What tools couldn’t you live without in your work?
I go through buckets of turpentine and Shellsol T (a less smelly alternative to turpentine). My process involves letting the paintings hang around the studio for large periods of time. I then submerge the images in thin layers of translucent paint and solvents to distort and destroy the surface of the paintings and let something else emerge on the canvass. A lot of these source images derive from photos I have taken in and around my studio. I have an Olympus Pen camera that is great.
What inspires you?
At the moment, Holy Motors and a Charlie Chaplin Autobiography.
What motivates you?
My painting style tends to be quite hit and miss. I will spend months adding and subtracting thin veils of paint and trying to create an image on the canvass with little or no success. Then finally something arrives interwoven in the midst of the palimpsest that shocks me. An image that feels both fresh, but also has the quality of a distant memory. Those moments are very motivating. A bit like fishing I imagine. While I am waiting for those moments I listen to a lot of music (currently Brian Eno and Yo La Tengo).
What you would be doing if it wasn’t art?
I would like to be a zookeeper.
Josh Lilley is proud to announce Tin Drum, Nick Goss’s much-anticipated second solo exhibition at the gallery which opens on Thursday 11thOctober 2012.
Josh Lilley Gallery, 44-46 Riding House Street, London W1W 7EX
Exhibition Dates: Friday 12th October – Thursday 22nd November 2012
