My God, I thought that was a child. This place is weird! What the fuck is that?
Look! Do you see what I have to deal with? Look at that. The people here are crazy.
Can you imagine what I have to deal with?
I was lucky enough to get them from Dr. Raymond Sawyer, who died a few years ago.
He was one of the greatest ornithologists
and his house in the country was full of the most exotic birds and plants.
So this group is a very very lovely find, which I was lucky enough to have.
It's not a good idea to have an active social life, especially no holidays.
You go on holiday, come back, the bonsais are gone.
They're extremely extremely sensitive.
For example if someone else waters them,
they don't like it.
So I have to make sure
that I water them and do the little bits of pruning and looking after.
But they say in the bonsai world; 'Until you don't kill your first bonsai
you can never be on the road to becoming a bonsai master'. It's impossible.
This one is the kimura, it's a kimura bonsai. It's the oldest one here.
I started working for my family when I was, I think I would imagine, 17.
And it was a wonderful experience, because they used to deal in carpets and jewels
and blah-dee-blah, and I was very happily on my way to becoming, well I'd imagine
a glorified salesman of sorts.
I went to the National Gallery for the very very first time.
I saw the Holbein painting there and then I thought to myself,
instead of engaging in commerce or making money, it's so much better to paint
because after you die at least someone years later might like your shit and
might be inspired by it and I think that's so much better, no?
Until about three years ago we only used to have the Hammerite. This is the
paint mixing room. So you'd have the weak and strong Hammerite which is sort of
the usual Hammerite. Which only comes in about
three or four shades which are not really great shades because you don't
really get the depth and the variety of colour.
But then on the internet we found
this a machine that no one really wanted to use and it's an antique.
You don't get any of these anywhere. So these and with mediums.
It's absolutely primitive but it works brilliantly. So this machine enabled me
to make my own paints and so we make our own paints here. You can see.
Some of them do have sort of rather funny names but please don't.
It's the kids here being naughty.
I wanted to find a medium that I could work with and try
to develop over a certain amount of time and I just wanted to see where
it would all lead to and that was about 20 odd years ago. It's that journey
of four primary, really hideous Hammerite paints, to this.
I would say that it all starts with the drawings. For example this is the Cranach
for the Scottish National Gallery. That one over there.
So there was a photo shoot for that painting where I was posing as a
protagonist and the result was the drawing here
and this is translated onto board.
I would say that yes, drawings are the absolute backbone of the practice.
So if you imagine that Cranach painting, the Cranach
drawing that you just saw, that comes translated onto acetates and then
the acetates are projected onto the surface of the paintings here.
So you see there is.
I mean this one is finished in terms of the composition but for example,
as you can see, there's the birdcage. So there's a birdcage here.
If I want it bigger, it can be bigger.
If I want it small it and be smaller. You see.
So it gives a lot of freedom when the paintings are being composed and saves a
lot of time. I have to make sure that there is enough detail. But not too much
detail, that can be translated into a line drawing with the stained
glass liner. So each one of these sections lined with the liner and paint
is poured into each and every single section, so that it doesn't go
into the other bits. If you see what I mean.
So each and every single bit of drawing is almost entombed and walled in
and then the paint is poured.
Should we go to see the second level?
This is,as you can see, a painting in progress and now what has happened is
and it's I think interesting to see for example here, you can see here and I can
show you how it's all done. So over here now we have what is basically foliage
and this is a bit of a tree.
So next to the lighter leaf goes
a slightly darker one.
My lovely team here, and I think that this atelier is something absolutely
incredible, have been with me for 10 years, 12 years. Because it takes that
amount of time as a journey to be able to come here. That element of, as one
might call it craft or making, is I think it's taking it to an
absolute crazy, romantic, extreme and really I always want to see how these
things implode or how they explode. I really don't know.
I work on a number of paintings and the drawing for this dates back, God, three and a half years.
And this has been painted and worked on
now for, I'd say two and a half years. Yeah.
Lovely things happen.
I always do feel that it's lovely to have the painting studio next to the yoga room.
It's also you know, good energy. I think. Hope it is.
So it's very peaceful in here.
I presume a single man of no consequence,
an old single man of no consequence, doesn't really have much to do in life
than meditate and paint all that kind of shit. Phileas! Let's go Philly.
When I came to the sausage factory first it was up it was an absolute,
absolute, derelict dump and no one wanted it and it was raining outside.
It was raining inside and look how fabulous.
Isn't that wonderful that you have The Shard over there.
So this is a painting after Mocetto.
There's basically a portrait in the sculpture studio next door.
Now next door has been a painting studio only for about two years because
all the paintings used to be downstairs. That used to be the sculpture studio and
as you can see that is me creeping from the corner and this was actually 100%
the way the studio looked. Except for of course the floor, in terms of it was just
a plain floor. But all these splatters and all these things, they're all
life studies from the debris around the studio. As you can see the protagonist
is in a way trapped within the confines of the so called
studio. Because you know I come from Kashmir and I grew up in India and I
grew up it with all these you know colours and objects and that of course
will come into the work. Whether these paintings are good, whether they are bad,
I don't think that no one really knows. I think we'd have to wait for another
hundred years to see if they are really any good.
Unfortunately we'll all be dead by then.
Even now there is quite a lot of things. Oh you know,
it's decorative art, figurative art, bladdy blah. Whatever it is.
But whatever it is, it's my life and that's all I can do and I feel that when I look at the
first painting and the one we were looking at earlier, I think that it's a
sort of an okay justification for a life. No?