And do you know where I end up in your collage?
Yeah. Yeah, it's organized. It just looks terrible.
I've browns over there, yellow there, red here, blue and white over here.
And then I've got my light blues over here, because it's blue and white.
And then my purples kind of meet in between the blue and the red.
And then I've got like really dark reds in spaces where I've mixed like the brown and the blue.
And I've got dark blues where I've put a little bit of red and brown into it.
It does make a little bit of sense. I need to clean it though, like it's getting too much.
Like it used to be okay, but it's getting to a point now where it's just a bit too messy.
There's too much planning involved in sculpture. I like it, but I don't like the planning you have to do.
You can have an idea, you can do a few sketches and you can just start painting.
Or you can just paint it.
I really love metal sculpture, I love big sculptures, but you have to think, is it gonna work?
It doesn't matter if a painting doesn't work, it's just a painting.
When you look at a painting, somebody might only look at it for like 10 seconds,
or not even that, they might just look at it on their way, walking along the wall to the next painting.
They might only take like 3 seconds to look at it, but the artist has spent hours looking at it whilst they've been painting it.
But a painting is not of a moment, it's of, it doesn't just capture a split moment like a photograph does.
I mean it's a still image, but it captures hours of stuff.
Are you filming that shit? Yeah man.
I would be raging if you were.
I went to college, I was making all these abstract sculptures and stuff.
But I think I was trying quite hard to like, I don't know, just like, I was trying hard to be exciting.
And I wasn't really a fan of anything I was making.
Really? Yeah, like, I don't know.
There was a few things I made that were quite cool, but a lot of it, I don't know, I just really love painting.
I like all sorts of painting, that's why I paint models.
Did you like it back then?
I've always liked it, I used to do it when I was a kid.
I've been painting them for years and years.
But now it's a different, back then it was just like a hobby, but now it's like, I don't know, I spend all day painting,
but painting in uni is quite like, hard going, because you're painting about life and you're dealing with things.
I don't know, I think to me painting is a way of dealing with life and expressing what I have to say about the world and people and me.
But then I still like painting, but it gets too much, you need a break from that.
So painting little models is like, it's chilled out.
They live in a different world and I can just paint without having to think about Donald Trump being a racist.
Yeah, see, I think on the other side of that, a lot of times when I do stuff, it's like the other way around,
it must bear time and all that, that's spent looking at the news and thinking about stuff, being like, speak to folk and then like,
when I'm working and making stuff, it's like, to get away from that.
Yeah, that's the thing, people have said that before, like, art's an escape, but I don't find it an escape at all.
It's the least escaping thing ever, it's how I deal with life.
Like, I play video games to escape from life or paint models to escape from life.
If I want to think about life, I do art.
Why do you think I picked you?
I don't know, because I was thinking, like, I'm a bit of a boring artist,
all I do is paint self portraits at the moment.
I don't know, because I was thinking, like, I'm a bit of a boring artist,
all I do is paint self portraits at the moment.
But I think that's what I sort of found a bit more, because from my point of view,
I've spoke just about this before, like, I kind of found, like, your focus quite admirable in a way,
because I'd never be able to do that, which is kind of frustrating,
but then it's also not, because it's, like, it's just the way I am.
And I'm sure that's just the way you are as well.
I don't know, but I don't think it's, like, chosen focus, but, like, forced focus.
I think I'm, like, I've got quite an addictive personality.
I find it hard to take things in moderation.
Like, just, like, when I start painting, I can't.
Like, it's never good enough, I always have to keep going.
Like, I do, like, exercise.
I go through phases of thinking, like, oh, I'm kind of a bit fat.
I need to lose a little bit of weight.
Then I'll lose a little bit, and that, like, it just spirals.
I do the same with everything, it's like video games.
I get it tuned to it, and it just, like, spirals out of control, like, shit.
Is it sorry that I use it to your advantage, though, isn't it?
Yeah, sometimes it works.
I think it is kind of like, I think it does work a bit to my advantage in uni.
Oh, I'm just, like, so obsessed with the paintage.
I think art's weird.
You'll go home, like, sometimes I go home early, and I don't do any painting,
but I, like, watch a film or something, and I still feel like that's being productive.
Like, I feel like everything I do contributes to my art in a way.
There's crazy stuff going on in the world, and just, like, talking to people about that.
