London Art Award Nominee Paul Winstanley

Venetia Twigg

‘I realised there was a connection between my developing ideas and those inherent in the tradition of North European painting as opposed to say French or Italian painting. Painters like Vermeer, Casper David Friedrich and Vilhelm Hammershoi became incredibly relevant though of course always in terms of contemporary sensibilities and technology’

What first drew you to your very specific subject matter of the semi-public space?

These semi-public spaces are very much a product of  late 20th century moirés reflecting the social and political policies of the period. They signal these values in subtle and often subconscious ways. Often aspiring to look like private spaces they never quite make it so they have something of an ill- defined quality about them. There is always a question over who they are actually for even within the institutions where they might be found. From the point of view of making images therefore they have a useful neutrality. The ‘Lounges’ I have painted for instance look like lounges but they belong to no one in particular and, in terms of design and function, they aspire to a generic common denominator. This makes them particularly recognisable as they are ‘like’ many places we have all witnessed and experienced. They are part of our shared cultural experience, even subliminally. Interestingly, as time passes, some of these places are becoming much less common. The T.V. rooms I painted in the 90’s are already something of an anachronism, as everyone now has there own T.V. or laptop in their own rooms. Also, in the U.S. where they have a very different attitude to public spending and politics in general, these paintings do not necessarily have the same meanings, or, if they do, they have to be learnt and have a slight exotic foreignness about them.

Do you think you emulate any other artists in style or thought process, and who have been your artistic influences?

My influences have been various and changed as my paintings have changed. As a student I was essentially an abstract painter influenced by American minimalist painters of the time like Brice Marden and Robert Ryman. I learnt the fundamentals of painting by making paintings about those fundamentals. Later the paintings became more complex and, at some point in the 80’s, I made a sudden break into realist imagery and painting. This required many changes including thinking about quite different artists and many of these were historical. I realised there was a connection between my developing ideas and those inherent in the tradition of North European painting as opposed to say French or Italian painting. Painters like Vermeer, Casper David Friedrich and Vilhelm Hammershoi became incredibly relevant though of course always in terms of contemporary sensibilities and technology. Vermeer used the camera obscura, the most advanced optical device of his time, to help him realise his imagery. I use the modern camera for much the same reasons and I have no doubt he would have done the same had it been available to him. It’s important to be able to look at historical artists as if they were contemporary then they become useful. Within the contemporary context film is as much an influence on me as other painters. There is a bit of a renaissance of British film makers dealing with culturally specific issues. People like Stephen Frears, Joanna Hogg and  Pawel Pawlikowski.

You have been praised for your consistency over the years, but how do you think your art has developed since you started to paint?

For the last 25 years or so the work has been quite consistent but as the answer to the last question reveals, in the period before this there were many changes and rapid developments in order to reach this ‘starting point’. This point felt like such a breakthrough, both personally and culturally (no one else was doing anything remotely like this at the time) that I felt there was enough here to keep me occupied for a very long time. Suddenly the modernist idea of constant development and change seemed outmoded. Instead of one body of work or period of work improving on or superseding another, as in a linear development, I felt each new group of paintings added to the work gone before creating a corpus. It has been like the colonising of new territory. Of course there have been subtle changes in my approach to painting over this period so that, for instance, putting a painting from 1990 next to a recent work would reveal differences of emphasis in the way the image exists; in the speed of the painting for instance; but the underlying philosophy remains the same.

What are your hopes for yourself and your fellow British artists this year?

We have an incredibly rich cultural life in the U.K. with a huge range of artistic activity. In many ways we punch way above our weight internationally in all fields including film, design, art, theatre etc. and as practitioners we are valued and welcomed elsewhere. I think this strength comes from the attrition of anxieties that constitute our sense of who we are and what our place in the world is. It is also the product of great art schools and art school teaching that for fifty years has pulled in talent from wherever it is found within the social spectrum. My hope is that this will be allowed to continue and that the imposition of huge fees will not destroy this national success story. For myself I have often felt more appreciated abroad, in the States and Europe, where I have been invited to show far more extensively. I would hope in the coming year to be able to begin to redress that balance and reflect my work back more to the audience it is initially designed for.