Adele Underwood Interview
Published by: Nick on 08 Jan 2012 | No Comments
Categories: Artists, Interviews | Tags: Adele Underwood
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Tell us a bit about your studio and how your working day usually runs?
When I arrive I usually sit for a bit, studying the work, almost immediately I know if it’s right, the signals come flooding in, and I construct and manipulate. I don’t work from an elevated place looking down; if its low, then i’m in a ditch with them and by painting them i’m trying to dig us out together. I’m trying to keep it quite dangerous. I never have models, if the work is moving it’s because it’s just in there. I work in the morning as my energy level is best then. If it’s going well, it can be incredibly uplifting. It’s strange afterwards when I look at it and i ask ‘what have i done?’. Only later it becomes part of a larger understanding.
Your medium is primarily in oil paint and charcoal, tell us why you like using these materials?
Charcoal is my medium, from college i knew that. For me it has the ability to transform my subject matter, the detail and softness is essential to make the marks that are right for me. i have always had the dichotomy of do i just stay with the drawing, is that enough or shall I obscure by painting? The answer was for me leave some of the drawing and paint some. Moving to oils from acrylics was a revelation, learning all the time, but oils do have that magic sense of opening a jewel, and I think the paintings reflect this.
You use a lot of animal imagery in your work, is there any symbolism in this?
Animals are hugely important to me. I would love it if in the real world we could merge their senses and ours, linked together would be magic. The symbolism is there and for me a joint merging would be perfect. Lorca has a wonderful poem which deals with the hearts of little animals who are forgotten.
“I denounce all those who ignore the other half, the irredeemable half, who raise their mountains of cement, where beat the hearts of little animals who are forgotten and where we shall all go down in the jamboree of drills”.
Is there any particular narrative that you want to project to and engage your audience in?
Yes, the narrative of love and loss, Eros Thanatos, always stemming from Joseph Beuys. Humour helps soften the irony and avoid pretentiousness. I seriously want to paint, I believe in the beauty of pigment suspended in oil on canvas, and the ability of that beauty to suggest transcendence.
Who do you look to for inspiration on a personal and creative level?
On a personal level, my partner, on a creative level everything in the cosmos. I’m drawn to other artists like George Condo, Marlene Dumas, Grayson Perry. I kind of like the messages they send in their work. Recently I have been drawn to Chardin and Fra Angelica and some outside of art; I love the films especially of the Quay brothers and I’ve lately been working to the soundtrack of ‘Crazy Clown Time’ and The Unthanks.
What one item would you take on a desert island with you?
Moisturiser.
Do you have a favourite place that you have travelled to?
Brittany, have lived there for a short while , some good eccentrics live there.
What are your hopes and plans for 2012?
Hopes and plans – to live long enough to paint the one painting that is totally right.
Thank you.