INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST MYCHAEL BARRATT

Mychael Barratt was born in Toronto, Canada but thinks of himself as a Londoner since arriving for what was meant to be a two week stay twenty years ago. He has a great zeal for his adopted home and includes local settings that have a personal resonance in much of his work. He is a narrative artist and anecdotal incidents from his day-to-day are at the heart of his paintings and prints.

Tim: I wanted to begin by asking how you came to be a printmaker? 

M: I studied mainly painting at Art School. After leaving school, I worked as an illustrator and I saw an exhibition of etchings by an artist called Chris Orr – until recently, he was the Head of Printmaking at The Royal College of Art - and his work really struck me as being fabulous. I had done a bit of etching and I thought I’d look into it and then did a course at St Martin’s and while I was doing the course, I took some of the my pieces out to galleries and started selling them and I’ve been doing that ever since. 

Tim: Does this form the majority of your work now, or do you do painting as well? 

M: Yes, I split my time between the two, 70-30 between printmaking and painting. However, I do reserve my paintings for solo shows. I don’t send them out to galleries, at large. Print-making allows you to earn a living, as an artist, whereas the painting is trickier, because you can only supply a couple of galleries with paintings, whereas with prints, you can supply a hundred galleries, with lots of prints, theoretically. 

Tim: Do you do a limited run of prints? 

M: I do, yes. I usually do between 100 and 150 for the etchings. 

Tim: Would you do all the prints all in one go? 

M: What happens is that I tend to print of about 30 or 40, at the beginning, and then just see how they go. Sometimes you don’t know whether you’ve got something that people are going to want. I have a certain degree of faith in what I do, but probably not to print 100. Also, it takes too long to do. If I sell 30, but it’s slow, then I probably won’t print the rest of the edition; they’ll still be called edition of 100, but there might only be 30 out there. 

Tim: What attracted you to London that you wanted to stay here? 

M: Well, I don’t know, my grandparents were born here and so I thought I should at least check it out and I’d been travelling around Europe for a bit. And, when I got here I just loved it. It is true to say that I’ve always loved cities, and the idea of cities, but this one was really the best. 

Tim: How long have you been living here now? 

M: I’ve been here over 20 years. I’m still a Canadian, but I do feel I’m also a Londoner. 

Tim: If someone was coming to one of your exhibitions, for the first time, how would you describe your work? 

M: Gosh, that’s always a hard one. Narrative, figurative, there’s a strong emphasis on drawing and often a strong emphasis on history in its English narrative tradition. 

Tim: I was going through your work and you seem to enjoy painting people, especially couples i.e. couples in love, couples reading poetry, why did you pick couples? 

M: I’m not sure.

Tim: I noticed that, often, in these paintings there are objects floating about i.e. lanterns, angels, people, papers etc and I just wondered if there was some significance about those things? 

M: Those things have come from something that’s happened in my life and are some kind of anecdote ... the lanterns, for example, is all about when my niece got married and we went out to the New Forest and lit these fire lanterns and let them go there. That was an amazing experience, because when you see these lanterns, in the flesh so to speak, they’re quite something ... almost scary even, but they’re also unbelievably beautiful. It was one of those moments that sticks in my head and I keep going back to that, so that I’ve painted it half a dozen times. I’ve done monoprints of it. I haven’t done any etchings yet, but it will come. With regard to such things as papers floating, it’s partially a device for adding movement into a painting, because it’s quite hard to do that, without doing Gerhard Richter directional brushstrokes, or something like that, but I find putting in floating trails of origami animals, or poems, or something escaping from someone’s hands it is just a wonderful way of getting the viewer's eyes to move through your painting. 

Tim: I like that sort of information ... it’s interesting how you get that sort of feeling into a painting, that’s great. Also you have a lot of dogs in your work. 

M: Yes, I’ve got three cats and a dog. 

Tim: Do they get any commissions on any prints you sell? (they laugh) 

M: Yes, I was just saying to my wife today, about my dog .... Well the dogs responsible for the big Dickens piece I’ve just done; I wouldn’t have done it without the dog, actually, because when we got her, about 2/3 months ago, I had to stay at home with her when she was a puppy. The idea was that I would stay at home and do some painting, but at the same time, I couldn’t have her in the studio with me because she would just get in to everything. But, she freaked out whenever she wasn’t with me and so I had to figure out something I could do while she was in the room with me and I just did drawings for about two weeks and came up with the Dickens piece. So I’ve got her to thank for that. 

Tim: I see you use a lot of street scenes, as well, is that the London theme coming through? 

M: Yeah, the immigrant zeal. 

Tim: Have you got a favourite part of London? 

M: Well, I love where I live in north London, and everything from Highgate, Muswell Hill, Hampstead Heath and that whole area, is probably my favourite part, but I love old buildings and East London is also a favourite. 

