Colin Moore was born on the Clyde Coast of Scotland in 1949. He studied architecture in Glasgow. After years of study he ended up with two degrees and became an architect. An international career in architecture and design followed. Colin is much travelled and has lived in South America and Spain. With his language skills he went to Madrid and helped build the Spanish high speed train system. He has worked in London as an architect and as a Creative Director with a firm in Covent Garden. In 2002 Colin was made redundant, but in a good way i.e. he had the money to do what he’d always wanted to do – which is paint and from this he became a printmaker. It was tough for Colin at first. However, slowly but surely, he has established himself and is becoming better known. Colin has recently had his first book published: PROPAGANDA PRINTS a history of art in the service of social and political change.
Tim: Have you always wanted to be a painter and did it come easily to you, or did you have to work at it?
Colin: Ever since I was a tiny child – and according to my mother - loved drawing and she says I could draw long before I could talk! I would draw all over everything, which didn’t make me very popular, I always really loved drawing and I suppose becoming an architect was partly to do with that, but also, paradoxically, becoming an architect put me off a bit, if you know what I mean. Because it was my day job, I didn’t feel like doing painting or anything like that at night. I wanted to do something different at night. I had to get all of that out of my system when I started to draw and, in fact, as I got older and past my fifties, I started to think ‘you know, this corporate world has been good to me but .... it’s not really what I want to do and I feel like I’m wasting my time a wee bit here’ and I began to wonder what it was that I actually wanted to do? Also, I thought ‘how old do I need to be to give myself permission to do what I really want to do?’ I was a bit scared of doing it, at that stage,, Of course, I had to consider the whole financial security side of it too. I thought about how I’d travelled all over the world, through my work and how I started to take a sketchbook with me, wherever I went, religiously, and I would lie and connive so I could get time to myself, so I could go and draw. I gathered together all these sketchbooks and really this went on for about two or three years, drawing a lot and I was working with pen and ink and a little bit of colour (but not much though at the start) because it was mostly about getting my drawing style back .... Well actually, let’s rephrase that .... getting my drawing style established, because I felt that I really didn’t have one. In fact, that was the basis of the whole thing, actually, as it gave me the confidence, when the opportunity came along, to make the break. It wasn’t as if I had started from nothing and although I hadn’t realised it at the time, I had already achieved a recognised style of work, which is what you can see on the walls all around you. It’s all about drawing for me and so, I had a starting point and a whole body of work that I could draw on and develop.
Tim: In architecture, is it fair to say that you have to draw things which have to be exact i.e. the measurements are exact but, with your art, you now had the opposite of that, you had the freedom to do what you wanted to do.
Colin: Yeah, I mean, it could be what you wanted to be. The nice thing about art is that you get to make the rules, but there is definitely a truth behind what you’re asking there, which is .... should I really have been an architect? All I can say about that is that it is a fantastic education and one of the best educations, as it’s very broad and is really interesting but I think, temperamentally, I wasn’t all that suited to being an architect. I mean I was smart enough to do it, but attention to detail is not really my thing and actually, I wasn’t really all that hugely interesting in building, either! However, having said that, I’m still very interested in architecture as an art and I’m interested in making my own art, from architectural subjects – which is something I wasn’t at the beginning and I deliberately stayed away from architecture and wanted to get away from it, as it was my background so to speak. But, I can see that it is starting to creep back in now, albeit changed and warped, to suit my artistic interests. Looking back on it though, I don’t regret anything I’ve done in my life. I’ve come to realise that I wasn’t a natural born architect.
Tim: Are there any particular artists that you like?
Colin: Oh yeah, I’ve always loved art and that was another thing which helped me make the break and to make the change ... that all my life I’ve been into art and artists. Haunting art galleries is a thing that I’ve always done, so I knew a lot about art before I made the break. I’ve had love affairs with all kinds of artists and taken inspiration from them.
Tim: You use lots of kinds of mixed media in your art. Would you say that you prefer one above another?
