Let’s talk about authenticity…

Visitors in contemplation at a recent exhibition. The paintings you can see here are ‘Floating Free’ and ‘Precious One’.

I know that authenticity is a buzzword at the moment and you might be rolling your eyes reading this but I feel moved to address it in the context of being an artist, specifically.

I had an experience about a week ago, when someone came to look at my paintings just as I finished hanging an exhibition, and they asked me, ‘so are your paintings about anything?’ My answer to this question has changed throughout the years that I have been a painter and I feel it is important to remain fluid and to respond with what is true in that moment. But it got me thinking.

For example, I used to say that my paintings are purely formal and respond to the discourse of Fine Art and what painting is and can be. I have also at times, conceded that they are spiritual landscapes, although I don’t fully understand what that means and whether it is quantifiable! At other times, I have been ok with letting people read emotional expression into them, particularly if they are intimately connected with my life. But are any of these things true?

I feel that one of the core tenets of being an artist is to be exquisitely sensitive and attuned to the thoughts, ideas, changes, expressions and mood of society on a collective and individual level. We are not islands and can’t help but be influenced by all of the above. Some artists make work inspired directly by a specific issue and their work adds to the dialogue of a particular narrative, such as environmentalism or identity.

As an abstract artist, I resist addressing any one subject directly, but believe that it is no less my job to engage with and understand the cultural conversations that are taking place. In short, all of it goes in. For example, at the moment, I am reading into topics such as parenting, feminism, economics, ideas around enlightenment, the nature of reality, classics and political ideology! Of course, life is to be experienced as well as examined and I am deeply introspective about my own life in an effort to grow and transcend my personal limitations.

I would go as far as to say that I define living authentically and with deep connection to my inner life as much a part of my job as the research is. It is as though the more I can integrate my true self with my outer surroundings (family, social network and beyond), the more I can paint with integrity too.

Although you may be thinking, ‘oh what luxury to have time to read and ponder big questions – some of us have real work to do!’, this fieldwork is essential in order for an artist to make anything with originality or life in it. And actually, daring to know oneself on a deep level and attempting to gain a felt sense of what is happening in the contexts of the wider world is deeply uncomfortable work, much of the time.

Back in the studio, it is then for the alchemy of my muse to translate this way of being into paintings, each with their own unique origin. As I have said, I try to paint with an empty mind and to resist controlling the process as far as I can. That has been a tricky dichotomy to get my head around. Surely, my ego wants to tell me, if you have learnt so much you should be expressing it! But no, I now understand that by just showing up to the canvas (each time in a slightly altered incarnation of myself) the painting will take care of the content.

To return to the initial question then, are my paintings about anything? In that particular moment, I said ‘no, they are only paintings.’ I may have been trying to avoid being labelled as ‘a painter of…’ but it would have perhaps been truer to add that paintings that are not about anything are never about ‘nothing’.