This interview was done by email in Autumn 2004.

Hello, my name is Emma, and i live in Sydney, Australia. At the moment i am doing an art project for school.  Its made up of a practical part and a theory part. For the practical part we have to appropriate an artist, and I've chosen you, and for the theory part we have to research the artist we are appropriating. I hope that makes sense. Well i was wondering if you would mind helping me out a bit as i am finding it hard to find much information on you, all i really have is whats on your website. If you have time, could you possibly tell me some more about yourself, your techniques, and who influences your art(mainly the encaustic art).
thank you
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CHILDHOOD
 
1. What schools did you attend? 
I was born in Devon, England in 1956, on a farm. My father was a herdsman and aged 3 we moved to Surrey and another farm. My first memory of school was here at Oakhill Primary, but that was just for a term, then we moved to Wales, where I have mostly lived ever since.
 
I went to primary School in Newport where there were Welsh and English language streamed classes. I did not have any Welsh ability, so remained in the English streaming throughout the rest of my school life. I was very good at Maths in primary school and generally did well in all the class work. I was also good at sports and captained several of the small local teams in the school. At age 11 I moved up to the Secondary school at Fishguard where I was in the "A" stream although being rather lazy I never really excelled.  At 13 I discontinued Art - the teacher and I disliked each other. At the start of the "O" level studies ( today's UK GCSE level) I moved to a different Secondary School near Crymych, where my parents now had a small holding. I chose Maths, English (Literature & Language), Welsh, Economics, Geography, Biology, Metal Work and Chemistry. I passed all but English Literature and Chemistry. I also played inter-school Rugby. I left school just before my 16th birthday, with no desire to study further.
 
2. What did you think of school, what subjects did you enjoy?
Whilst I was in school I could not really say that I enjoyed any of the subjects, they were just what I had to do until I left school.  I was keen to leave but had no idea what I would do and never really gave it much thought I suppose. I had always thought that I might be a farmer like my father, but a farm was too expensive and so I was already drifting by the age of 16!  My father had a woodworking hobby, so enrolled me into a carpentry course to keep me occupied and give me some practical skills for future use.  I did the college course part time and in between worked in the family wood turning business and also building bungalows for a while. I quite liked this type of work, but at 17 had a major motorcycle accident which slowed me down and put me off work for 5 months.
 
 
 FAMILY
 
3. Do you have siblings, and if so are they older or younger? 
I have an older sister and 2 younger sisters - I did also have a brother, but he drowned when I was 5 - that is why we moved to Wales. My older sister and I were close until she got to her later teens, then she wanted a different range of activities to me. She is two and a half years older. So my attention then fell to my younger sisters - one is 6 years younger, the other is 7 years younger. We had fun together, but they were a long way behind me in development, so it was a big brother relationship where I used to tease them in a playful way rather a lot. We all got on well and I never had big differences with any of them.
 
4. Has your family had much of an influence on you in regard to your art? 
Yes. My great great great grandfather married a gipsy and he was a wood carver. My grandfather on the same (mother's) side was a diamond setter in London, so both had dexterity. My mother loved to draw and paint, although her work never got further than a pleasing hobby. My own father had an interest in woodworking, so that was the start of my practical experience of using tools. The carpentry master that taught me once said "Learn one set of tools and it is easy to swap to another". This is of course true.
 
My sisters (except the youngest one) are both very good at drawing, much better than me.  But I am good at learning things well enough to use them - I never really master anything more than I need to. I used to write lots of saying all over the walls of the workshop where I was sawing up planking into turning blanks. One said "All knowledge is irrelevant unless you need to know something".  I still live by that dictate.
 
ART
 
5. How would you describe the style of your art?
Lucky maybe! Some people love to paint - but that is not me. I am fascinated by creativity - exploring and discovering, solving skill problems and experimenting with ideas.  Repetition gets to me after a while, then I must move on, so I keep developing or creating, then I feel calm and in tune with myself.
 
Creative art has to contain some new or unknown qualities. As soon as you know what you are going to paint then most of the creativity is passed. It is down to skill to now execute the idea that has formed in your mind. I don't like preconception, so prefer to work by creative reaction. In creative reaction you decide on an approach, then begin the work.  At any moment you are free to react to the emerging result and alter direction or re-define the objective.  There are few or no rules. The object is to arrive at a satisfactory result that is pleasing to me and that I feel is the best I can arrive at within the piece, having made decisions and choices as it emerged.  There always comes a point when the idea is formed and the final work is often just to tidy up or "sharpen the focus", so that the eventual observer of the piece will see it in a manner that leads them to a clear impression of what they are viewing. So I tend to work in a reactive process rather than through a preconceptive one.
 
6. What other artists or people have influenced your work?
Jean Marie Giraud was the French Canadian whom I first saw working with molten waxes and oil pastels. It was his work that inspired and encouraged me to start experimenting with this type of process.  I liked the work of Dali and M C Escher, but there are no other "famous artists" that have any particular pull on me. 
 