Colin: I don’t have a preference that would make me not want to work with any of the others, if you see what I mean .... No. Every medium that you work with has its own challenges and its own opportunities. However, having said that, I love oil painting and it’s not for nothing that oil painting is so important in the world of art, because it is just so flexible and powerful as an expressive medium and so sexy when you’re working with it.... it’s just a real joy, and I always go back to that. But, this whole print thing has come as a sort of surprise to me. As you’ll probably recognise I do linocuts, mostly, and I got into it almost by chance. A good friend of mine, who is a well known printmaker, suggested that I try it out, as he thought my style would suit it and it turns out that he was absolutely right and I do really enjoy it; I really like printmaking and it’s what helped me make a living. Also, I found it easier to get into the world of printmaking, rather than painting, so far!!
Tim: When you do any sort of work, how do you begin ... do you start with a sketch ... how you build up to a piece.
Colin: Everything starts with drawing for me; in fact, everything is about drawing and the technique which I have evolved is that I do little drawings, that are really quite small and which are done very quickly. Simplicity is really important to me in my work, and if you can I try and keep it really simple. I find that working small helps me to do that and basically I have various techniques that I use. These little drawings form the basis of everything that I do and I try to be as faithful as I possibly can, not just to the spirit of that drawing, but to the detail of it, as well. After I’ve done these drawings I use computer techniques. I scan and blow up stuff and that is a really crucial part of what I do, in keeping the character of my drawings. I couldn’t do what I do if I didn’t use this technique.
Tim: That was actually what I was going to ask you about in one of my questions. Do you ever take photographs and then come back and work on them in your studio.
Colin: Well, I prefer to draw at the site but, at the same time, sometimes it’s just not possible... it might be too crowded; it might be insecure in some way, it might be raining ... all sorts of things. So I generally do both. It is true that I use photographs, but I never use photographs as the basis for the work, rather as the basis for the drawing, so that the photograph is the second-best way of being there, if you see what I mean, so that I never really use the photographs, in themselves, as I don’t really see the point of that and my work is quite expressive, in its own right, so that I might need to change things, or move them around and make them shift.
Tim: It’s funny you should say that ... when I interviewed Paul Catherall, he said a similar thing, in that he takes photographs as well as drawings on site, and that if you work straight from the photograph, you’d know it straight away, it’s no good.
Colin: Yeah, it doesn’t work.
Tim: Can I ask you about colour now. You said that you started off just sketching in pen and ink and gradually began to introduce colour. How have you found working with colour?
Colin: I have found a deep and abiding love of colour, in me. There is a Scottish tradition of colour. As you probably know, The Glasgow Boys were recently featured in The Royal Academy and the Scottish Colourists are even more famous. I don’t know what it is about my people but, we really are in love with colour, as a race .... it’s probably because we don’t have any in the landscape (laughs) .... well, that’s not true, but it is quite bleak up there!! Whatever, the connection is, I feel it very strongly. I love colour and I love working with colour, in an expressive kind of way.
Tim: Do you think there is a kind of science behind colour?
Colin: There definitely is, yeah. From my technical background, I don’t have a problem with that, but at the same time, I have to admit that it’s not how I work. It is true to say that I’ve become familiar with various different colour theories that have developed over the years and I must admit that I have had some help from ideas of colour theory, if no more than to help me to actually mix the colours that I want. I have found concepts like complementary, colours i.e. hot and cold, hue, tone etc.... you know, all those things which are associated with colour, I have found helpful. But, in the end, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that my approach to colour is totally intuitive and when I’m mixing the colours, I’m gone and I don’t know what’s going on! But, when I see the colours I want, I recognise them and so, it’s quite an emotional thing, the way I work with colour. I can’t fully explain what I’m doing and I kinda find it quite hard to take the necessary precautions to be able to remember how I actually got a colour, in the first place. To help me, I keep a studio book, when I’m mixing colours ... and you know, it’s quite important that I can remember it, because as a printmaker, I don’t print my whole edition at the beginning, so I have to go back and find the same colour again, as a matter of routine. For me, that goes against the grain a wee bit.
Tim: With Paul Catherall, when he does his series of fifty or whatever, he does them all in one go 50 blue skies then 50 of the next colour it’s interesting how different people work. Now, when you travelled, did you notice how colour was different, in different countries and even that you looked at colour differently in those countries?
