dark and monochromatic, but I believe they speak an emotional truth that colour can sometimes not express. I often use a smidgen of colour to relieve the darkness.