Tim: I put the Less is More question to all the artists I’ve interviewed and most of them apply that to their style of work, but in yours it seems to be the opposite, where there is a lot going on. 

M: Yes, there’s ‘More’ (they laugh). It has to be said that I have a hard time leaving empty spaces and tend to fill every corner and I think it’s because there is a sense of narrative about my pictures. I think it is very hard to tell a story, with very few elements and the more I can get in there, to tell the story, the better. 

Tim: Yeah, it’s nice to see how people look at things differently. 

M: I also like to feel that the work is rewarding. Colin’s work, for example, is very stripped down, where he might just have say three elements and that will do something for someone looking at the work, but I also like to reward people from delving into things and to maybe put things in that they wouldn’t have seen when they first saw the piece, so there’s that way of looking at it too. 

Tim: Just wondering what process do you use when you start a piece, do you sketch first, or do you photograph? 

M: Actually, invariably, I almost always tend to write out my ideas in longhand first and then I do a drawing from that and it’s probably to do with the whole narrative thing. I write things down first, as a generation of ideas and then I do a drawing from that and then paint. 

Tim: What about the computer – do you use it? 

M: No, not in the art process, or in the generation of ideas, or anything like that.

Tim: I notice, with some of your early work – and even in some of your newer ones – that you’ve got the main image in the centre and then you’ve got things which come out from the pictures. It’s very effective and I wonder how that came about? 

M: Yeah, it’s actually a technique called counter-proofing. Basically, an etching is done on the plate and then it’s printed onto Japanese tissue paper and then, while the paper and the ink are still wet, it’s placed onto another piece of paper and then run back through the press at high pressure. So, those ones you were talking about, have been printed from paper. What this does is that it allows me to have one bit that’s printed directly from a plate and then other bits – which are still etchings, but which don’t have any plate marks or such and it’s just the shape of the paper i.e. you cut the paper out to fit the image from paper, and then print it from that. It’s a nice way to break the border set. 

Tim: Yes, it’s very unusual the way they come out of the picture. 

M. Yeah, it’s quite funny, because I was telling someone about the technique and this woman came back to me afterwards and said to me ... “I was talking to my daughter, who knows a lot about printmaking, and she says that those bits are not etchings; those bits are lithographs”. And I replied “No, you can tell your daughter that this is how it’s done, I promise you.” 

Tim: would you say that your style has changed much over the years? 

M: Well, I’d say that’s it’s evolved a little bit and certainly, it’s changed from when I first started doing it. I think the pieces were much simpler and there wasn’t that much of an attempt to make them realistic. I like things looking like real. So I think it’s evolved, rather than changed. I think your drawing style, is your drawing style. 

Tim: When you started etching, did you have to learn new skills? And, obviously you’re working with different tools; did you find that hard? 

M: Yeah, it was difficult learning the techniques, but really it’s only as hard as you want to make it and you take it as far as you want to take it, so etching can be quite simple and even straightforward. But then there are other more involved ways of etching. 

Tim: Yes, I’ve been looking into it (watching how it’s done) and there seems to be quite a lot to it i.e. the chemicals, the acid, tints and it’s a long process. 

M: Exactly; it can be tricky. 

Tim: Are you limited in the size you can do, with an etching? 

M: Well you’re limited in how big you can print something i.e. how big your press is. The East London Printmakers have an absolutely enormous press, where you can print huge things. With that, though, you have to figure out how you’ll etch the plates.

Tim: I don’t suppose you can quantify how long something takes to do, but have you any idea about how long the Canterbury Tales took to do? 

M: Well, the Canterbury Tales piece took me longer than anything else I’ve ever done ... that kind of got away from me ... I was controlling it at first, when I was doing the drawing, but then it went into directions that I let it go in. First of all I had to read the Canterbury Tales (he laughs). Basically, it’s got lots of different aspects to it; for example around the outsides are all the depictions of the pilgrims, then there are the tales themselves and all the different places the pilgrims go to on the way. All these little vignettes relate to the pilgrims’ tales. In fact, I did a key for it, the other day, and I found that it was 3,000 words, I got carried away. 

Tim: And how many times would that piece have gone through the press? 

M: This only goes through twice 

Tim: Lots of your pieces are humorous; they bring a smile to the face; they’re happy. 

M: Yes that’s quite important.

Tim: However, there was one where death is playing cricket and I wonder what that is all about? 

M: That one is a very dark little piece, but really it is just a pun.... that’s where it came from. Death and the Maiden and I thought ‘Death and the Maiden over’ (they laugh).... you know, death playing cricket and just missing that last ball in the over. And, you know, that isn’t one of those pieces which makes money. You know sometimes we do work solely for ourselves without  thinking about a possible audience for it. That was one of those pieces for me. I just had the idea and I liked it and went ahead and did it. 

Tim: It’s quite macabre. 

M: Yeah, but I’m still very pleased with that piece. 