Colin: It certainly is. Obviously the climatic conditions are different. The angle of the sun is different, for example, in the Tropics, the sun is right overhead, so that you can have no shadows and everything is just blasted by the sun, in the middle of the day. The sky is often washed out, so that it appears white, because there is so much sunlight and of course colours are very, very bright, in sunlight places and not so bright in others. But, you also have to take into account that colour is different in different places. What I am sure of, if nothing else, is that it is very important to be open to those changes and variations and work with them. However, having said that, the faithful reproduction of natural colour is really not what my work is about! As you can see, I am quite tactical with colour and fairly arbitrary as well, you know, because if I want a bright orange sky in Essex, then I’m sorry, that’s what you’re going to get, even if there has never been that colour sky in Essex, in living memory, I’ll do it if it’s suits my purpose.
Tim: I’ve been looking through your work and I’ve noticed that you do a lot of work with boats, harbours and fisherman. Is that because of where you come from?
Colin: Yes, I think basically it is. All my ancestors, on my mother’s side anyway, were sailors and so it’s definitely in my blood. I was born on the Clyde coast and when I was little, I used to visit, my mother’s family a lot. They lived down the harbour and the sea was always there and a lot of my most vivid memories and cherished childhood memories are of the sea and boats and that is definitely a deep-running thread in my life. I get a lot out of being by the sea and even today when I go down to the coast and I get a charge like no other! It is something that really inspires me.
Tim: Looking at those fishing paintings, the ones that stuck out for me is the Night Fisherman and The Death of the Fisherman.
Colin: Oh really!
Tim: I’m wondering where all of that came from? Was it because of the superstition of sailors?
Colin: Possibly the mythology that surrounds it interests me. Yeah. It’s interesting that you should select these two paintings, as these are two pictures which, in pure commercial terms, have been spectacularly unsuccessful. People seem to be scared about some of these subjects, actually. Any picture depicting death and you’ll have a hard time shifting it! It’s a pity really, as it’s an interesting subject and more interesting the older we get! I like those pictures and that’s one aspect that runs through ... and I’m speaking about the mythological side there ... But as far as the fisherman is concerned, then that’s a different thing. Another thread that runs through my work is - and I don’t want to sound pompous - that it’s all about social awareness ... and because I like maritime, coastal subjects and I tend to go around coastal towns in this country a lot, it has struck me that a lot of these towns are in bad shape. You know, fishing’s had it in a lot of places – in most places, in fact – and there’s not a lot happening in these places and they’re not happy places, or should I say they don’t seem to be happy. However, I don’t have the good fortune to know many people living in these sorts of places. But, just going in there and visiting them, it’s obvious that a lot of them are pretty rundown, compared to what they were, even 50 years ago and I find that quite sad.
One of my oil paintings (hanging in his studio) is called ‘No More Fishing’ and I got the idea for that painting, walking along the prom at Brighton. You get to a point on the prom in Brighton, where there a couple of kiosks which sell ice cream and postcards and stuff and beside them, by way of decoration, there is an old fishing boat that they’ve planted out with flowers and I thought that was a really powerful and poignant image, from my point of view, that is, because this was somebody’s livelihood, this boat, but now it’s just got flowers in it. It struck me as being a metaphor for the whole fishing community and industry, in this country, as we’ve moved from fishing to .... well, what can we call it ... tourism ... So, this series of paintings and in particular the idea of no more fishing has formed a commentary on the social state of our coastal towns and villages now. However, I also paint seaside towns like Brighton, which show the bright side of the seaside, the happy family side, the deck chairs etc.
Tim: When I considered the Death and the fisherman painting, it reminded me of that old hymn.... ‘those in peril on the sea’ and how it is one of the most dangerous jobs there is, if that film A Perfect Storm is anything to go by.
Colin: Several members of my family, in past generations, have died at sea, the sea is dangerous, you know, and that’s what makes it so fascinating as well, as it’s not all blue skies and ice cream..... It can be pretty dark.
Tim: On the other hand, and sticking with the theme of the sea, my wife likes your deck chairs paintings!
Colin: Well, on the contrary, they are hugely successful ... yeah, people like those pictures, as they represent the happy side of the seaside.
