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PAUL HARVEY
In a way, the
actual celebrities I paint are not important - I find an image that is
interesting to paint. Perhaps I'm trying to find out if there is something
really there. I pick the most glamorous image I can find and try to make it more
human, to try to make something that is beautiful and has depth, not just in a
decorative way. There's very few people I would feel nervous about meeting. I've
met people like Mick Jagger - I think what he does is great, but I felt nothing
when I met him. For the last ten years the only people I've admired have been
painters - most of them dead - and it's not really the artists I admire: it's
the paintings. I love the purity of the experience when it's done in the right
way. Thats why I will always love Vermeer, van Gogh, etc. above Mucha and
Warhol. It's something I can aspire to. I started painting in an art nouveau
style because it seemed the most derided of art forms, and I found it
interesting that people resented it so much. Later there was a resurgence of
interest in it. Madonna
(notes on the painting): If I was to tell the truth, I would say that I painted
her because someone asked me to - it was a commission. It's in the same style as
other ones. I look for images that will create a good composition, but that's a
small part of it. With the art nouveau ones, I'm looking to give the person a
kind of depth - what is essentially a shallow subject, and it's an interesting
experiment. To me, the painting has a completely different feel to the one the
original photograph had. I hope to take a very confident public image and make
it into one that has more vulnerability in it. Some of the objects I pick are
light-hearted, though I don't want to say. Sometimes I fall foul of irony, which
I don't like either. I may have thought of them in an ironic way, but by the
time I've painted them, they aren't any more. When the paintings work, they seem
to transcend that light-hearted imput and they seem to take on a fuller,
more-rounded significance, and contribute in a genuine way to the feel of the
painting.The objects in Madonna are to do with working-out and being healthy -
dumbells and apples. Born: 7.5.60,
Burton upon Trent, More paintings by Paul Harvey: Artists Collections | Paul Harvey |
