I sometimes describe my work process as akin to a dance, and in fact, actually perform a kind of physical dance in the making of work.
-- Jeremy Annear, 2024
EASTWOOD FINE ART: In your studio, you keep a library of books and orthodox icons. Are there any particular enduring sources you look to within your practice – be they from art history, literature, music or religion – and how do they inform your work?
JEREMY ANNEAR: This is a good question but not easy to answer. My studio has grown around me, it is a sanctuary, a safe place and a place of retreat. It has its own calm but energetic and distinct presence, that is often to my surprise and pleasure commented on by those who enter it. I think that generally any space where a person consistently creatively searches and produces any material object or artefact can express this metaphysical almost tangible energy.
I am by nature positive, reflective and focused. My work could be described as a form of geometry (in terms of reaching for the sacred, rather than logical or mathematic) and abstraction (in that it is not representational, topographical or narrative). And so to address the question, I surround myself in the studio with music and musical instruments, some that I just like to look at like a broken accordion and an ancient Middle Eastern lute, as well as literature of all sorts. I just like books, love objects from my whole life including, for instance, a very worn and broken brown velvet monkey from my childhood, quirky objects picked up along the way, and of course the materials of my trade including some that I have had since my days in art school in the ’60s.
EFA: Across your canvases, there is a precise play of colour, form, and texture, with each element contributing to an internal rhythm and architecture. What is your process and how do you approach these elements?
JA: I sometimes describe my work process as akin to a dance, and in fact, actually perform a kind of physical dance in the making of work. I believe that for myself, I need to be fit and agile and on my toes as it were. I build a kind of rhythm in my movements attempting to maintain a lightness of touch with intense engagement – trying to release myself from mind games and too much front-of-the-mind analysis, preferring rather to set myself free from preconception. It’s a very private and personal performance and I would be unable to paint whilst being observed!
EFA: Your latest works reflect a shift in tone and palette that conjures a new sense of spatial or sculptural abstraction embodied by luminous colour. Could you tell us more about these latest developments?
JA: I never know really why or how work evolves, but am simply delighted to know that if it does as you seem to suggest it indicates a fluid not fixed inventive creativity.