Black and White (2001)

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Damien Hirst: I like these, they are a bit purple

Rachel Howard: You don't like purple.

DH:I just bought a suit the other day, which is purple. I can't read my own writing from yesterday. Yeah, I can. Okay.

RH: Oh god.

DH: Why do you like painting?

RH: Is it recording?

DH: Course it fucking is.

RH: Erm. Why I like painting?

DH: Why do you prefer painting to sculpture?

RH: Because I understand painting more than I understand sculpture, I don't have a three dimensional brain, d'you know what I mean? It makes sense to me, painting.

DH: Did you have painting around when you were growing up, did you have art in your background, was anybody an artist or anything?

RH: My dad writes poetry on his tractor.

DH: On his tractor?

RH: Yeah.

DH: [laughs) Does he write it down?

RH: Yeah…and he does drawings.

DH: Fantastic. So what made you wanna go to art school?

RH: Because it was the only thing to do. I studied art history from sixteen to twenty one.

DH: Which do you think is better? The idea of being an artist or a painter?

RH: A painter, definitely.

DH: (in aggressive northern voice) Fuck Off? Why?

RH: I'm a painter…. Why is it better? Because you're working within such a long tradition, so it's like you're already doing the impossible, you're already doing something that's so…you're up against so much and to find a little crack where you can get in and invent your own language seems virtually impossible.

DH: So which painters, if you were going to go through the whole history of painting, would you say influenced you?

RH: Rolf Harris, no, er, Masaccio, 1428 "Trinity". It's the first painting I studied and it got me hooked immediately. Beautiful, the colours are amazing.

DH: What kind of art did you study?

RH: Everything from Etruscan pottery to Pollock and beyond, so l've spent the rest of the time trying to forget art history. I did A-level art history, I did a degree in art history and if you want to be a painter then you've got to embrace and then forget all that shit. When you went to college you discovered all that for yourself, I had it pummelled into me, so I've had to forget all that, forget everything.

DH: So, who was the last artist you looked at?

RH: Er, Turner, the Clore Gallery is opposite my studio. I've started going there once a week, I don't go into the rest of the Tate.

DH: Do you like The Snail by Matisse?

RH: Who doesn't?

DH: It seems to me your work is on the edge of painting and sculpture but you'd disagree with that.

RH: Yes, I paint. I started using household paint in 1995. The fluidity of the paint is so gorgeous I felt like I wanted to conquer it and control it.

DH: Do you use the paint directly from the can?

RH: No, I let the paint separate in the can, I use the varnish at the top and the pigment at the bottom.

DH: You let the paint separate out? Do you throw out the top bit?

RH: No, I use the top bit to get the gloss, the top bit is the varnish, I use the pigment underneath and I also use the top bit to manipulate the paint. When I do drawings now, I use felt tips or biro. I don't use pencil or charcoal love the idea of using modern materials, you know, like marker pens, etc.

DH: Well, artists have always made art with what's around them.

RH: Exactly, so that's what I'm trying to do with my work. Using household paint and colours to take you someplace else. Using the everyday to take you away from the everyday mundane.

DH: Do you do a lot of drawings?

RH: Yeah, I've done loads whilst I've been here [on holiday in France] but I get more from painting because it puts distance between you and everyone else, but also it's like laying down tracks.

DH: What about the other different works like the photographs and the portraits, I mean you work in other ways apart from these paintings? Do you ever worry that you re gonna get pigeonholed?

RH: No, because I've got a million paintings in my head that I want to do. I'm
totally not bothered about that at all.

DH: I wouldn't like to spend a night in your head.

RH: Nor me in yours (laughs].

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DH: How do you deal with scale?

RH: You see a Rembrandt etching that is only this big, [gestures 1 inch by 1 inch] and it has massive scale. Some of my one foot ones feel really big, like this one [points to "Study 1'], it feels huge.

​DH: Has the way you make a painting changed?

RH: I used to work in just one shot. I'd go in and have to work it out in one go l used to trash loads of paintings because it wouldn't work and now I can be much more manipulative. So I might have three paintings on one canvas and then I'll pare the surface back with the varnish. Then, when I pour the varnish on it pushes the painting back, back to the painting underneath, so then I can use, say, two or three paintings on one canvas with different bits coming through at different distances and they look so wet. I just pour the paint and work and look. I work spontaneously then step back and look at it.

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DH: You do them against the wall?

