Vincent Hawkins — ART PRESENCE

Which 3 words best define how you would like your art to be perceived?
EXPLORATIVE / SPECULATIVE / OPEN

What creative challenge have you faced and overcome that has transformed your art practice?
Accepting that I make quite different work at times. Learning to trust myself and let go, keep it simple. Thinking gets in the way.

What tools do you use as part of the preliminary stages of your process?

I work In different ways, on paper, on canvas, and wall constructions. a certain set of colours prompted by something I’ve seen or am interested at the time. But usually how I begin a painting is to initiate through the randomness of making a mark which then requires or forces me to respond. I continue in that way. There’s nothing really linear to it. Once you start it’s like taking a wild dog for a walk on the end of its lead.

How do you usually start an art session - any habits or rituals ?

I look at what’s going on in the studio on arrival and see what I can do. Kettle goes on later. Over the years I’ve become more interested in the conversation between works on the wall... so I look at the wall and start to make connections.

How do you deal with doubts and fears?

I don’t think you should have any fears, I mean nobody makes you do it. I have accepted in myself that I don’t set out with any fixed idea in mind of where I want to get to. I am looking to be surprised, and to see what I might find... and it comes through improvisation. If it doesn’t turn out well you can always start again. And, there’s a curious thing about painting, that what you are making at the time may go on to resolve itself in another painting further on down the line. I’m fascinated by the question of how is it we instinctively know when something works and when it doesn’t. Is that “Truth”?

With what intentions do you infuse your art making?

I intend to PLAY in order to find. That art is a mirror, and you are on an adventure of discovery, and that it can unearth something you hadn’t realised previously through making.

Where do you draw your color inspiration from?

At the moment it is through an idea about quietude and meditation,(It could all change, of course). I’m looking at Giotto, Piero della Francesco, Fra Angelico; and Indian miniature painting (albeit on line). I’m to take part in ‘The Festival Of Art In Chapels in Brittany‘, next year (all being greatly improved re the pandemic) ; so my thinking has much to do with the particular chapel I’ll be showing in.

What brilliant piece of advice were you given on your creative journey and would be happy to share?

I read something Agnes Martin said - “Don’t have too many ideas”. Also, “Your Process Is Your Teacher”, from Nadia Khalil’s Origins Of Truth ( now that book has a big surprise in it) .

What is something absurd that you love doing ?

Trying to remember jokes. Trying to formulate mental descriptions (it’s a work in progress ) ah, playing cat and mouse with a theory I have that rectilinear paintings on canvases are a fixed world and that other shapes are not .. I know, I know, absurd... but..

What do you like about your work & what do you dislike about it?

I like and I don’t like that each different medium I use not only causes me to respond differently but will give me completely different subject matter! For eg, during first lockdown I made a series of ink drawings in notebooks, which is still ongoing, called “Night Garden”- a comment on the situation of what I might find each morning pulling back the curtain on the day, in these bizarre times. I’ve had performing seals, sharks kangaroos and all sorts show up ....