7. Do your suroundings influence your work, if so how?
Yes, my surroundings are a great deal to do with the outflow that is exposed by the creative work I do with encaustic art.  Obviously landscape is very important to me and I live in an area of the UK where we have 2 national parks almost right next to one another. Natural beauty is what inspires me most of the time, although I am also excited by sci fi and futuristic imagery.  I love to walk and take photographs of what I see, especially when the photo disguises the original subject and makes it look like something else - close ups are good for this, or colours in a rock formation that resemble a natural landscape painting.  Flowers, water, insects, all have their beauty to reveal in "lateral thinking ways".
 
I find "art" to mean "being".  So my way of being is my art. I think that good art communicates something with the eventual observer that is more than just paint on a surface.  If it creates an "emotional impact" then it is causing a reaction in the observer.  This is at least effective art. The type of reaction and the level of its influence on the mind and perhaps in the life of the observer will be some measure of the value of this "art" to that particular person. I do not hold strongly with the way in which our capitalistic society chooses to "announce" and "inform" its people about what they choose to uphold as "art". For me these expensive Gallery works are consumer creations often targeted at high investment customers - it has become a game in our society. In primitive society the "art" was often the most sacred of their efforts - ceremonial objects or recordings of the groups life styles and what they found to be important (cave paintings / hunting).
 
8. How would you describe your palette? 
I use natural colours for landscape, vivid and strong contrasting colours for fantasy work and also for many of the abstracts that I like to do. Encaustic colours mix like any other pigment based system, so virtually any colour or shade can be created.
 
9. On your website I noticed that your works don’t have titles, do you name any of your work, why/why not?
On the website I am working to promote the idea of encaustic art as an activity that expresses the artistic state of the user, so it is not necessary to name the pieces, they are often just examples of a technique.  If I want to create a definite association or a certain impact then I do name pieces.  A name helps describe a piece, but it is also a limitation.
 
10. What do you feel are the advantages/disadvantages of working with wax?
Unfreezable paint is not something common. Encaustic Art allows changes to be made at any future time, that is fairly unique.  It is also a fluid molten medium that can be worked in numerous ways - direct contact, blown with hot air, worked on a hotplate with brushes, palette knives, and many other movement tools, etc.  The flowing colours offer a very creative material that inspires its users with vivid imagined forms emerging as the wax is worked. There are very few amorphous materials used in artwork.
 
The wax colours seem to endure time very well compared to all other paint media. However, the wax surface can be fragile and easily abraded by scratching, so that must be considered when choosing where and how to use the wax techniques,  for example it is not ideal for painting furniture.
 
11. Why do you chose the subject matter that you do?
I could not paint when I started out, so chose very easy subjects. Even now I do not really like painting what I see, I prefer to create imagined versions based on things that I have seen, or can imagine. I usually prefer to take a good photograph of a real place or person rather than try to capture them through paint - it just seems a better idea to me.
 
12. Do you have a favourite work, why?
No I don't have a favourite work.  I like most pieces that are put in front of me because each one has something to offer.  I like very simple ideas as well as hugely complex ones.  I feel that if someone has to explain to you why an image is to be respected or admired then the image has missed the point.  If it does not talk to me directly when I look at it then it is not of value to me - no matter what the professing commentator tells me.  If a work of Art does not radiate its own power effectively to a particular observer then it is obviously not of interest to that person.  Why should someone else tell me it is valuable if I don't find it to be so?  Am I beholden to their "educated" opinion (they have been taught what to think and value) or am I to be allowed the right of human freedom "to choose as I find to be real", and to hold to that truth?
 
13. Do you plan what you are going to "paint" before you start?
Sometimes I do have a strong preconception, but the creativity is almost then past and the work becomes a piece of craftsmanship - one where I need high skills to execute the preconception effectively and thus manufacture the piece in accordance with the idea defined in my mind at the outset.  I much prefer the freedom to alter, react, deviate, create, discover, invent and imagine as I go along.
 
14. What do you feel is your greatest art related achievement?
Art is the act of being. An artist is someone who is "being who they really are". The spiritual masters are all great artists (they probably never painted though!). A picture in a Gallery or museum is just some paint on a surface.  What does it communicate to its viewers? Does it communicate at all? If not to an individual then that person should not be forced to uphold that piece as good art. A scribble on a piece of old newspaper can be claimed academically to uphold all sorts of values and qualities - look at some of what is on show in the "top" galleries around the world.  I say let each person decide for themselves, without the accompanying commentary of the people who want to uphold a particular piece because they have already been educated into believing certain things about it.
 
So my greatest artistic achievement is still to have a free mind. Not to believe the stories told, but to recognise truth when it is in front of me.
 
15. Is there anything else you would like to add? 
I suspect that some of the answers I have given to your nice questions are not quite what you might have expected. Painting is just one way for an artist to express.  There are numerous others, many of them more effective and more easily understood than an image.  Communication is all that can at best be achieved through our art, be it a painting, writing, speaking or even a shared silence. As humans we struggle to reach out to one another with our experience and understanding. Words are easily misunderstood, imagery can also be like that.  A free and open mind with a willingness to express and communicate with as much honesty as we can muster will serve anyone who lives by it well.
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Thanks for the questions Emma, I hope the answers help you along.
All the very best in your future life
Michael