9 Questions to Terry Greene. 

British artist, living and working in West Yorkshire, UK.

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What is your art about?

In it’s very DNA painting, the applying of liquid colour to a surface by various procedures, offers itself as the ideal means to create a purposeful exchange, where chance can engage with necessity and randomness with determinism. Eric Chaisson writes that: “it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures.” The direction taken to produce my work is often reached through a complex operation of a series of decisions, that at times, might be automatic, random, yet based upon an idea that I’m attempting to yield unique forms and novel structures. It’s often the case however that you can’t reach the unknown by plotting a direct course for it: you have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings and trust that you’ll recognise your destination.

Please tell us more about your working process, routine, your studio set up and the way you approach new artworks.

I get into the studio usually after an early morning walk on the moors with my dog. The walk is ideal preparation time, allowing for reflection. In the studio there are stacks of (shop purchased) ready stretched canvases and canvas boards. I have returned to the process of cutting the primed cotton away from the stretcher. This has the advantage of enabling me to work on both sides of the canvas. I always have a number of pieces of canvas, paper and boards on the floor, in various states of beginning. Other works are on the walls (or easel) and these tend to be the ones I consider are currently in some interesting state. I attempt to begin straight away. I’m engaged with drawing and allowing paint to be paint on the taught or loose plane of the support. This is the initial attempt to begin to open up a space for a dialogue. One piece generally captures and holds my interest and I concentrate on that one usually for the rest of the session. The practice is one of trying to be in the moment during the act of applying, removing and the adjustment of liquid colour over the surface – just being present that instant when some form of dialogue begins within each work. I spend the day in the studio until around 4pm. In the evening I may return to continue to paint or more likely I’ll work on some drawings.

What is fertiliser for your work?

I think like most artists I like to push at any parameters from time to time, to explore some new territory and surprise myself. Each new painting seems to me to offer always new possibilities. But then there’s also Nature, travel, walking; in short the world about me, which inevitably informs my thinking.

Who or what has recently impressed you?

I have been exchanging paintings with other artists for sometime now. Works by: Karl Bielik, David Webb and Susan S Scott, to name but a few, make a wonderful impression on me on a daily basis.

Have a beer with an artist of your choice? Whom?

John Hoyland. I like that Northern, slightly abrasive manner you detect in ‘Six Days in September’, the 1980 Arena Documentary.

What’s your favourite city and why?

I live roughly mid way between London and Glasgow and they would count as my 2 favourite cities. I was born in one (London) and my wife and her family are from Glasgow.

What’s your favourite restaurant and why?

I like eating out (I especially like Italian food) but I don’t really have a favourite restaurant. Having said that I have a fondness for the Cappadocia Cafe & Bistro on the Grays Inn Road, near kings Cross. Whenever I get to London now I like to head there first for one of their wonderful all day veggie breakfasts. The staff are incredibly accommodating, friendly and charming.

What would you do with five euro found in the streets?

I would immediately feel guilty and probably look to give it away to the first Big Issue vendor I could find.

Do you have any dream projects in mind that you would like to do in the future? 

How about a 6 month residency in Italy – perhaps in Rome.

2018

Untitled, 2018

Untitled (310817)

acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 13” x 9” inches, 2017

Studio

Studio