I paint surrounded by hundreds of paintings. Everything is on the move and ideas can just flow from one piece to another. A sort of cross pollination occurs, allowing leaps in development of images, whether it be logical or erratic, through subversion or gently humoured manipulation. Sometimes a response to an accidental graze can suggest a figure or a face and it all goes off and keeps turning.
The studio, at best, is like my big sketch book that I can move around in and is the heart of the paintings. With the outside world shut off, without photographs to refer to, without preliminary drawings or a model to work from, the absence of fact places reliance on the physical properties of paint to evoke tangible new forms.
Scratching and teasing the painted surface with a jumble of tools, pushing the extraordinary flexibility of oil paint with its ability to hold sensation and evoke new forms, it is often after prolonged engagement with the materials and with care and effort, that the finished painting is brought into focus. If along the way, guided by ‘touch’ alone, the sensation is lost, I stop and turn to another painting.
This website and images contained within it are copyright Andrew Litten 2009 - 2011