‘There is This Horrid Moment When You Have to Take Yourself More Seriously Than Others Do.' British Artist Hugo Wilson Wisdom
Hugo Wilson’s paintings are as elegant and colourful as Veronese and as visceral and sensual as Rubens. Britain’s finest artist tells THE RAKE about the philosophy behind his work.
Being an artist is hard. Not that I would know from personal experience — in fact, if you’d asked me until fairly recently, I would have spoken purely in objective terms. I would have said that I was aware of how few artists scrape together a living, that it’s a career choice of men and women who have an inalienable talent and have chosen to take a risk.
My mind has been changed by artist Hugo Wilson. He is tall and handsome, has an enormous smile and a fabulous speaking voice, and he is more of a hugger than a handshaker. This ebullient man convinced me that being an artist is not for the faint hearted. From such a calm, gentle soul spring collisions of colour and meaning, and it is clear that Hugo’s creations are bled out onto the canvas. In fact, that’s not fair, as he’s not limited just to canvases:
as well as being a painter, he is a sculptor. The first work of his I ever saw was in 2009, when he filled a deer’s lung with a resin and then dissolved the flesh in acid, leaving behind the most extraordinary tree- root-like set of peninsulas and promontories.
His paintings, however, are mesmerising. There is chaos and harmony, panic and peace. His style is as elegant and colourful as Veronese, with all the viscera and sensuality of Rubens. And just like Rubens, there is no lack of allegory in Hugo’s work. Take the camel painting, for instance. “I am fascinated by collisions,” he says. “On the one hand we have a camel, exotic and noble animal, but we don’t traditionally think of them as patchy with long shaggy dreadlocks, but they are. Does that speak to the realism of the animal in the painting or a symbol used to represent a false history?”
Tools of the trade contribute to the longing and exacting nature of the work. He uses a certain type of paint, called Alizarin, which can take between three and seven weeks to dry, depending on the season. For Hugo it is an agonising wait: “I can’t wait for that huge chunk of black to dry because I want to see what happens when my brush goes over it and forms the next set of collisions.”
I am something of a neophyte when it comes to art, so it was enlightening — an education in the medium, in fact — to listen to Britain’s finest artist...
There are artists who start to make art as though they are making a work like themselves — things go wrong then.
Plenty of artists have gotten successful very quickly by doing the same thing again and again. I don’t do that. There’s a certain structure I want to see in a work that feels like it is complete. I keep giving myself hurdles to jump over to get there. I keep fighting to get to this 'thing'; I don’t really know what it is but the structure and ideology, I guess, is the same.
The basic idea of an artist is that he or she walks into a blank room with a blank canvas — you have to have parameters, otherwise nothing happens. Then you have to question those parameters so it can be an impossible task. The intuition of a work is made better by confidence and evidence, and I wish that wasn’t the case, as it is a chicken and egg situation.
I am interested in the human nature within all ideologies, which I believe doesn’t change very much even if ideologies do, hence the collisions. It all comes down to survival, safety, security, and when principle moves into self-righteousness. But it is impossible for ideology to sit within a single position.
There are very good artists, writers and musicians who start to make art as though they are making a work like themselves, and things go wrong then. That is where confidence and evidence come in, because you have to trust that whatever you’re looking at is going to come through an honest set of filters. It might be as simple as rods and cones, but it is much more than that, it is every experience you’ve ever had, it is every experience your parents have ever had, and is how you were brought up.
There is a discussion as to whether painting is dead.
I don’t know of anything as infinite on one single plane.
I always ask myself three questions: should this be an artwork, should this be made by me, and if so, how? What I mean by that is, should it be an artwork, a book, a film or an HBO series? If so, let someone else make it, as there are plenty of people who would make it really well. Should it be made by me? Is it relevant to my life, am I stepping on toes, am I wandering into something because I need something to think about?
I think there has been a very strong political bit to art in the last five or six years, and good political art is very hard to make. When it is delivered perfectly by the right person it's amazing but just painting a protest doesn’t mean you are making good protest art, I think actually protesting might be better. Works of art have a place, which (in my case) is there to make you rethink, quietly.
Artists I respect with long careers have all had an honest intention for a long period of time, the bodies of work are what speaks rather than a specific set of works.
There is this horrid moment as an artist where you almost consistently have to take yourself more seriously than other people do. And that, particularly as an English person, feels appalling, so when I say things like, “That is what I am aiming for”, I do die slightly inside. But if you’re not in it for that, what the fuck is the point?
There is a self-therapy aspect to starting a new work, which comes under the hippie bracket, but it is also a gamble, which I enjoy, as it is something I have never done before, and it is the same reason I like sport. My clever German gallerist called me on this. I quite enjoy it when a complicated deal is being done on my work. Sometimes I hate it, but it makes me feel alive. I think the excitement makes one a better artist — well, that’s for everyone else other than me to judge.
There is an important discussion as to whether painting is dead. I don’t know of anything better and as infinite on one single plane as this. I don’t think you can digitally represent 100,000 conscious and 200,000 subconscious decisions in one place. I don’t think Photoshop does that yet.