Tim: Do you get to do much commission work at all? 

M: No, not now. When I was an illustrator, that was all I was doing, commission work. To be honest, I don’t really like doing it particularly. However, it can be fun, if people give you a commission that is based on your work, and occasionally I’ve had that, where people have asked me to do a piece, based on my own work and then ask me to set it in say, Whitechapel for example and where the brief is quite broad – that can be quite fun. It’s not something I’d like to go back to; I don’t miss it at all. 

Tim: Another piece of yours that I like is – and I’ve done something like it myself – the Monopoly board, I did mine, graphically, using Illustrator. I got to a certain point, did all the places on the board, but then doing the cards sort of put me off .did you get to do your cards yet? 

M: Oh no. I just did the card “You’ve come second in a beauty contest” which is on the piece. That was a fun one to do, actually. I had to go round to all the places and some of the streets I hadn’t really heard of or, if I had heard of them, I couldn’t think of where they were. 

Tim: Yes, there are some fantastic street names in London. I noticed, where I used to work, in Ludgate Hill, where all the churches are, that there are names like Amen Corner, Pilgrim Street, etc. 

M: I like ones that relate to professions, or like Pudding Lane, Petticoat Lane. 

Tim: You’ve done a lot of pieces relating to Shakespeare. Is that something you’ve always been interested in? 

M: Yeah, that’s something I’ve always been interested in. I heard that Sam Wanamaker had plans to rebuild the Globe and I did a piece to raise money for the project and then after the Theatre was built, the person in charge of buying merchandise, asked me if I’d like to have a permanent relationship with them and do things every year, based on the plays they were doing. And I thought that was great. The whole time Mark Rylance was the creative director, he’d ring me up and secretly tell me the names of the plays they’d be doing that year (and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone) and that gave me a running chance to do things based on particular plays. I suppose that was a commission, in a way, but it was quite free, where if they named a play (for instance Timon of Athens) and I couldn’t think what I could do for it, then I just left that and did something else for that year. In other words, I didn’t have to come up with something for each one.

Tim: Were you commissioned to produce your book - Intaglio Printmaking? 

M: Yes. 

Tim: How long did that take? 

M: Well, that took less time than it should have done, but I was still late. They gave me two years to write it. I hit the ground running, interviewed a lot of people and in the first two months did loads of work, but then I didn’t do any work for the next 18 months (he laughs) and then I realised that I’d only four months to get it all done. So what I did was ... my brother and sister-in-law had a place in the New Forest, which had a little outbuilding/studio and because I couldn’t write here, as it was just too distracting (I’d sit down and then I’d think of other things I had to do, I’d get up, I’d start drawing etc) and so I went and lived with them for a week a month for 5 months. So, I guess it took me about five weeks to write the whole thing. 

Tim: And, did you practise the skills that you mention in the book? 

M: Yeah I did. That was the idea, that for every one of the techniques, I met people who were really excellent at these. They’d tell me how they did their technique etc and then I’d go off and practise that technique. The Shakespeare print has an example of every single technique I learnt. 

Tim: So, it was a good experience, learning all those techniques? 

M: Oh yeah, it was fantastic. I mean, there are some techniques that I’d never use again, with the best will in the world, even though I think they are wonderful. I bought a bunch of engraving burins, and gave it a go, but realised that it just takes so long and for you to get really good at it, you’d have to devote a phenomenal amount of time to it and I don’t know if I have the patience for it. There are some techniques that I use all the time now and I learnt how to do them from that experience. 

Tim: Can I ask you about colour itself i.e. how you use colour ... do you use colour theory.... how do you work with colour? 

M: With painting, colour is just an intuitive thing, but I have a phenomenal palate. I like to mix the colours and find the combinations of paints and mix them, and I’ll have 50/60 colours out on my palate when I’m painting a piece – a ridiculous amount actually. Sometimes I have to scrape off colours which have been on there for months i.e. 10-20 colours. I usually have a range of every possible colour imaginable. However, printmaking is totally different, I am usually trying to evoke something with a colour, so like with the Canterbury Tales again, I was trying to find colours that would actually give it a sense of being contemporary and yet still had the feeling of being a mediaeval map, or something like that. I work on the colours quite a lot, on the prints. I enjoy that aspect. However, until about 2 or 3 years ago, I didn’t use colour inks at all in my printmaking. I’d print monochromatically and then hand colour things, but now I use colour tints all the time. I love it.

Tim: I asked Colin this question, when you travel abroad, do you see colour differently? 

M: Well, my sense of colour and my feeling about colour has changed since I’ve been in London and I use a very London palate in my painting especially i.e. a very subdued. Maybe I’d use different colours if I was in Canada. I think it is less colourful here, but I love the variety of tones and shades. It is true that the light is very different here.


See more of Mychael's work at www.mychaelbarratt.com