Bonnard is known for his extensive use of incredibly bright and vibrant colours often mashed together in weird and wonderful palettes. These colours feel like they vibrate because of all the spots almost like how a magic eye image would make you feel dizzy. He was part of the Les Nabis movement which was a group of Post-Impressionist painters who liked to incorporate big planes of bright bold colours but in a simplified way, often making parts of scenes look rather flat but obviously our minds make sense of the images and give them depth. Bonnard was inspired by Gauguin and also Matisse, Matisse admired Bonnard’s paintings but another of his contemporary’s Picasso did not admire Bonnard’s paintings. 

I’m drawn to Bonnard’s pictures because of the colour, he had a great sense of colour and he would paint from memory but exaggerate colour to convey a sense of what he was feeling in the moment, Bonnard once coined the term “un arrêt du temps” which translates to - painting is a stilling of time. When he paints, he is trying to relive a moment again and again, he would often work on multiple paintings at one time so they probably all fed into one and other, one moment in time spilling into another just like life.

He also liked to go on early morning walks to stimulate his mind, I do this and I feel like it has become a core part of my practice, often I will take walks in the mornings with my dog, I like to go out in the evenings as well to see how the light has changed and also to tire me out as I feel as though a good night’s sleep really helps to rejuvenate my body and mind, getting me in the right kind of mood to make more work in the morning. Having some kind of routine, some kind of ritual seems to be common for artists. For example, Francis Bacon would paint very early in the morning from about 6am, then take lunch, maybe hit a casino and get incredibly wasted, have extravagant meals, live life to the fullest. He was also friends with Auerbach who was in comparison a bit of a hermit, who famously painted every day of the year apart from Christmas, but thanks to Francis got to go out and have incredibly fancy meals. Three painters: Freud, Bacon and Auerbach.

Auerbach is another painter who is deeply influential to my work. His process is amazing, he would start with shit loads of paint then the next time he painted on that support he would scrape it all off and would repeat this process until he was happy with it, he wanted to make sure that whatever was painted on the surface was fresh and wasn’t months/years of layers but rather have that feeling of being painted very quickly. It’s hard to get everything right strait away, right, not sure if that’s the RIGHT word, there is no right or wrong but there is to the individual artist, we are very strange and we know what works and what doesn’t, but we have to see it in front of us before we know what works sometimes. Alien to other professions, who plan out everything to a tee beforehand. Perfectionism is the enemy of art; it is imperfections that help us develop. The most successful (prolific) are the ones who have failed the most. So being a failure is more important than anything for me. Howard Hodgkin said something like “I wreck a painting so that I have a problem to solve, feel less precious about the work”. Artists create problems so we can solve them, painting is just problem making. Problem solving is covering the wound, but what I want to expose is the ugly scabby innards of my soul to the world, this is what I feel, look at it in all it’s disgusting glory!