I feel like that's contributing to my art.
I go into uni and I've got these things in the back of my mind,
and I think they come out of my painting.
Like, when Brexit happened over summer, I did a lot of very angry looking paintings, I think.
Like, subconsciously, like, I was doing a lot of painting,
and I think a lot of it was coming out very, like, frustration at what was going on.
It was coming out of my self-portraits.
It just influences your frame of mind.
Like, it's just stuff that's in the back of your mind,
and I'm sitting there painting a self-portrait.
I'm trying to, you know, just...
Like, because my self-portraits are so abstract,
I think the one I did earlier in the week,
I think it looks quite a lot like me, but it's still so abstract.
It probably looks a lot more like me than a lot of the recent ones I've done.
It's like, it's really, like, it's quite ugly and violent looking.
And I think...
I don't know, there's a lot of ugly stuff going on in the world,
and you read about it constantly.
I think social media is a big, like, influence on people's frame of mind.
Because it's constantly, you're constantly bombarded with all that stuff.
And then, like, I wake up in the morning,
and I look at Facebook or the news or whatever,
and I'm seeing stuff, and then I go into uni,
and I look at my phone, I look at Instagram, you know.
And I'll be seeing stuff.
And I'll go for my lunch and look at more stuff.
It's just, like, constantly in your mind.
So I'm not thinking about it while I'm painting.
I'm just thinking about a nice,
I think I'm just thinking about a nice composition,
but the way that it's composed is influenced by how I'm feeling,
and how I'm feeling is influenced by what I've been looking at in the media.
I think the media does play, like, a big part of my art.
They're just in a very indirect and not very noticeable way.
I'm not going to do that.
I'm just going to do something.
I'm going to do something.
I'm going to do something.
I kind of find it kind of funny in a way that you can make something
and then sort of be ignorant towards a large aspect of the thing you're making.
Like, you can make something and then it means it's, like, way bigger than you already.
There's so much in it that you hadn't even thought about or realised there was in it.
It's kind of amazing, actually.
Yeah, I like that.
I don't know, some people get really caught up in people understanding a specific message in their art,
and if people don't understand that specific message, then they get really upset
and they think they've failed, and their art's not good enough.
But I quite like that you can make a piece of art, and it's so much more than what you've made
because everybody will see it differently, and it'll mean something to somebody else
that you've not even considered.
I think that's a really great thing about art.
And I think it's a waste of time, and I think people are being really naive
when they think people don't understand art, if they don't understand a specific aspect of something
that they feel people should understand.
Yeah, I totally agree.
The ambiguity is where, I think that's where the fun is.
There'd be no point in art if everybody understood everything in the same way.
Yeah.
I used to get it a lot when I did my really abstract black and white paintings.
Yeah.
People would be like, oh, what does it mean?
People used to get really mad because they'd just shrug at them and be like,
what do you want it to mean?
You decide what it means.
And they'd be like, what?
It has to have a meaning, it has to mean something.
You decide, you're looking at it.
Yeah, totally true.
It seems, it looks like a mess, but you know where everything is.
I think my art space is like that.
I've got paintbrushes and rags and stuff everywhere.
They're all over the place with pallets and my tubes of paint.
It looks terrible, but I know where it all is.
It's organized mess.
Yeah, so I hadn't looked into the past whether it was organized or whether it was just like...
No, if anyone went to look for something in it, they'd never be able to find it,
but if they said, oh, Greg, where's this brush, I'd be like, over there.
I don't know where it is.
That's good though, because then it means it's like truly yours.
You don't really want people to know where stuff is.
How many brushes do you have?
Shitons.
I don't use that many of them though.
I've got a few that I really like.
I don't know if I want to do any more to this today.
I think I need to take a break from it and come back in next week.
We'll have another look at it.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
You stop looking at it properly if you look at it for too long.
Looks good though.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
I think second guess stuff is blinded.
A painting that lasts like a week changes a lot from day to day, depending on how I'm feeling.
I never have a vision for what paintings are going to look like at the end though.
Some people know exactly what they want their painting to look like at the end,
but I don't want a clue.
I never start a painting with an idea of what it's going to look like at the end.
I just start a painting with something that I know I want to paint
or something I know that I want to capture in the painting.
But I have no idea what that will look like at the end or how I'm going to do it even.
I don't know what I'm going to do with it.
