The way in which I work in my art and music is very similar
Once I start something, I don't start anything new until I finish
I don't work on anything else whilst doing it
I very much focus on one thing
and it's a very solitary thing for me
which is something I like about it
When I was about two, we moved to Loch Lomond
where I spent the majority of my childhood and teenage years
It was a very beautiful place to grow up
I was really very into Polish poster art
There's something quite grimy about it, and very, very surreal
I'd been reading a lot of Kafka
and I was listening to a lot of Polish classical music
like Penderecki
So I was just kind of in that world already
and then I came across the art
It's taking care of normal, everyday things
putting things in places that you wouldn't expect to see them
I was quite into an artist called Pam Carter
who's a Scottish artist who uses quite clean lines
but with a very vibrant, colorful paintings of countryside
That really got me interested in wanting to paint like that as well
It wasn't until I moved into Glasgow
that I started to notice the architecture of Glasgow
and I started to realize just how unusual a city it is
and I started painting buildings, and I thought okay,
that's why I like clean lines
is because I love the way that a building looks
My artwork is very influenced by the environment around me
We have amazing architects from Glasgow
Charles Rennie Mackintosh being one of them
and you see his buildings mixed with
next to it there might be a high-rise
and then next to that there might be a church
That's just Glasgow. It's just a complete mix of things
and that used to always really fascinate me
I realized what it was about painting that I really loved
which was straight lines and repetition
the sort of patterns you can see
whenever you look at a city from above
It's almost like a design, as opposed to a painting, I guess
I quite like the idea of merging both
The architect's artwork
is very repetitive and very intricate
which really reflects what I was doing with music
There's lots and lots of layers in the music
and there's lots of tiny little things going on
and so they kind of merge together well
It usually begins with finding a place that means a lot to me
so, say, the album artwork is a place in Glasgow called Byres Road
which is somewhere that I know very, very well
and it was somewhere I was spending a lot of time
whilst making the record
The new album I have coming out
I have decided to paint stairwells
in particular my stairwell
in the flat that I've now lived in for nine years
So many clean lines that I can play around with
and there's great angles, as well
particularly with the bannisters and stairs going down
Whenever I'm making music I need to get away sometimes
from the room that I'm working in
but I don't ever want to go too far
because within five minutes I want to go back to making music again
Whenever I paint, because I'm...
I use my mind a bit, but it's mostly my eyes
I can listen to a lot of things
and because I paint for long durations, as well
I can get through album after album
I find new albums, and find new things I'm influenced by
both for music and for my art
If I wasn't painting
then I probably wouldn't listen to music that much
because I wouldn't have time
because I always have a pair of headphones on making my own music
As well as catching up on all of the modern pop music
that's coming out, and alternative music
I listen to a lot of classical music whilst painting
in particular French composers, French Impressionist composers
like Debussy or Ravel, just because I really enjoy
going into completely different worlds whilst painting
The goal for me is to express myself
in a way that hopefully others can understand as well
and feel
I like to put my all into it
because that is the whole point in me making art
It's not to pretend I am something else, or someone else
it's to put myself out there