Andrew Douglas-Forbes Artist Painter South West Wales Fountain Fine Art Llandeilo Cardiff Mumbles

With a busy career that spans two countries and two artistic discplines, Andrew's painting talent grows along with the number of people collecting his work - at a formidable rate. Despite his young years he is already becoming one of the most popular male painters in South Wales and currently supplies galleries in Cardiff and Swansea as well as Fountain Fine Art here in Llandeilo.

Biography

School - Gowerton.

Studied clarinet R.C.M. - Sidney Fell.

Art Foundation, Swansea College - lecturer Ms Pat Briggs

Prestigious scholar (R.A.M.) - studied at opera school with Dip R.A.M.

Sung over Europe – Mozart tenor of note - Quoted by many including Nicolai Geddi, Paulo Montarsolo and most recently Paul Gimenez (eminent lyric tenor) “as having one of the most beautiful god-given voices he had ever heard”

Currently working as a tenor in middle Italy working with soprano Slavska Taskova-Paulaetti - one of the worlds most important contemporary music ‘sopranos’ of the 20th century.

Artist Statement

Painting/Singing

When it all boils down to it, my two professions are the same thing – communication and description of emotions, objects, feelings, colours, harmonies or discords. A human need to communicate is a wonderful thing, but when it is then trained, as my voice has been, to such a level, this allows one to openly communicate fully in much the same way that painting technique has to be developed not to get in the way of the painting – the coloured object presented to a public to communicate – the beauty of a place etc. – the beauty of a phrase – passage of paint?

My inspirations are endless – subtle shifts of light – close tone values; fantastic ancient buildings which, in their very existence, communicate first hand with one the abstractness of everything. I know I am painting a landscape, but really I paint patterns on board! I never forget this - I will not be governed by subject. If one day I wish to describe movement in my figures, so I will fling the brush across otherwise ‘finished’ figures to open them up - to sit them on the board.

I have a huge obsession with the passing of time – using it as the essence of my being – always looking to the past to work to be timeless. I hope that it has, perhaps, a 1950s feel for some people as this is a period that I love in painting - the American abstract period. My canvases sometimes remain full of abstract work for weeks before some ‘recognizable’ image appears. I never force the image. If by sheer lack of self control I do push an image forward too soon I will cover it. Turn it upside down. I try not to paint – I don’t like painted paintings (if that makes sense?)

Texture has become a strong element of my work. My sketches are full of downward strokes - looking like everything is seen through a pane of glass, with rain running down it. This individuality of my drawings has influenced the application of paint. I try to imitate my sketching language with my painting one.

Colour is of prime importance. I have had, since a young age, a very sensitive relation to colour noted from when I was in school and developed over time. I use colour very much as a tool in my liking? Also, working at the Chatelet Opera House in Paris, the director Louis Herlot noted how colourful my phrasing was. He was delighted to hear I was a painter, as he had already sensed something deeper. He then showed me his huge interest in French painting of the south of France - very strong, high coloured work.

I am very rarely interested in the actual colour of things per se. I like to invent (like a poem) a group of related or unrelated colours to work with, then sticking with my self- reduced palette, hoping that some harmonies will appear. Gentle vibrations of a colour, altered ever so slightly from another, are what make me tick. I am fascinated, at the moment, by the magenta trees at sunset in the beautiful park outside the house – the sunset glow low on the horizon throws the most beautiful colour harmonies at me, just like Ravel or Debussy – having not fully absorbed my new landscape. Italian paintings are few and far between. I am starting with interiors – my welsh objects helping to soften the culture blow. The sun sets beautifully on one edge of my Welsh dresser (at the moment full of simple grey pottery) – no pattern – this scene will be developed in my mind before it transports itself to paint. I think like a composer. I see the finished object long before its finished. I know what I am after from a canvas before I begin. The difficulty is not to push too fast, as one only lands up with an illustration which serves no purpose. Every day I work my voice and will compose something most days – thinking again of feelings and moods.

