CHRISTOPHER’S PERSPECTIVES:

1) What inspired your latest collection, and what story are you trying to tell through it?
The inspiration for this work is finding wonder and imagination again. In a complex and demanding world. It is important to take time to be amazed by nature, maybe it is sublime or maybe it is daydreaming. Paintings need to be able to live with you, to be in your world and to remind you why looking is valuable. Hopefully these paintings can do that.

2) How do you decide on the colors and textures in your paintings?
I have been working with colour in for a while now where I want it to be more intense than natural. Technology has always had a role in my painting as an element- how we encounter most images is on screens and a painting is not that however the images on screens influence us and how to see the world. So my approach plays into that.

3) Do you have a favorite piece in this collection, and why does it stand out to you?
Daydreamer or Where Sky Meets Sea, both for similar reasons as they stretch out towards the infinite for me and it feels like you are looking into a space that you can never anchor yourself in. These feel panoramic and that you should still be able to see something more in them. I was working with the rule of thirds; in each of these pieces it is inverted. The horizon is either at 1/3 or 2/3 and I played with these in the studio flipping them around and landed on this configuration that felt right.

4) What’s your creative process like—do you plan every detail, or do things evolve as you paint?
My process is to treat these like painting. I start with the underpainting that loosely follows my source material. Here I allow elements of chance to happen: paint gets to be paint, then I layer and build. I decided on the degree of interaction between the layers, what to keep and what to develop. My reference material is photographic, usually locations around me. For instance, I live about 15 minutes from the ocean and go there for walks, listen to the waves and see the changing sky.

5) If someone is new to your work, what’s one thing you’d like them to know or feel when they see your art?
Painting for me evolves. There are always connections between my work and the world around me. I am interested in solving painting problems in an authentic way. I am interested in the history of painting, from studio practice to the artists that innovate and advance what painting does. I work with what interests me as a subject and with the materials. I would want someone that is new to the work to find moments in the paintings that do this for them. I intentionally try to layer the work with meaning and lay bare the process.