Paul Cunningham

Artistic background

I have been a drawer and a painter for most of my life and I paint and draw on most days and often for many hours. That life spent creating art manifests in every new drawing, every new painting. I also have a formidable academic understanding of art and art history and that knowledge also informs my work. As for the paintings I use acrylic, water and oil colours. I often paint over old paintings. Why? Because I improve. Let me say from experience that as an artist your work that previously looked good no longer satisfies when you have improved. And what does that mean about the process that is involved when I work? Foremost it means that I work hard and I think hard about the piece I’m working on. I debate its virtues and defects - with myself. I’ll look at it for ages and thereby come to decisions about how to proceed in each case. I don’t usually abandon a work when it’s just not coming right for me. I usually, in the end, resolve the issues. It’s not uncommon for me to ‘finish’ a piece, then finish it again…and again! Who influences me? A useful question but difficult to give a definitive answer without filling the page with names. I am going to say that Turner, Pissarro, Monet, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Cezanne are enduring influences. In truth it’s difficult not to add other names but in the interests of brevity I’ll leave the list at its current length for now. Sometimes my work is impressionistic, sometimes it is abstract. I do portraits, landscapes and seascapes. But irrespective of the subject or the genre in which I am working at the time, the work needs to be well composed. The colours need to work with each other and never jar against each other. The piece has to work as a unified whole in that the drawing and the method of rendering the paint is consistent over the entire board or canvas and that the finished item is not undermined by any moments within the whole that would seem better placed in another work of art. There is therefore a rigour and a discipline to what I produce. At least, this is my intention. What about the drawing? Well, I’m a good drawer, in fact, a very good drawer…even if I say so myself. I love drawing. By their nature it is easier to get accuracy with a pencil or a pen than it is with a brush. For that reason and also because accurate drawing requires a lot of skill anyway, drawing is often the hardest aspect of a painting, particularly if it is a figurative piece or a portrait and a likeness is required. And as I write I conclude that I owe it to myself to do some paintings that are founded on excellent drawing. Do I use photographs? Yes…of course I do. Sometimes I don’t - but often, I do. However what I produce isn’t a photograph and it doesn’t seek to be one either. Let me say it plainly. A painting that looks like a photograph is a waste of time. If you want to look at a photograph, look at a photograph but a painting, at least a painting by me, well, that’s a different thing entirely.