Back To The Teepee
Here is a little peek inside the Teepee. it has become my habit in recent years to paint major works in the privacy of a teepee that I construct in the middle of the studio. Paula says it is because I am really Peter Pan and need my 'cubby', and maybe there is an element of that. primarily however it is about the privacy I need to create. Creating a large work like this Leo Sayer portrait is an intensely personal process in which the deepest levels of my psyche are exposed. As the turmoil of creation intensifies, the privacy of the creative space becomes paramount. Here then is my private world inside a teepee.


It started With Learning How To Make A Marionette
As soon as I knew what the picture would look like, I knew I needed to make a marionette of Pierrot the clown. An online crash course ensued. Soon I had bought the clothes, and modified them, and made the trimmings and the wood and plastic fabric of the puppet grew. More on the making of Pierrot here.


Acrylic technology / Renaissance Technique
Acrylic paint has many advantages such as fast drying, and brilliance of colour which many contemporary artists like. My discovery has been that acrylics allow a revisiting of Renaissance painting techniques that due to the fast drying of acrylics can be achieved in less time than modern alla prima oil paint techniques. Leonardo Da Vinci is always my inspiration. He would build his paint in numerous thin layers. It was one reason his paintings took so long to do, as he spent considerable time just waiting for oil paint layers to dry. I can put on more layers in a day than he could put on in a year due to acrylic's friendly qualities.

Rembrandt is also my guide for using paint. I have closely studied about 60 of Rembrandt's paintings and my use of texture has developed from insights into the way he would use texture as a structural part of the visual effect of paint and how to use both transparent and opaque paint layers to get the most from that texture.

To balance these old masters the use of paint by Lautrec, Schiele, and Lucien Freud have all been heavily influential in the way my paint goes on. For me painting is as much about the sheer joy of paint manipulation as it is  about anything else. The result is a firey alive paint surface that glows with rich colour and textured patterns. My paint is thick and thin, tranparent and opaque, applied and rubbed back, sanded, sprayed, brushed, wiped and scraped. It is my love affair to play with and celebrate my love of rich intense colour.



Photograph:
Looking into the entrance of the teepee. Photograph by Tony Johansen.