Tim: Yeah they’re bright and happy and reminiscent of trips to the seaside and trying to control things, like deck chairs, tents etc, on blustery days. Moving on, you’ve done another series based on actors and masks that fascinated me. Where did that come from?
Colin: Well, that was early stuff, actually. I suppose it was a comment on, not just actors, but all of us, as we have one face for home, another for work, another face for our friends and another face for our enemies. The idea of the actor, who can change his appearance, by having a mask, was fascinating and actually, in technical terms, it gave me quite a lot of rich material to work with graphically, as I could draw a face, but then have it partly covered and, of course, it then led me into that whole series.
Tim: It’s interesting, but there’s one which isn’t quite the same, but is related i.e. the actor on the TV. Did you do that at the roughly the same time or not?
Colin: Slightly later. That is part of a TV series and that came from an idea I had, of a motif of a picture within a picture, which runs right through the history of western art. There are loads of examples such as that of Valazquez when he did Las Meninas .... you can see the King and Queen, his patrons, reflected in a mirror behind him and it’s as if that’s another picture inside the picture that he’s painting. Of course, the modernists picked up on that, and, for example Ben Nicholson did lots of interiors, but with a window in the picture and the view out the window was in the picture as well, so you’ve got an interior, with a view of an exterior – a picture within a picture. And this is a rich thing, because it gives you a new dimension within the work; it gives you a dialogue, if you like.... perhaps a tension, if you want there to be. So, I was aware of that and maybe that’s what got me into it. But when I did the very first TV picture, I thought there was fantastic potential, enormous potential, to put a TV screen with a TV scene of your own choice – and your mind runs riot with the possibilities there; in fact, mine did! And something happened quite soon after I did the series. On the internet, I found a site put up by this guy who collects old TV Test cards.... Well there’s a nostalgic element to that – and you can tell from everything I do, that there is a lot of nostalgia, for good or ill, in my work. Also, I realised that there was a lot of graphic potential in these test cards.... squares and grids of lines, blocks of colour and things I could play with and pervert ! Which I like to do! And so that’s how that series, within the TV series happened.
Tim: Yes, my children have no concept of the TV only being available at certain times, as they can watch it at any time they like, day or night. They probably don’t even know what the test card looks like. Moving on to the next question now .... Are you asked to do commissions much at all?
Colin: No, I haven’t been asked to do many commissions, at the moment, to be honest. However, having said that, sometimes people will see a work and say ... ‘I’d like a painting of that’ or a couple of times I’ve exhibited a painting and someone has bought it and then someone else has said ‘oh I wanted to buy that’ and ‘could you do something like that for me?’ I’m actually working on a commission just now – Faber & Faber, the literary publishers, have asked me to produce a print, which they can use for the front cover of a new book about Wordsworth’s poetry, as part of a series on romantic poets that they’re about to publish. So that’s a commission and I’m really enjoying it, actually. (I’ll show you how it’s coming along, when I show you the studio upstairs.)
Tim: I just wondered if you might find it restrictive if you have to do work for other people.
Colin: No, I don’t have that problem, but that’s probably because people aren’t asking me that much. However, having said that, I’m not sure I’d be happy working to commission all the time. To be honest, as an architect and designer, I’ve had to work to other people’s briefs all my life, and becoming an artist, has been about writing my own brief. And so, up until now, I’ve been very happy enjoying finding my new-found freedom, to really want to do commissions regularly. I’m not saying I’m against it, you know, and you have to take any work you can get as an artist, let’s be honest. But, given the choice, I’d rather do the stuff that comes out of my own head!
Tim: I’d just like to run something by you now.... you know that term ‘Less is more’. Do you believe that, in the work that you do?
Colin: Yes, I absolutely do. It was a German architect/modernist called Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who coined that phrase. Of course, with my modernist, architectural background I’ve experienced this. Less is more is how I was trained to be an architect and all my life, as an artist and a designer generally, I’ve found that simplicity is a virtue. When I say this, I mean that if you can cut something out of a picture, without damaging its essence, then you should cut it out. I think my drawing style follows that dictum too. I don’t like to get bogged down in extraneous detail. I believe the smallest number of marks on a page, to get the idea across, is what I’m looking for and I try to ruthlessly get rid of stuff that’s not actually contributing very much.
Tim: Do you put a time limit on your work?