RH: Yeah, standing against the wall and then I lay them down to dry and I haven't got a clue what I've done until I go in the next day and stand them up. Then I walk out and come back again, to literally get that immediacy. Then, I'll either work on it more or trash it. I have to live with it for a month or more before I can decide if it's any good. There are loads of paintings that I've done where I've thought it's shit and then later I've decided, actually it has something.

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DH: Do you ever think about the portraits while you're working on these?

RH: I do those but they are just really a way of focusing my mind. It's a totally different way of working.

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DH: In a way they're like ghosts.

RH: Yeah, they are but I think these paintings, the ones for the show, are much more layered and there are also traces of things gone, things that were there before. Working on top, fresh, obscures the marks underneath, which I suppose is a similar process to the way I work on the portraits.

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DH: A tutor at Goldsmiths once said about my work, there's a lot of flower arranging going on here. Are you not worried about a similar kind of criticism?

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RH: What's wrong with beauty? What's wrong with something that is overtly sumptuous, what's wrong with it?

DH: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it but it's dangerous territory to be in because you can be seduced away from your vision.

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RH: I like seduction. I know when I'm cheating when I'm painting. There are certain things you can do in painting where you know when somebody else is looking at it they will like it. When I do a painting like that, I don't like it, to me it feels like a failed painting because I don't want to play tricks, I want to get something that totally hits the nail on the head without using tricks. You know it's gonna win people over everytime hands down. It's a cheat but I think there's a different way. A way to go about it the long way round but still get to the same result.… without trickery, do you know what I mean?

DH: Yeah, I think so.

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RH: Oh, and another thing: the colour. It's so difficult because art historically you'd look at these deep purples and go, oh yeah Rothko, but I'm not gonna shy away from colours because of that, because somebody else has used them, because then you'd be fucked, you wouldn't even go to the canvas. I wanna get something going where you go, immediately, ' Oh yeah, this is a Rachel Howard painting.

DH: I think it's brave the way that you dive straight in there.

RH: I'm not going to be afraid of doing anything. The fact that I'm the one doing it makes it different enough for me. If I'm content…I' m never over joyously happy with what I do but if I'm content, have a level of contentment with my work in the studio, then I don't give a damn what other people think…At the end of the day once it goes out of my studio it's out of my hands.

DH: Go back to what you were saying about tricks, I didn't get that.

RH: Well, for example you know your spot paintings, you know how to put colours on white, well that's a trick, as soon as you put a colour on white it's playing with your eyes right. If I was to put white in a painting, like this painting, everyone really loves this painting…it's just that trickery equals ease to me, in a negative way, I want to stretch myself beyond that.

DH: [holding up reproduction of 'Epiphany Brown', 2 × 2 feet| Do you think there's a trick to this one?

RH: There is a trick with this one because what it's doing is it's laying two colours next to each other, one jumps out the other recedes which is exciting yet uncomfortable for the eye. You see this one [pointing to 'Yellow'] is much more difficult. I like it because I never use red, I've never used yellow and red like that. What you can't see in this is the edge and the most important thing for me is the details. So I look for the way that the red collides or just edges up against the yellow. It has this sort of trace that's left and the way I've partially stripped the red back with the varnish, well it just moves. The canvas vibrates, and when you look at it your eye is always flattened by the yellow because there is no depth in the yellow apart from the edge where it reaches the red, so you're almost blinded. I don't mean blinded as in blinded by light, it actually isn't glossy either, it's dull, so it flattens your eye. All the time your looking at it, it makes your eye run around the canvas, it flattens all the time with nothing to hold onto except the precarious edge. The yellow is a much stronger colour than the red.

DH: So are you trying to make people feel uncomfortable?

RH: Well, yeah, I don't want people to feel comfortable. I don't want them to be able to say 'Oh that's a lovely painting'. Of course I want to seduce them but very close to the edge. There's a visual language that exists, my visual language definitely and that's how I know when a painting works and when it doesn't

DH: Do you get nervous about destroying work?

RH: No, not at all, I would never feel nervous about destroying work that I didn't like, why would I?

DH: Don't you worry that as you become more confident they'll become easier and like a trade mark and lose their poignancy?

RH: Well, I'm not at that point so I don't know but I do know that I've got lots of ideas to explore and if anybody's interested in what I do then they have to be interested in the way that I change as well.

DH: Why did you recently get a guitar?

