An interview with Christopher McHugh
by Krysdenia Haydek
KH Where do we start? They're all colourful, small, textured..... how would you describe your paintings?
CM that's always hard... I'd rather you start by looking at them some more....
KH okay [.....] ..... the first thing that strikes me is that some of them are obviously landscapes.
CM that's second isn't it? - you already mentioned size, colour, surface.....
KH sure..... and I would say they're an odd mixture of being unusual, challenging..... and conventional
CM how's that?
KH well, as a theme landscape, surely, is a backward-looking genre, a nostalgic longing for some notion of a non-existent bucolic idyll.....?
CM .....but I don't think they're 'landscapes'.....
KH ..... the horizontal format, the skyline, a sense of light, perspective - most them exhibit some of these features, don't they? ..... and then there are the titles.....
CM ..... titles, there's something to come back to, but first, the features you mention, maybe it's a nice point, but they're of landscape painting ..... I think I'd want to say that my paintings are more like poetry than novels - a condensed mixture of structure and association rather than a clear narrative.....
KH do you mean to say that poetry doesn't have a narrative?
CM no, that would be silly, but sometimes the narrative is a product of the reader's interaction with the poem... perhaps the important narrative is the story of the reader's changing relationship through time, reading and re-reading it
KH we seem to have moved off the paintings and on to literature
CM it's easy to slide off the difficult topic - talking about paintings - easier to talk about other things
KH does that mean you subscribe to the idea that it's futile to talk about paintings, something so visual?
CM I know that's a common cliché - that's because there's some truth to it..... but no, I don't hold with that idea..... it's difficult, and the words can never be the visual experience - but then the same's true with music, performance.....it's still worth talking about art, to make signposts, open doors..... but the kind of painting I'm interested in, both in the viewing but also in the making, is about the process of looking, a layered experience, the return, changing perceptions, a changing relationship.....
KH - that other narrative?
CM - just that!
KH I still feel we're missing something though - what's at the heart of these paintings?
CM I suppose it's the colour and the paint..... the sensual impact that these concrete qualities can have on the viewer
KH that sounds like Modernism - 'truth to materials', 'what you see is what you get'..... ?
CM I don't mind admitting to that - although I'd like to think it's a subtle, complex form of Modernism
KH there are a couple of points I'd like to get back to.... the paintings don't all look like landscapes - in some I can see things that look like cups, vases ..... and then there are shapes that might be other things I can't quite name. Am I right to read them this way and what are we meant to read from these things?
CM it's pretty much what I wanted to say about the landscapes - they aren't really objects, it's more like they're picturing painting objects, if that makes any sense - they're part of a world of painting. This is where the ideas about representation link up with the direct, sensual appeal to the viewer - the painting is an invitation to enter into a world that is referential through its structure, through its form , but real, concrete, direct in its material
KH that all starts to sound rather solipsistic
CM I know what you mean, but there's more to it than a circular argument, at least for me, and hopefully for others. This is where another thought from earlier comes into play, where the explanation in words wears a bit thin and the proof of the pudding is in the looking. I find it instructive, no actually crucial, that often different people read the paintings in different ways, or at least with a different script. Whatever the painter wants, people bring their own experience to the table - I want to make paintings that take this fact as a given, and turn it into a strength even - actively draw out people's propensity for association and reading-in. This is one of the problems with titling - a title seems to fix the reading, to claim priority on meaning and stand in between the painting and the viewer.
KH so why use them? after all, there is that Modernist convention of labels - 'no. 7','10.3.06', 'red over blue' - that do nothing more than identify the artwork.
CM signposts and doorways..... although..... I'd want to make links to the surrealist's relationship with titling, in other words using titles as another layer of the work, another mutable form of reference or representation, and at the same time, in the shape, rhythm, sound of the words themselves, another concrete, sensual element of materiality - like with poetry
KH how do you know if a painting is working?
CM there's always that internal sense of when something feels right, when it's 'working', which is another cliché I know (and there's a whole other conversation here about a psychology of aesthetics), but there's also something about the way other people respond to an arrangement, a certain configuration.....
KH ..... the terms start to sound a bit vague, not to say mysterious - a bit reminiscent of Significant Form..... more Modernism..... ?
CM I suppose that's right, ultimately that's where it comes from.....
KH a lot of Modernism and not so much of more recent cultural theory; is that some kind of a stand?
CM no, I don't think so, it's just that that would be another interview.....and it would probably be more theoretical, because that's in the nature of the ideas..... for example we could have been talking about these same ideas in terms of theories of representation - but it would all feel drier, more distant.....
KH and is that important?
CM yes, because I want the paintings to have life and not just a conceptual framework
KH ..... perhaps we'll leave it at that for now.....