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FAD Magazine covers contemporary art – News, Exhibitions and Interviews reported on from London

Thomas William Dowdeswell answers FADs Questions

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Dynamics of a Relay Race. Oil on Canvas. 30″ x 40″ x 2″. 2012.

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Waking Up and Realising I’m Part of the System. Oil on Canvas. 48″ x 60″ x 2″. 2011.

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The Pyramid of Power. Oil on Canvas. 60″ x 40″ x 1″. 2012.
1. If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?Growing up in Northamptonshire most of my family were in some way involved in the leather and shoe industry so maybe in another life I could’ve been a maker of fine crafted boots.

2. Can you tell us more about your work and what are the main ideas you would like to express?
I’ve always wanted to raise questions about individual and group identity, particularly in a gadget-oriented consumerist society where it is easy to be part of the crowd and increasingly harder to express ones own unique perspective on life.

My latest series of paintings deal with the urban landscape and how peoples lives unfold, often anonymously as our experiences are dwarfed by the built environment, our own hectic schedules and capitalist systems which can frequently overshadow what we do on an inter and intra-personal level.

3. How do you start the process of making work?
Normally with a large pot of coffee, a couple of hours of solitude and some loose concepts about the direction I want the work to take.

One of the most important things my father ever told me was “it doesn’t pay to be too hasty” which is a philosophy at the epicenter of all my works. I normally start with one figure on a canvas, a few overlapping lines or sometimes a loose sketch to work from; once I have a staring point it becomes a case of decisively working the vacant spaces and recognising which angles, lines and figures fit around what I have started with. I normally have a working title which dictates the direction of the painting but if nothing is happening I understand the need to step back, re-assess what is already down and maybe make another cup of coffee and change the music I’m listening too. It is very rare that a painting will be fully formulated before it commences.because I enjoy the malleability of an idea and believe my work evolves most expressively when it has not been completely formulated from beginning to end.

4. Do you consider the viewer, when making your work?
I’m more aware now than I have even been that audiences often interpret my art in ways I had never previously conceived but I think it can be dangerous to consider your viewers too much when creating a piece of work. The rationale and the message I want to express are implicitly rooted in my own experiences and opinions and I think paying too much attention to the viewer can dilute the message one is trying to convey.

5. Name 3 artists that have inspired your work?
Kasimir Malevich, C.R.W. Nevinson and M.C. Escher have always inspired me and continue to play an important role in how I conceive new ideas and pieces or work.

6. Name 3 of your least favourite artists.
I’ve never understood the big fuss about Rothko but that’s about it.

7. What defines something as a work of art?
Something that makes you think and revise your opinion.

8. In times of austerity, do you think art has a moral obligation to respond topically? I think it is important for art to challenge our preconceptions politically, culturally and socially. If we look back through the canon of art it is evident that hard times have often produced the most brilliant, powerful pieces of art. These are challenging and transforming times and I think art needs to reflect this but also inspire people to believe that they can make a positive contribution to the direction of society.

9. Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
To have been Otto Dix or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Weimar Germany would have been pretty intense but interesting times.

10. What is your favourite ‘ism’?
Artistically Vorticism as it is the format at the centre of my paintings and still retains an important rationale in contemporary society. Culturally Consumerism as it is at the forefront of everything we do and inspires a lot of my social commentaries.

11. What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?At first Dowdeswell’s paintings seem apparently too vivid and often overwhelming but they are works which involve many intertwined stories working on many different levels. The more I looked at the work the more involved in it I became so that even after the show the images and questions riased kept coming back to me like flashes of lightening. S. Morrell.

12. And the dumbest?
I can’t actually think of anything dumb. People have either been positive or said nothing at all.

13. Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship?
I’ve been working figures from Malevich, Wadsworth, Duchamp and Crali into my latest paintings about the urban landscape which is a reflection of how I am using artistic frameworks and theories of previous generations but updating them into the modern vernacular. Everyone borrows concepts and inspirations and channels them using their own voice which is a process which dates back through the canon of art and is an imporatant process in the regeneration and redifinition of ideas.

14. Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
I care in the respect that I need to make a living from my art but also as it is a fair reflection of the years of hard work I have put into my practice.

15. If Moma and the Tate and the Pompidou wanted to acquire one of your works each, which would you want them to have?
I’d want the Moma to have “Waking up and Realising I’m Part of the System becuase it is a seminal painting which signifies a real development of my practice. I would want the Tate to have “The Battle with the Boys in BLue” because it was painting in response to last years riots and in years to come will be an integral painting commenting on the austere and challenging times we live in and should remain in this country. For the Pompidou I would want them to display The Pyramid of Power as it is a comment on the built environment which relects the abstract power of the deign of the Pompidou.

16. What’s next for you?
This month I am showing my Cityscape paintings in the Ka-Boom exhibition at View Art Gallery in Bristol details: www.viewartgallery.co.uk/ Then I will start work on a 21st Century alter-piece “God in the time of Google”. I am also in the process of producing a new installation called Our Addiction is Killing Us which involves a coffin, a noose and a lot of engine oil.

www.womanakkin.com/

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