‘Welshness’ is a huge issue in my painting and in my daily life. The home in Italy is full of old welsh objects. Books on history. Books on chapels. Books by Welsh people. I eat off Llanelli pottery and use Ynysmeddu knives and forks – jugs with hyfen-cream written on them, old Welsh chairs with their amazing simplicity, and abstract sculptural beauty. Welsh food is often prepared for unsuspecting guests – tapes of welsh hymn tunes and all – how nuts! - but that’s me. That’s what floats my boat! The abstractness of Dylan Thomas is about it. He uses recognisable words to describe moods/situations but the result is pure abstraction. That is what I’m after. I may paint Dylan’s shed, but really it’s about the colours, the form, the textures and yes the ‘feel’ of the place, the feel is important. I must stress again that I won’t be governed by correct colour but the blue shed or a red door may start a whole new colour journey off.

Coming from Gower, Swansea and spending many childhood hours down “the point”, industrial estate in Penclawdd, cockle pickers and their daily lives form a large part of my work. I adore the fat women with their old aprons and their wellies turned down. Old men, leather faced, with the salt air held together with bits of old rope, their eyes telling another story - a profound sadness to it all - the ‘darkness’ of being Welsh. The story telling, the sense of community, the stances one takes to work, bending over in cockle beds, standing askew to listen, faces pulled. My grandfather and his brother, being natural comics have influenced the way I pull faces. I look for it in others. One needs to be an expressive person - a huge sense of self irony without self irony. One is self conscious and therefore closed.

I have recently been given a photograph of a childhood friend’s mother from Penclawdd. She is standing on a roundabout near Swansea selling cockles out of a basket. The solemnity and the obscurity of it is amazing. It is a document of a time long gone. Aneurin Jones talks very much of a time long gone. How he was lucky to be just at the end of a time of simplicity. I connect very much with this. By chance I was surrounded in childhood by extremely old relatives with whom I connected - one or two adults from the 19th century. All children have these old people in their childhoods but I connected so wholly with them – going to church in hush puppy shoes and itchy wool trousers and even a dicky bow! I still connect with old people who are wise with experience. One could say I live in the past – is this just a lever? A superficial quip which shows a lack of understanding? I live very much in the present.

In school I was very fortunate to have a teacher who still remains a very close colleague and friend. Mike Gibbs is not only a painter but a great authority on Welsh life. He and his wife have a penchant for Welsh costume collecting. He recently wrote an article on the arrival from France of the ‘Welsh hat’ - the height being a symbol of wealth, so with an art teacher like this, with whom I connect wholly – he took me to the Kidwelly antiques shops one day after a trip – a spell was spun and I was hooked! After school I did one year foundation where I met Pat Briggs who was supposed to be in charge of us - although she couldn’t take charge of a Sunday school trip! - but she was a fantastic fountain of knowledge, a superb draughtswomen and an eminent sculptor. She was older. We hit it off straight away. No ‘teacher/student’ from day one. She sharpened my sense of drawing, of looking. Nothing, but nothing, passes her beady eye that is wrong – or trying to be too clever. She pushed and guided me very well. We still remain in contact weekly. She is the only person to see my work unfinished when in my Welsh studio in Swansea

Pat will come in everyday with her trolley, sit and pull apart what I have done, and put it back together again. She sharpens my mind every visit. She is absolutely insane – we have great fun rooting around charity junk shops together, everyone thinks it’s my mother. She, in her loose fitting eccentric garb and me with the latest Italian fashions, Gucci and all! – a friend is a metalware designer for them – how fortunate! The fun is that people class us as two nutters when we can outwit all but a few – spotting a 19 th century glass or bottle or a fantastic pair of old shoes at a mile off. We have great fun laughing all the time at them finding us odd. As the Italians say, gemelli – twins. Arima gemelli – soul twins!

We are also infamous at the car boot – setting off on foot, well before 6 a.m. for ‘the boot’ as we call it - me, helping Pat with her pusher which gets some odd looks! Sometimes, I may have something on later so go in ‘tidy clothes’ – this gets even more odd looks! If they find out what I do, they always say I thought you did something like that. One women, I’ll never forget, said, ‘I thought you were someone!’, and to Pat, ‘you must be proud of your son!’ This level of self irony really pushed the button for both of us. We can be seen later laughing over a greasy spoon breakfast a few hours and later discussing our finds and stories.

