I know you specialize in paintings of the Caribbean and figure paintings. Why do you paint the later?

“When I was young I painted the occasional nude, rarely from life, and pretty much for the same reasons early man would paint on the walls of his cave the animals he intended to hunt the next day. I do it now because I’ve realised over the years I genuinely love women, and I love painting them. The beauty is obvious but I find they have an energy I can tap into, at the risk of sounding wacko I’m even tempted to suggest it’s the Goddess principle, which I flatter myself I can bring into the painting to some degree. A photograph won’t do that: it simply records what it sees. Of course with clever lighting the photo can be very beautiful but the photographer can never light the model from within, the way a painter can..I once read an article by a very successful portrait painter who suggested one should paint the subject upside down to divorce oneself from what one knows! What a prick! The skill of the artist isn’t just shovelling paint around a canvas in a pleasing pattern, the whole point is that as a painter I can record not just what I see, but express what I know of the sitter. I can paint what I feel of her personality, how the model and I relate to each other. It’s an incredible high. Such a high that I’d go as far as to say that the sitter also becomes the muse. They say the artist always falls in love with his model, I’m sure that’s how the saying came about."

Talking of which – isn’t this a dangerous occupation?

"I think it's true that this isn’t something I could have done when I was young, when all my thinking took place in my trousers, but one of the few benefits of maturity is that you learn to control your emotions and not have them control you. Of course I’m aware of the subjects desirability, I have to be: it’s absolutely vital that it goes into the painting, but that doesn’t mean I have to be stupid enough to succumb to it. This is very important. My work has a bright, clean, energy of which I’m immensely proud. It’s the purity of that energy which I believe lifts my work from so much that’s produced in the same genre."

Isn’t this a difficult subject to sell?

“Is it ever, and particularly here in the U.K. I’m tempted to say that we’re too prudish but that isn’t the half of it, it’s far more accurate to say we’re too bigoted. We’re a nation of voyeurs, we love to sneak a look but God forbid anyone should catch us doing so. Do you know, when I’ve had my work on exhibition you can actually see people walking past the figure paintings which have faces, especially the ones that look back at them: paint a tastefully curved back with the face discretely averted and they’ll stare at it all day. I don't know who they think they're kidding: we all know they want to look at the painting that’s hanging next to it but, in public at least, they simply can't bring themselves to!"

You’re very scathing about art galleries. Why?

"Disappointed would be a better word - but then to be honest that's probably because I'm an artist who only sells to a niche market and galleries aren't fighting each other to represent me. That does make me acutely aware of the way the art market works. The thing to remember is that galleries are really just retailers, nothing more: however much they pretend to be. What hangs on the wall, as far as the gallery is concerned, isn't art - it's merchandise. Choosing merchandise they can sell, and making sure it does, is something they are very good at. Not all galleries operate like this of course: there are many who operate to the highest principles – but frequently here, and especially in the major cities – it is very much the case”

That’s a very contentious thing to say. Would you explain it?

“I’d be delighted! The art industry is worth billions: and I’m not talking about the prints punted out every year by the mainstream publishers, but about the major galleries and auction houses. Very few figurative painters, however brilliant they are, will ever make the big time, at least nowhere near the giddy heights of lets say, Tracy Emin, or the bullshitting butcher Damien Hurst, and there is a sound reason for that. In order for the art establishment to make the really big bucks they have to intellectualise about the qualities, about the meaning of a work, regardless of whether or not it actually has any. In fact if it has none, if in fact it is simply a blank canvas, then so much the better – the pseudo-intellectualising needs know no bounds. It really is the story of the Kings new clothes. If the work actually resembles its subject then it is firmly rooted in reality, and no matter how brilliant the work, no matter how skilful the artist, it simply cannot be hyped to the same extent and the bullshit just will not work! That’s why, as far as contemporary work is concerned, the big money is always spent on pieces that are at best pleasing graphics and at worst simply banal.  

The tragedy is that the art establishment has been promoting this paradox for so long they actually believe it. We now have art students who can’t paint because they haven’t been taught, and they haven’t been taught because their tutors can’t paint either. Tracy Emin once proudly announced that painting was dead: of course it isn’t but that’s no thanks to her. She’s laughing all the way to the bank so why should she care?”

You sound as if you have no appreciation whatsoever for abstract art.

“Far from it. Where would the graphical environment we enjoy every day be if not for the artists who changed our way of seeing things so radically? My complaint is that these people had something very valid to say and they’ve said it, but that isn’t the whole story. It’s changed from the appreciation of something new and profound to the propagation of rubbish for vast profit. A hundred years ago the Impressionists founded the two galleries at bottom of the Tuilerie Gardens because The Salon, who only represented figurative painters, wouldn’t hang their work. Thank God they did open them or we would be immeasurably poorer, but this has now come full circle and those of us who still know how to hold a paintbrush, and this includes the impressionists, would very much like it back!”

Don’t you quote Oscar Wilde on the front page of your website as saying that “All art is quite useless?

"I do, but I also quote him as saying “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” So admire an unmade bed if you wish, spend your millions on it – and then consider what it says about you.”  SB

Is it true that you paint from photographs?

Damn right I do. I work from life and I work from photographs: dozens of them. It's an extremely contentious issue this and an awful lot of rubbish is bandied around about it, especially from the 'let the mind fill in the gaps' brigade - nothing wrong with that, it's just not how I work! A few years back I was watching a national art competition on the TV. One of the judges was Brian Sewell, an intellectual I normally have the utmost respect for. Standing with the artist in front of a canvas of what appeared to be a girl lying on a pavement in the rain, he told the guy that he'd never get anywhere in the art world painting from photographs - and that he had done so was a pretty safe bet considering the subject - and that he must paint from life! Come off it Brian! It isn't the nineteenth century any longer and few of our models can find the time to sit for weeks whilst we paint them. The subject of my painting "Skylark" - a fabulous girl - is a single mum who works long hours, bloody hard, to support her kid and run a home. Where is she going to find the time? I'm damn lucky she can spare me as much of her time as she does!

But isn't it true that if you paint from a photograph you get a painting of a photograph?

Very true, but only if all you do is copy. Don't forget I know these girls pretty well: I could probably paint them from memory, but that isn't what I'm doing with my figure work. I work with a considerable degree of precision and to ensure I get that I use whatever reference I need. Decent figure work is like sculpting in one dimension and in order to strike a good likeness there must always be the tiniest amount of exaggeration. I not only work from the principle image but three-quarter shots, profiles and the rest. Consider I'm painting a portrait and, let's say, I'm working on the nose, a significant element in achieving that likeness. By consulting all my reference material I can see the shape of it perfectly, often an element which is missing from a head-on view, whether from life or photograph. Then, when I return to the canvas I can paint it with a significant degree of accuracy. Knowing exactly what it looks like I know how to make the shadows fall, and where to enhance the highlights, to get the effect I'm after. The same process applies to everything: arms, legs, torso. It's a technique that works well, despite the fact that the snaps themselves are dreadful, I'm no David Bailey for heavens sake.

And the life element?

Ah! Hands, feet, eyes and hair: almost always. One knows when ones stuck and I often have to ask the model to sit again, sometimes several times. Ten minutes of working from life is often all it takes to put something straight.

So working from life is the better?

Of course it is: it's just that in this day and age it's rarely practical.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to sit all day every day in a studio with a naked girl? It's every blokes dream. I'd be happy to do it but it ain't going to happen! Remember, it's the finished work that's important: not how it was produced, and the professional painter is pretty much justified in using whatever tools are at his disposal to bring about that end. I promise you: if Constable was alive today he'd be sponsored by Canon! SB.