RH: I love the idea that as you get older you can do things because you want to do them. Or because I am selfish.

DH: What do you think about having children and being an artist?

RH: It's fantastic. I'm very lucky.

DH: Have you ever worked in black and white?

RH: I would love it if I didn't have to work with colour. To me colour is an absolute hindrance because it goes back to that cheating thing. You can cheat with colour and you can play games with it, and in my work if I didn't have colour it would be so fantastic.

DH: Can't you buy a pair of glasses that remove the colour so you only see black and white?

RH: It would be perfect.

DH: Sorry to keep going back to it but you see I still can't quite understand why you call it cheating. I kind of understand what you mean. Maybe that's why they're successful paintings because it's so easy to do what you're doing on a superficial level. But for some reason they go a lot deeper than that, they're elevated above the superficial. I think what's going on is what you're talking about but I can't quite get my mind around it.

RH: That's one of the reasons I wanted to get more real depth, You remember the earlier work, the ones that I did in that show, they are less about depth. The one you've got in your house I think that one's really successful. Not cheating.

DH: We only put it up when you come around (laughs).

RH: [laughs] I feel much more relaxed now that I can work on a painting over a much longer period of time instead of having to finish it in one shot like I was doing before.

DH: What do you think about control, your own control or are you searching for uncontrolled accidents?

RH: Well, all artists do to some extent don't they?

DH: You seem to be striving for more control than that.

RH: It's more like a battle between being in control and out of control at the same time. There's still that search for the unexpected, I think it's both. I couldn't bear it if I went into the studio and I knew what I was going to do, it would feel so defeatist. I like making it difficult for myself.

DH: Why is this show so predominantly red?

RH: Well, red is the most basic colour, isn't it? It's blood, it's birth, it's death, it's lust, power, love, sex, it's almost edible, it's life, you know, look at the fruit and veg, it's like beetroot juice, raspberry juice. I've been painting with fruit and vegetable juice here and it's like bleeding,

DH: What really, painting on paper, where?

RH: Here, France, while I've been here…everything's ultimately about experience isn't it? We all paint and make work from our experiences and these things go on in the back of our minds, not the forefront of our minds, for example in the forefront of my mind is Lucas's teething and I worry is Felix's tummy ache gonna get better? And in the back of my mind I've got all these sub experiences that go on which come out in the work. It's not like I'll experience something mundane and record it. It's all the experiences in the back of my head that I try to make come out when I go to the studio. And I'm on my own and I just try and let it come out. It's not like thinking when I go to the paint shop, 'last week I was in bloody bed and this week I'm in the studio so I'm gonna paint red', it's not that direct.

DH: When you talk about reds you're talking about dark reds?

RH: Yeah, dark reds, maroons, burgundys. Like dead blood, expelled blood, not the blood inside you, not a life giving blood, I don't look at a chart and think I'll use a pretty colour that catches my eye. I think in my head, I'd like to work in this vein, excuse the pun [laughs]. And then I look at the colour charts and then I go and buy tons of it and try to work from there.

DH: So how do the paintings and colours change then?

RH: They just change from working with it, as I work I think about it and things suggest themselves to me. I think it'll need more or less of this or that colour, it's spontaneous, fluid. Although sometimes when I'm working I find I don't have enough of a colour that I'm using, which usually means the painting is ruined.

DH: Wouldn't you use a completely different colour?

RH: No, I wouldn't, the painting is heading in a specific direction, but I learn from dead paintings.

DH: What else are you working on?

RH: I've got these new ideas for a new set of much more figurative paintings that I've started but haven't got around to resolving yet. They're sitting in the corner of my studio. I've been doing them for about four years now, slowly working on them but because I am so absorbed into these I haven't had the time or the opportunity to work on them properly.

DH: What kind of figurative paintings?

RH: Well, they're semi-figurative. It's like when you get the code, like working with these I'm getting the code and I've still got a long way to go with them but with these semi-figurative ones it's like starting in a place where you're a virgin with this whole new set of paintings.

DH: If you've been working on them for four years what do you mean by new?

RH: Smarty pants! They're new in the sense that I haven't had time to work on them in the intense way I'd like to but the excitement with them is that I could conquer it all over again.

DH: So, describe them to me.

RH: When I lived in Southwick House, there was a newspaper on the side and there was this picture about half the size of one page of a broad sheet and I was looking at it for ages and I just could not work it out.

DH: What was it?

RH: I'm telling you, hang on.