Catherine Street workshops, in the heart of Swansea is, perhaps, the oddest place in existence. Every large town has a commune of sorts. Swansea has the arts workshop. The print workshop, Dylan Thomas etc. All but Catherine Street is different. We are not up our own arse about it all – people come to work and work we do – we have got private views on mass, meeting other artists there. The buildings were once dairy sheds and mews. Now we have a cobbled tunnel between two terraced houses and an oasis of calm and eccentricity. There I have formed life long friendships with all of my colleagues – potters, stained glass artists, abstract painters, wood workers. Strangely most of us are ex-students of Pat Briggs so she reigns supreme over us all – which she revels in.

In Italy my studio is a large long room, with a very high window (long) looking out onto a medieval piazza on a very steep hill. So I am at road level but look down on the passing tourists. I have a lovely view of an ancient church, a monastery and a large palazzo – a very ‘town’ view but a very beautiful one. I work very slowly. My ex-students would find this a shock as I used to paint very fast! Work is propped up on shelves probably 50 on the go at one time. Then, perhaps, I will finish 10-20 and send them home. Friends and artists from the village now want to see the work before they go as they love to see the progress from abstract to recognizable abstracted reality.

I work in acrylic with many added substances = (not collage) and hundreds and hundreds of layers of paint – some boards weigh a tone. I use huge or very tiny brushes. Never the normal No. 6 – 9 brush, never!

I am usually, if in the house and not away singing or getting ready for an exhibition, up early with the sun, paint for 4-5 hours, or look and dab more like. Then lunch, then off to the studio on the other end of the village with the Steinway grand - tuned a little sharp to make me work harder. When you get to perform it seems easier, or when in Eastern Europe or Russia, it is of no shock to find the pitch a little higher. After a voice work out I always walk back through the historic centre and back to work, painting – then a trip again to the studio finishing at about 9pm - after which I can switch off – no thinking. My vocal coach lives in Florence, so I have to walk over to Porte Veachio to get to his home and watch the Arno river. It’s about two miles – what a walk! This perhaps is the end of another day – an example of how one discipline encroaches on the other.

Some of my influences in painting are for sheer beauty of paint surface, William Nicholson, (father of Ben Nicholson), Ben, for his pairing down of subject to bear essentials, Anne Redpath again for beauty of paint and all the late 19 th century French school – absolutely not impressionists. Every one says how impressionistic my work is – well they can think what they want. I don’t paint an impression. I paint a feeling an atmosphere, a moment in time full of remembrance. It’s not the same thing at all. They (the impressionists) painted magically beautiful snapshots of the present – mine are full of the past. There’s also Gwen John for her control and heartbreaking beautiful subjects and S.A. Forbes for his beautiful sketches – not his finished academic works – and then on to the American painters of the 50s, 60s and 70s. They inspire me on a daily basis, to try harder to push myself further in my own small way. I am not interested at all in being part of a radical forward thinking group to push the boundaries of art, neon lights etc.. I leave that to my contemporaries to play with. I want to play in the boundaries already set. They suit me just fine. I have a lifetime of things to say in my own voice!

Framing sometimes includes driftwood or parts of furniture. This is a direct response to the ‘place’ in the painting. Swansea bay will have Swansea bay driftwood, decorative, but used to a much deeper reason. I have recently, with my dad, ‘ripped’ apart an abandoned wreck of a boat in Penclawdd, to be used at a later date as a support for a Penclawdd painting.

I am always pushing myself, looking for the new, the unseen, the undescribed – although always within my boundaries. I don’t stray into deep waters as painter, singer or person.

I am always pleased when a collector or young local painter comes up to me and has understood what I have said in a painting or appreciates the colour. It spurs me to go on looking for things to share with others. It’s the joy of being present then - that is my essence.

I hope that out of this outpouring, something is of interest to someone.

Andrew 2005