Peter Wright
You have to go out there where there's nothing beneath your feet. You have to get out of your box and do the things you know you can't do.
You could always go on changing things but there comes a time when you have to decide to stop.
When I look at some of my old work, the pieces I find most interesting are the ones with people in them.
Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own.
Looking at Kandinsky, I realised that you could do absolutely anything but that you had to treat colour as though it was form.
I've had to do all kinds of jobs to pay the rent. I've even worked in a Cornish tin mine.
I've always been terribly interested in science. Had I the education I might well have been some kind of scientist.
I was drinking too much and not getting to bed until the early hours. Having blackouts and generally getting in a bad way. I thought that a couple of years building up a body of work down in Cornwall might straighten me out and that I would then resume my artistic career back in London.
I used to paint landscapes without any people in them but now I paint people who happen to be in a particular place. They might be outside a pub, or on a beach or in a studio. They might have clothes on or they might not.
I tried to learn the violin for a while.
I think most people see drawing as subservient to the subject, a sort of meditation, a studying, a searching observation, in my case, for its own sake.
I never know what it's going to look like. Wouldn't be much point in painting if I already knew the outcome. I have a subject in front of me and I start flooding colour and making marks, I don't know, it's improvisation isn't it?
I have to experiment with methods and I'm trying to find an authentic way of making an equivalent of the living, breathing person within the limits of a single picture.
I have never subscribed to the Dirty Pallet school of painting.
I have never been much of a joiner-in. The idea of a colony actually put me off rather.
I had been living with dialysis for three years or so, and the new kidney felt like a reprieve, a new gift of life. I felt alive again and I guess that has had an effect on my use of colour.
I felt the need to get back to painting and I thought the best way was to start drawing, so I enrolled in a life drawing class. I soon discovered that people made very interesting subjects and I am still surprised that I had never discovered it before.
I allow the paper or the canvas to shine through so that the pigment retains its luminosity. I like to stain the surface rather than paint on it. Light passes through the pigment, hits the white layer behind and is reflected back through the pigment again. I combine this effect with flat opaque areas for contrast.
As far as art goes, I do enjoy other forms besides painting and drawing. I trained as a potter a few years ago and since then I have made some quite large interior relief murals in coloured ceramic and the occasional architectural terra-cotta piece for outside elevations.
As a kid I quite fancied the romantic, Bohemian idea of being an artist. I expect I thought I could escape from the difficulties of maths and spelling. Maybe I thought I would avoid the judgement of the establishment.