Interview for SPOTLIGHT: Edition One
December 2023
 
Painting is always exciting for me when I am fully engaged. When there is a kind of negotiation between reportage and invention.
 
 
-- Oliver Akers Douglas, 2023 
 
EASTWOOD FINE ART: You are primarily self-taught – having studied English Literature, followed by a short period spent at Camberwell College of Arts – are there specific experiences or interests that have informed the development of your practice? 
 
OLIVER AKERS DOUGLAS: From as far back as I can remember I always wanted to paint. I have always been happiest when lost in a solitary creative zone. Particularly outside. I painted non-stop through my teenage years at school, inspired by teachers and strong friendships with other schoolboy artists. This was my first glimpse of the intoxicating excitement of a creative life.
 
After school, I actually studied at Camberwell first, and being disillusioned with formal art education, I then reverted to an academic degree in Literature. I was still painting throughout the several years I was studying and consequently working as a journalist in London. It soon became abundantly clear that I was suited neither to office life nor a career as a writer. It was too static and self conscious for my temperament. So in 1999, I rented a studio in Peckham, and remember distinctly the renewed feeling of optimism I enjoyed every time I woke on a painting day.
 
From about the age of 26, I worked and worked and worked, disappearing almost entirely into a world of paint. I spent a lot of time on the roof of the studio painting clouds over the skyscrapers of the City and believe that this might have been my eureka moment. Certainly I can think of no better art education than to paint skies. Little by little I began to believe I could make painting the work of my life.
 
EFA: The British landscape has been a continual source of inspiration to artists throughout history, what in particular has drawn you to it as a subject matter and are there artists or even writers that you reference?
 
OAD: I was brought up in rural Hampshire beside the river Itchen. Staring at trout in gin clear water, walking dogs and riding horses through watermeadows and chalk downland are my core landscape memories. It’s all I ever knew. Everything about this type of landscape tugs on my heartstrings, and takes me back to who I am.
 
Like Constable in Suffolk, the landscapes I paint are freighted with emotion. I suspect there is something particularly homely and comforting about the English landscape. Think of Bilbo Baggins in the Shire. 
 
These days I still live on the chalk, but in south Wiltshire. Just like painting on the roof of my studio, I like to get onto the top of the steep sided hills and paint the sky. We have wonderful broken English weather, and the reflection of light off the chalk creates a particularly fresh effect.
 
In recent years I have also painted a lot on the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland, as well as in the Swiss Alps. Maybe there is a connection between cumulus cloud, white sand, snow, and chalk. I also went through a stage of painting pillows! Maybe I am particularly attracted to shades of whiteness!
 
My influences are wide. I’m a bit of a magpie. I cannot name all the artists that inform my work. It is anything from Constable to Corot, or Cadell to de Kooning. Broadly, I could be categorised as working in a British tradition of landscape painting. Many times I am tempted to give my pictures cryptic and elaborate titles, so have learnt to control my literary pretensions!
 
EFA: Your paintings unmistakably convey an emotive sense of place, yet avoid direct realism, how do you approach each new painting?
 
OAD: Painting is always exciting for me when I am fully engaged. When there is a kind of negotiation between reportage and invention. So I have both a nagging obedience to the scene but also to the picture itself which ultimately has to work entirely on its own terms. According to how I 'feel'.
 
Every painting needs to start with a definite idea or dynamic that I have identified in the scene. The painting itself usually begins in an excited flurry of anxiety, prone to many false starts, revisions and U-turns. 'Scrambling for grace' is how I've come to think of it. From start to finish, a painting is the result of many thousands of miniscule value judgements. It’s a minefield, navigating a line between chaos and control. You can't just decide to paint a masterpiece! Rarely does the finished work turn out as I expected. But occasionally, just occasionally, one thinks 'wow, did I really do that'.
 
EFA: Are there any elements, for example, colour or the changing seasons, that pose a particular challenge to you?
 
OAD: Different seasons are a wonderful thing. They force you into different moods and styles of working. Painting outside can be extremely tricky, and requires a kind of problem solving mentality, so I have learnt to be strategic, anticipating such things as weather and wind direction. As well as having half an eye on frisky bullocks and combustible gamekeepers!
 
After years of experimentation my painting setup and equipment are pretty well honed to any condition. I must learn to carry less weight, particularly when I am painting with skis in the Alps. If there is at least some direct sunlight I can work outside. Otherwise, I will cut my losses and work in the studio. Painting in the West Country I find there is too much green in the summer and in response have developed monochromatic paintings when I have reached saturation point.
 
EFA: Could you tell us about your process, and in particular the landscapes in your latest paintings for SPOTLIGHT?
 
OAD: My process is rarely calm and straightforward. There is a lot of pushing and pulling of an image, a lot of scraping or blotting out and subsequent reapplication of paint. At the easel I try to work quickly, with as much energy as I can muster, so that it feels fresh and dynamic with areas of bare canvas and underpainting peeping out. Like it looks effortless, even when it's not.
 
I try not to rely on routine or assumed formulas for colour mixing, but I do of course have habits which might also help make my work look distinctive. Quite often a picture will be destroyed. It is important to enforce quality control!
 
This selection for Spotlight comprises a particularly colourful group of recent paintings. I am trying to achieve a fresher, more innovative approach to my use of colour while trying still to remain true to a bold and direct style of observational painting. I am using less white, as well as experimenting with thinner, more transparent paint. The main thing is to be brave, and let the paint do the talking without explaining a scene with too many amendments. It is hard to describe, and I don’t really want to, but feels like an exciting development for me. Right now I am thinking particularly of Matisse and George Bellows.