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Chris Gollon
Christina Leinemann Knittel
Dan Kitchener
Kaori Takamura
Kelly Vivanco
Lenny Moskowitz
MIke Ciccotello
Ryan W Ruehlen
The Powells
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W. Bennett Berry
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Liquitex Featured Artist
Chris Gollon
London, England
website:
www.chrisgollon.com
Biography
Chris Gollon is an established name in British Painting and has enjoyed many solo exhibitions in the UK, public commissions and major museum acquisitions, including the British Museum. He has exhibited at Art Chicago and with Yoko Ono, David Bowie and Gavin Turk in ROOT, a crossover exhibition of contemporary music and art.
His work continues to attract increasing acclaim in the national press and specialist arts press. Chris Gollon: Humanity in Art by art historian Tamsin Pickeral (Hyde & Hughes), and endorsed by Bill Bryson OBE, was published in 2010. More recently one of Gollon's paintings was used as an integral part of the story in the Hollywood film Twilight: Breaking Dawn (Part One).
Interview with the artist
Chris Gollon discusses his influences, the importance of black and his acrylic techniques using Liquitex….
LQ: Chris Gollon, I want to start by asking you about black. You use a lot in the early stages of your painting. Is there a particular reason for this?
CG: Yes, I based my technique on that of El Greco. He would not have used black, but rather brown and then heightened it with white. With Liquitex acrylic paints you can paint white over black and the black will never come through, this is much harder in oils. I have modernized El Greco's techniques; I block out in black gesso and then work up in white paint, using my thumb to smudge half shadows.
LQ: You mention black gesso; do you use that for textural reasons?
CG: Yes, I used to use the Liquitex Soft Body mars black, then Heavy Body, but you get an uneven texture, a downward stroke will be different to an upward stroke. With Liquitex Colored Gesso, no matter what you do; it will dry in a completely matt way. The black you get is like infinity, it goes back and back. With other paints you get a bit of shine and it doesn't work as well. The black gesso has a similar effect to printer's ink, a lovely matte, even black. I got the idea from 'Under Milk Wood' by Dylan Thomas, 'sloe black, slow, black, crow black,' the idea of all these different blacks is very appealing to me.
LQ: What other art has influenced you?
CG: I particularly like the Spanish old masters, on the modern side I was influenced by Max Beckmann and Soutine, particularly the way he painted flesh in, 'The Ox' which he got from Rembrandt. Rather than copy Rembrandt he bought a carcass and worked directly from that. I work in a different way, what the French call 'En tête,'literally, 'in the head'; it comes from my imagination and memory.
LQ: Some artists work in series or on several paintings at once, what is your preferred method?
CG: I prefer to work on one at a time. That is why I use acrylic, I don't have to put it aside for four or five days, I can just keep going. As long as I don't get too tired, I can go on for as long as it takes, that's very appealing for me. I don't use any mediums for my glazes, only water; it has to go on quite thin so you can see what's underneath. If you have a monochrome structure, then glaze over in yellow for instance, its like magic, you have half tones with a strong structure underneath. I used to use Liquitex mediums like 'Black Lava' years ago, if you put it in the paint, you could shine it up with a rag when it was dry and it would glitter like diamonds. Over time I have also refined my palette to a limited range of colors. It was something I read when I was quite young, that the great colorists used only a limited range. You can make most things with blue, yellow and red, the only problem is making nice greens, so I use phthalo green sometimes. It makes it difficult for yourself, using 30 different colors. Even with someone like Rubens, it looks like a difficult technique but is actually quite straight forward when you look into it. Apparently he preferred horse riding to painting anyway; he liked to be finished by lunchtime.
LQ: How do you know when a picture is finished?
CG: Picasso said, 'a finished picture is a dead picture.' I think you should stop painting when you've said everything that you want to say. You have to have a lot of self discipline to know when to stop. The art critic, Tamsin Pickeral, said my painting was, 'haphazard, organic and without any plan.' I try not to peak too early in a painting so that I leave the poetry to the end.
LQ: Why Liquitex?
CG: It has been my choice of paint for over 20 years; I got it from David Hockney who said in one of his books, 'try this new American paint.' I found the colors better and to my mind more beautiful than oil paint. The Heavy Body you can use like oil paint anyway. I like the full on, in the moment activity of using Liquitex, you can go for a five hour stretch and not have to stop. Lately I've been starting off with the new Liquitex Spray Paints, or blocking in with the black gesso then breaking down with the spray paint.
LQ: You've recently developed an app.
CG: I talk about a picture, the poetry or ideas and also the colors I used, then you can circle three points of interest on a picture and zoom in with fantastic quality. There are 8 images free to download, then every month we release a 'gallery' of at least 10 more, which people pay a nominal fee for. I describe in great detail the techniques used, the creative inspiration, and also my general thoughts and influences. We even asked Fr Alan Green, who commissioned my Fourteen Stations of the Cross for a Sir John Soane church in London, to contribute his insights and reveal how we collaborated on the project. A lot of apps are being downloaded I hear, so I'm glad people like it.