DH: TELL ME NOW!

RH: [laughs]…and I was looking at it and I kept going back and going back and thinking there is definitely something there. What is it? I read the article because I couldn't see what it was and then I realised what it was. It was thisbloke carrying a child with a sack over its head. And it was photographed froma video. And the bloke carrying the child didn't have his head in the picture frame. And in the foreground was a chair and all that my eye kept going back to was the chair because it was the only thing that I could recognise in the picture. And I loved the fact that to me it just looked like an abstract painting. But it had this chair but also it was blurred, it was very blurred. And the kid had a sack over his head and the man was holding it, carrying it and it was one of those old kitchen chairs. I love the fact that my mind was drawn back to the chair and I was trying to comprehend what was going on behind the chair. So, I'm going to call them 'chair paintings'. The hardest bit is breaking the back of it and getting your language and then within the language there is perfecting the technique or trying to perfect a technique and once you do that you move onto the next thing, don't you? They are now here near where I want them to be. What I'm trying to do is work with the colour in the same way as I do in these paintings, so in a way these paintings are almost like colour charts for the next series of paintings.

DH: They sound great.

RH: I'm so excited about doing them but it's going to be another four years easy on them. I'm nowhere near completion, they're nowhere near right.

DH: Do you believe in God?

RH: No……. Definitely not [a dog barks]

DH: Do you believe in dogs?

RH: [sarcastically] Oh, yeah……Absolutely.

DH: Were you brought up with God?

RH: Yes, at school, not at home.

DH: God not dogs.

RH: I went to a church school and a Quaker school. When I'm in the bath I sing hymns for fuck's sake.

DH: And you don't believe in God?

RH: I don't, no I just think it's a good story.

DH: But you believe in Art.

RH: Yeah.

DH: Do you find it difficult to not believe in God and yet believe in Art because they are pretty similar?

RH: No, I don't find it difficult at all. It could be God, it could be drugs, it could be love. It… God could be replaced by anything.

DH: Even being a mother?

RH: Art's an integral thing to me, it's as integral as being a mother, I have doppelgänger [in a scary horror film voice] 'there's Rachel the artist and Rachel the mother'. They're totally different, God doesn't come into it.

DH: Do you paint with the kids?

RH: Yeah, they paint when they come to the studio.

DH: Do the kids like your paintings?

RH: They say 'That's nice and that's nice and that's nice… and I like that one' They're the best art critics.

DH: [laughing] Do they never say they don't like it?

RH: No, they always say they like it.

DH: Connor came into Pharmacy and said 'I don't like it but I really like the big thing in the window.

RH: [laughs] Exactly.

DH: It seems that you've got very strong belief in what you're doing.

RH: It's a belief that's innate.

DH: What colour can we expect next?

RH: Maroon [laughs].

DH: That's what you're using now.

RH: I was laughing because I was thinking about being marooned…blue. I've got a problem with blue, so I'm definitely going to work with blue next.

DH: It sounds to me like you've definitely got a problem with every colour.

RH: Fuck off. I've definitely got a problem with blue.

DH: So is this show going to be a series of paintings all in these dark reds - there's going to be no blue ones creeping in?

RH: I can't see it [laughs]. I'd love to put just one painting in a big gallery. It'd look fucking brilliant. I make about twelve paintings a year and I'd love to be able to make six...

DH: How many have you made so far this year?

RH: Six. seven. Seven.

DH: Are they always square?

RH: Yeah, I love the proportions of a square.

DH: Do you think humour plays any role in the paintings?

RH: I think on some level they're cheeky. I don't think there's humour, but there's definitely a bit of cheek going on you know, like going, you think you've got me, you think you can get what I'm doing', but like that yellow one… I like to throw people off track. I think sometimes they make me laugh (laughs]……and cry [laughs]. The photographs make me laugh more.

DH: You've always taken photographs?

RH: I'm a mad photographer but photography works like… it's research. Some of the photographs are very humorous - you haven't seen the canary ones, have you? They're very funny.

DH: What about the New York school?

RH: Well, that similarity is just about the expanse of colour and you can't copyright that.

DH: I wouldn't expect that to work today?

RH: Well, it's funny when I went to New York, this woman asked me how I felt about doing abstract paintings and I said, 'Fine, thank you very much!'

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This interview took place 2001 whilst on holiday at La Curniere, near Saint-Cannat, Aix-en-Provence, Southern France.