Artist Q&A: Harry Simmonds

Harry Simmonds

HCA: How did you get into art?

I had initially planned to study Graphic Design, but during my one year Art Foundation course I developed a passion for painting and so I decided to pursue a degree in Fine Art instead. 

HCA: Why is your chosen subject? and why? 

I have always felt the need to paint ‘from life’ directly in front of the subject matter. During my first two years at university, I would make trips to Dartmoor each week in order to paint the landscape and I did a four month Erasmus exchange to Spain where I painted in the mountains each day. During the final year of my degree, I switched to making self-portraits so that I could work in the studio, and then after I graduated I began using models to sit for me in my studio. 

HCA: What materials do you use and why?

I mainly use ink and acrylic because I like the fact that they dry quickly. I’m interested in Japanese calligraphy and the idea of a mark being ‘charged’ and having a life of its own, and I like the way paper absorbs he ink and enables one to make all sorts of different types of marks. I also paint on paper because I like the fact that it can be trimmed or added to quickly and easily if one wants to change the dimensions of the painting. It also enables me to collage separate pieces of paper together. 

HCA: Where do you get your inspiration from?

I get lots of inspiration from looking at the work of other visual artists as well as from other art forms such as literature, music or cinema.

HCA: What’s your studio like?

My current studio is in a warehouse in Bristol. To some people, the way I work is chaotic but I’ve never been able to work in a tidy, minimalist space. I like to have piles of drawings and works in progress lying around and pinned to the walls. The studio is a sort of brainstorm in three dimensions.

HCA: Are there any other artists that inspire you?

In terms of living artists, I really like the work of Anselm Kiefer and Frank Auerbach amongst others. There are all sorts of artists from the past that I like such as Rembrant, Carravagio Titian, Turner, Manet, Monet, Van Gough, as well as lots of Amercian artists from the mid-20th Century such as de Kooning, Franz Kline and Cy Twombly.

HCA: What is it you are trying to achieve in your pieces?

I want to represent what I see before me when I am painting; not only the appearance of the person, but also the sensation that I am experiencing. The marks that I make are an emotional response to the subject matter. It’s also important that paintings function on an abstract level too, and to that end I’ll often turn my paintings upside down or on their side to see how they look independently of the subject matter. The paintings have a meaning, but it’s a visual meaning that can’t be put into words, in the same way that many pieces of classical music are purely musical and are not about anything in particular other than themselves. It’s inevitable that people will interpret ones work in many different ways and come to different conclusions regarding meaning but I’m not trying to illustrate a particular idea or concept. 

HCA: How do you know when a piece is finished and when it’s the right time to stop?

It’s instinctive and I usually know straight away, although very occasionally I need to hide the painting away and not look at it for a few days or weeks. When I don’t want to continue because I’m worried about ruining what I’ve already done, then that’s usually a bad sign; it suggests I’m being precious with the painting and I’m just settling for mediocrity. When I finish a painting it usually ends with a kind of crescendo of spontaneous marks, and a feeling of certainty. A feeling that all the time that has already been spent working on the piece was a sort of rehearsal for what is now taking pace. At such times the hand seems almost to move itself in an automatic way. I’m no longer intellectualising the work or thinking about it in terms of words. I loose sense of time, and seem to forget myself in such moments.

HCA: Are there any other art forms that you would like to try such as sculpture, ceramics, printmaking etc? 

I’ve experimented with printmaking a lot over the years, but never really sculpture and this is something that I’d like to do more of at some point.

HCA: What are you working on currently?

I’ve recently completed a series of self-portraits, and I’m planning to start working outside an a series of landscapes/seascapes in the next few weeks.