Colin: Time limit? (pauses here). I think there is a time limit, but I don’t impose it, consciously. I think I get bored. I like to change things and that’s one of the reasons why I wasn’t a great architect, as well. You know, it takes a long time to build things and you’d get fed up, towards the end of the two years etc, or whatever it is. I really enjoyed working with graphic design, later on in my life, for the reason that the turnover was quicker. So with my paintings and my prints, the faster I can do them, the better. I do work very quickly. I am a bit of a procrastinator, but once I get going, I do work fast and I find that I do my best work when I’m really flowing. I like to do something, get it done and then move on and do something else. That’s my ideal.
Tim: Can I ask you about graphic design. What style do you like?
Colin: I like minimal stuff but, at the same time, I’ve gone through changes as far as graphic design is concerned. For example, my appreciation of graphic design and my taste has changed a lot recently. I don’t know if you’re aware that I produced a book. When I was researching this book, I came across a lot of design which wasn’t particularly familiar to me and I loved it. The Russian Constructivist, for example and I really fell in love with that. I would say, of all the graphic designs styles, at the moment, probably one of the ones that I like most is the Russian Constructivists. Of course, they had a huge influence on all the western graphic design that came after that in the 20th century. So that style of quite dynamic, bright, modernist look, that’s the stuff I like best.
Tim: I went to Budapest last year and there is a museum there called The Museum of Terror and it features the oppression of the Hungarian people. Within the museum, there is a whole room, about 20ft high, where each wall is covered in posters, similar to the ones in your book. They were predominantly red. They are very powerful.
Colin: They really are. In fact, the whole history of Russian Constructivist art fascinates me. I have a natural tendency towards a socialist view of life and to read about these young Russian artists re-inventing art for the purposes of freeing the proletariat brings tears to my eyes; it’s absolutely wonderful.
Tim: What set you off, on your journey, putting all these posters together for the book? Was it just what you’d come across in your travels?
Colin: Well, I was invited, by a publisher, to come up with an idea for a book and I’d been in Mexico just before that. The offer came along and my head was full of Mexican political art and so I suggested a book about political propaganda art and to my surprise they thought ‘that’s a great idea ... get on with it!’ It wasn’t a subject that I knew much about before, but I know a lot about it now! It took me two years to write the book. It’s a very interesting subject.
But to get back to your question about graphic design. I wasn’t trained in graphic design, of course, and architects, as a general rule, don’t have a huge appreciation of graphic design, to begin with. However, what’s happened to me, without me really realising it, is that all the way through my life .... and although I had an architectural education, and worked as an architect for years, it’s all been about visual communication for me - that’s what ties together all my interests and it’s what made the process of writing the book so fruitful for me, because the subject of Propaganda Art ties together all my individual interests in what is, actually, visual communication.
Tim: Funny you should say that, but that’s the name of my course Design for Visual Communication. It’s nice to pick your brains about that and what it means to you.
Moving on from that, how do you think this theme of propaganda features in our lives today? Do you think still think it exists, and is still going on, but we are just not aware of it?
Colin: You’ll have to read the book! The last chapter tries to deal with what is going on now and what might go on in the future, but really, since I started in ancient Mesopotamia, I was kind of out-steamed before I got to there and I found that there was a whole other book there .... What’s happening now is phenomenal, as far as propaganda is concerned and I think the last statement of text in the book is that we’re all propagandists now and surely that’s a good thing.
Tim: To round up the interview, Colin, I just wanted to ask you about your ink drawings and your work in black and white. Do you like the discipline of only working with one colour?
Colin: I do because, again, it’s a simplification tool where, if you restrict your means, then it forces you to simplify things; it forces you to take a tactical view of how you construct the image, because you can’t use colours to differentiate things, or use colours to achieve depth etc. So, yes I love working in black and white, where I have to make an image work, technically. And, because I’m a relief printmaker, it’s a good discipline for me, because quite often I have to re-organise and simplify an image to make it work. If I want to only print one or two blocks, or whatever, I have to simplify things. Working in black and white, drawing in black and white, working with ink (I do a lot of ink drawing) it’s a really good workout; it really keeps your eye in.
www.colinmoore.uk.com
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