An interview with David Shillinglaw

Tell us a little about yourself then David?
I am a full time artist, and I drink coffee every morning. I am the singer of The Moby Dicks band. I was born in Saudi Arabia, but I have lived in London my whole life. I once fell on the London underground train tracks and got electrocuted.

Who would you say the driving influences are behind your work?
A long list of artists, writers, musicians, magicians, chefs, women, children, friends, and mythological creatures.

Your work incorporates a lot of poetic phrases and language, are these borne out of streams of consciousness or inspired by your reading?
Both.

Who do you like to read?
Kerouac, Bukowski, Braughtigan, Murikami. I am currently reading Jonathan Safran Foer

Where else do you look for inspiration?
Food, relationships, bodily functions, comics and nature.

I like your faces a lot; is there a story behind why your drawings draw heavily on faces, and the body’s anatomy for that matter?
I like your face too. I have always enjoyed depictions of the human form, from medical diagrams to Egyptian hieroglyphics. I think the face and the body and the hands say a lot about the human condition, we are filters and vessels of the environments we inhabit. I am fascinated by the many devices we use to both reveal and conceal our identities. I also feel that viewers automatically connect with a face or a body. Whether they see someone else or they see themselves they have an automatic dialogue with the image.

In my own practice I really like honing in on details, really making the eye work. How do you feel that your work interacts with the viewer?
I like to play with the way the work is read. Like a game of snakes and ladders, I use composition, colour, shapes, patterns, words and symbols to guide the viewer through the work. Ultimately, I try not to think too much about what other people will think about the work. I like to make work that isn’t necessarily understood but enjoyed, like a game you find and the instructions are in a foreign language, or a song you can’t understand but can still dance to.

I like the way your stuff always comes across as if every line has been drawn with sure-fire intent and that you knew what the final piece would look like before you even laid a splash of colour on the canvas. Is there a particular methodology behind your work? A way that you approach the blank canvas each time?

My approach to making work totally depends on the materials and the environment. If it is something large like a wall it might be planned and prepared, but I work very instinctively, using all kinds of materials, and sometimes work on a piece for years on and off, adding and taking away until it feels complete. There’s probably a method in it, but I don’t always know what I’m going to do, or how something will end up. I find each piece informs the next, the problem solving carries me on from painting to painting.

Seems you’re quite the international jet-setter now; a show in Japan, a project in the Netherlands just the other week. Could you tell us a little about Japan and how your work was received?

Japan and Holland were both amazing, and my work and I were well received. It can be odd trying to communicate and translate ideas into other languages, but also very rewarding to see how ideas fit into other cultures and belief systems. I really love to travel with my work, it feeds my ideas and keep me on my toes creatively.

Any forthcoming projects or exhibitions we should know about?
I have a show in London later this year with Cement gallery. I am doing the artwork for The Traveling Bands new 7” record. And, I am having a book of my artwork published, it will be out in time for xmas. Lots of painting, projects and travels I hope. Good times with good people.

for more about David visit www.davidshillinglaw.co.uk

All photos have been taken by permission from David Shillinglaw.

//Daniel van der Noon

By mads on June 16th, 2010 | Art