Questions to a Painter

Alun Leach - Jones is one of Australia's most accomplished abstract painters; a complex and prolific artist, whose work is underscored by a deep understanding of modernist art and literature. The dialogue of art is evident in Leach - Jones' painting and sculpture; they are literate works without being prescriptive, formally complex but alive to the sound of the world.

QUESTIONS

Can we start by talking about your recent paintings and sculptures? For me they are very much things of the studio and still life painting. Can you tell me about starting points and how works may develop for you?

Yes you are right about a number of paintings in this exhibition being centred on the studio and still life, though not all. None of my works can claim to be wholly centred on one theme or subject, that would be much too confining.

There are as many starting points as there are paintings. Most works start with one or two ideas or even more importantly just a few simple images. A good example of this process would be the painting A Midsummer Night's Dream. This started as a different theme but gradually developed into the Dream picture. Once I start a painting I often find the work develops a life of its own. The overall structure of this picture is essentially abstract; this is signalled by the three bright red squares, the three yellow arcs and the smaller brown arc. These devices hold the composition together. Then there are the images derived from objects and things - stylised foliage across the top of the work, two musical instruments on the left of the work and in the centre, two ladders used by the two lovers Pyramus and Thisbe. The play is staged by the rustics in the third act of Benjamin Britten's opera, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and so on. All this layering of sources and ideas hopefully results in something more poetic and inventive, as a painting that is more than the sum of its parts. All is then subsumed into the silent language of paint.

I know you have talked before about the life of a painting and the struggle to end it. Is the ongoing - ness, as it were, from one work to the next a necessary continuum?

The overall body of the work that is made should always have that sense of ongoing-ness, In a sense it is all one work from the very beginning until one finishes the very last painting. I'm trying to create a total and coherent language, each painting plays its role in this continuum. As to 'finishing' a painting this is always difficult. Each work is really a provisional solution. I hate to let them go.

Geometric complexity. An issue for you in itself or - simply put, the world is a complex place, the paintings are the shape of that world. Or is it just the way the paintings are developed and seen?

This is a really interesting question. Oddly your question is spot on, but it is back to front. You quite rightly say that the world is a complex place but the complexity in my work reflects my complex reaction to the world and not the other way round. If the world was a simpler place my work would still be very complex because that is the way I am and that is always what my paintings would reflect. It is me that is the complex puzzle at the heart of the work. In a sense complexity in itself is a kind of autobiography.

In which case, does the appellation Baroque abstraction sit happily with you?

Yes, the appellation Baroque abstraction is appropriate, if by that you mean the work is characterised by sinuosity of line and a love of complex and suggestive form; colour that is non naturalistic and synthetic, sensual and erotically suggestive, with a certain amount of theatricality with reference to poetry, music and other forms of expression. Then I think what I make comes close to that description.

You have sited Celtic art as a formative influence. Are there other forms and artists we should consider?

Certainly the Celtic influence is there in both my work and in my personality and character. There is a love of elaborate visual and ambiguous complexity, vivid colour and pattern as meaning and metaphor and visual tricks and sly references. Also being largely Welsh by birth and upbringing informs my passion for poetry which always seems to feed back into my work. This influence embraces the love of melancholy, sad themes and retrospection.

The titles mean something don't they? In as much as all titles mean something, yours seem to have an added dimension: The Plain Sense of Things, From the Ocean of Painting, Small Worlds and I.

Yes, titles do mean something though not always in the sense that you might think. Naming a work may not always tell you much about the work, its subject or meaning.

It's a bit like naming a racehorse - it doesn't tell you much about the horse itself but it may tell you quite a lot about the owner!!

How important then - literature and poetry?

Poetry, literature and of course music - classical and opera mean a very great deal to me. These are the rewards of past and current cultures. To be drawn upon endlessly, for pleasure and inspiration.

The aphorism: 'all art aspires to the condition of music'. Apposite when looking at your work or well off the mark? I am always intrigued by the music that artists listen to, certainly whilst in the studio. Do you seek to make a relationship between painting and music?

The aphorism 'all art aspires to the condition of music' is a nice conceit. And in some ways it may be true and it may apply to some artists' work. Certainly for me the abstract sense of music is close to the abstractness of painting. Music in the main is non mimetic as is abstract painting, so in that sense there is a connection. No, I do not seek to make a direct connection between music and painting, though it seems to me to be true that there are times when I am making a picture that there appears to be a direct connection to certain pieces of music. I have already cited Benjamin Britten and there are others such as Franz Scheker, Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Alun Hoddinott and Gerald Finzi. I guess I could only say these are connections but the connections are somewhat vague and ambiguous.

Alun, here is a quote I have found from Alloway's Nine Abstract Artists (1954) which I thought appropriate: 'The quotidian things become visible. It is an art which is predicated on the relationship between the visible world and the parallel universe of painting.'

This is so true and valid. I have always thought so. Painting mediates effectively between the visible known world and the inner, parallel world of painting. Again this is the silent language of paint.

From a conversation between Brett Ballard and Alun Leach - Jones, May, 2005