John Calcutt
Your technical processes are very distinctive and form a fundamental aspect of your work. Could you perhaps explain how you go about making your paintings?
Peter Lynch
The finger marks started off when I was at college [Glasgow School of Art]. I had a bucket full of dirty paint from cleaning brushes and I painted a canvas with that paint; then I tried to pick out the crud from it, leaving small finger marks. That is how I first started bringing the finger marks directly into the painting. It was at that time a form of irony, initially intended to question the idea of the perfect and the pure which came into prominence with a lot of Modernist painters. I wanted to really break that down. Since then the finger mark has become a lot more integral, in some ways melted into the painted surface itself. It is no longer a separate physical entity.
There are numerous methods and techniques that I use in making these paintings. Using a brush I apply lots of layers of paint, perhaps fifteen or more, each having to dry before the next one is applied. The first layer is usually when I apply the finger mark through the monochrome surface. Then, from that initial layer, it is either a case of trying to reapply the finger mark after each consecutive layering, or of negating it and trying to remove it. This often involves different types of paint marks going in different directions. In some works, for instance, a grid system has been created.
In other works the first layer is applied using a printing roller, which pulls the paint, creating artex style ridges, resulting in a rippling effect. The paint consistency has to be correct to achieve this effect. But on top of this initial layer I’ve used a brush, so the language of the process is getting more and more complex. It is difficult to work out how the paint has been applied; that is important because I don’t want to be in a system where the process predominates. I would not call these process paintings; the process is important but there are different issues I want to address.
The sides of the canvases are also very important because I’m trying to break away from focussing exclusively upon the picture plane. I want the painting to be experienced as more of an object. These edges also give some idea of the number of different layerings of colour that have occurred during the painting’s production. When I start a painting I generally don’t have an idea of what it is going to be at the end. I don’t think I have ever started a painting where the notion of its completion is there at the beginning. For me, the process develops the paintings.
John Calcutt
The procedures you have just described provide a certain kind of evidence for the history of the painting’s manufacture. To broaden this historical aspect, could you say a few words about how you position your work in relation to that of the past?
Peter Lynch
I think making abstract painting is difficult, but I think making painting in general is difficult because the language of painting is historically filled, so it is difficult to try and find interesting paths of development. But this history is not a development that is particularly linear; instead I think it is very circular. My work relates back to previous generations in a circular forward-looking process. Mondrian is important to me, but in a slightly twisted way. When I first saw his works in reproduction I really disliked them because of their graphic aspects. But later, when I saw them in the flesh, I realised that their lines are actually very tentative, very painterly, and definitely not very straight. They have become for me very beautiful, almost expressive works in a very minimal way. That experience of ‘re-reading’ Mondrian influences me in how I want to produce my own works.
The problem today is that, as a result of its widespread photographic reproduction in art magazines and so on, contemporary painting has lost this sense of materiality. A great deal of recent painting addresses itself to the camera, thereby developing an aesthetics that goes along with such a system. There is a lot of process painting that is purely trying to seduce the viewer in a tasteful aesthetic manner, and I am sceptical of this. My works, on the other hand, are a little bit grungy; there is a deliberate method of corruption. I’m torn between wanting to seduce the viewer but at the same time needing to repulse them. My use of colour is important in this respect.
John Calcutt
You seem to be very concerned with establishing a degree of complexity in the viewer’s relation to your work.
Peter Lynch
I want the works to be shown with as little information as possible next to them, so the viewer has the opportunity to interpret them in their own kind of way. I don’t think my view or position really matters, because ultimately it is the viewer who interprets what the painting is or means. They have to decide for themselves whether the paintings are utopian, dystopian, or whatever. They must contain many possibilities and invitations to interpretation, but not to the extent that they can be thought to mean anything at all. When people respond to the works they have different angles of interpretation, different positions and understandings. I just want to keep the context of the work open. The titles are important in this respect because they confuse the issue between object and language. The titles themselves are very ambiguous, avoiding any direct reference or meaning to the works, thereby creating a wedge between the visual and the linguistic.
John Calcutt
But, despite this openness, would it be fair to say that these paintings are NOT really concerned with expressing your own subjectivity or sensibility?
Peter Lynch
With my painting the gesture is very controlled so it is not a form of expressiveness, it is more in the nature of a reference to it.
These gestural marks are definitely not in movement, and I try to cover their traces anyway. What is interesting is that once the gesture in impregnated within the painted surface it is almost impossible to erase. I suppose I am trying to kill the expression of the finger mark literally by applying paint on top of it. It is also a form of destroying the historically developed concept of the monochrome canvas, because the physical gesture negates the possibility that the work results from a purely processed based technique. It is the physical interaction that corrupts the work, corrupts the monochrome.
My own main interest is more in the painting for itself. I don’t really believe in any notion of spirituality within painting. For me it is impossible. Some artists may think they can produce spiritual effects, but is more likely the viewer who comes along and reads such an interpretation into the work - probably because he or she has been told that the artwork can give them that. If I look at a Rothko I don’t try and find some transcendental position on it, I look at it as paint on canvas. For me it is more a question of aesthetics than of anything else. You can still get a mental or physical buzz from looking at an artwork, but my argument would be that this is not a particularly spiritual experience.
John Calcutt
Throughout its history, abstract painting has defended itself against the charge of arbitrary decorativeness by insisting upon content - either in the form of various conceptualisms, or in the form of various expressionisms. In retaining a sceptical attitude towards both, do you now risk reviving the accusation of decorativeness?
Peter Lynch
In my personal experience I find that I am constantly having to deal with that position, with that situation. Is this too decorative for my taste? It is a constant battle having to deal with questions of decorativeness, taste and connoisseurship. The problem with connoisseurship is in having this position of knowledge that to some extent dictates how you will react to the work of art. The artwork then simply reconfirms (or fails to confirm) the expectations that are brought to bear upon it. The work is reduced to a single predetermined meaning. I am more interested in broader position.
John Calcutt
You have spoken about some of the historical and theoretical contexts of your work, but what about its relation to the physical conditions of production and exhibition?
Peter Lynch
I’m becoming more and more aware that lighting is a very important aspect. Even the changes in the studio, the difference between natural light and artificial light are dramatic, so even in production I’m well aware how the works’ environment can change their effect. The paintings are very much about how light interacts with the surface. As you walk around some of them the painting changes dramatically from one position to the next. The surface, or more accurately, the texture of the surface, becomes an integral part of viewing the object. It is once again about the painting becoming a physical object as well, rather than simply being two-dimensional and only having an illusionistic plane.
John Calcutt
What is the nature of your own intellectual relation to your work?
Peter Lynch
I really enjoy making the paintings so it is not purely a conceptual position. I’m not thinking of something and illustrating that thought. My conceptual position is built and developed after the actual object is made. For me, that is essential. I find problems with contemporary art that tries to illustrate contemporary theory. Which comes back to my position with respect to language: when you are illustrating theory linguistics comes first, the visual second. For me, this is the wrong order.