My complete, unexpurgated biography...
PAUL HAWORTH
PAUL HAWORTH
My complete, unexpurgated biography...
My complete, unexpurgated biography...

Originally I had up here some excerpts from a press release about me, written by me, but the older 
I get, the less I care about or enjoy this bla-bla, so rather, here are some lines from songs which I like, which I listen to while painting, which sum up what it's all about for me.

I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
-from A Case of You by Joni Mitchell, though I really like the kd lang version

I'm a realist
I'm a romantic
-from I'm a Realist by the Cribs

I believe we are meant to be seen
And not to be understood
-from Alpha Shallows by Laura Marling

You had it 
But oh no you lost it
-from Horchata by Vampire Weekend
 

A TRANSLATION FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER. Those words, they're written on the side of a…I guess you would call it a tablet, at the end of Spui. On the one side it says that and on the other it says it again, except in Dutch. Classic Weiner. Yes, it is a public sculpture by Lawrence Weiner. And boy, how brilliant, how provocative, how quintessentially Weiner, that this artist who calls himself a sculptor should make a public sculpture which isn't conventional sculpture at all, only a Goddamn fool would judge this work in traditional sculptural terms, yet sculpture it undisputably is – the words of Weiner are his materials and he builds something far, far greater in both concrete and immaterial terms than almost all traditional sculpture. And as for it being public, give me a break, like a bum on the street people walk on by, don't see it, probably don't even know it's there. But I knew it was there. I'd stand and stare at those words for hours on end. There's a magazine store close by, Athanaeum Boekhandel and that's where I'd go to buy magazines. They've got the best selection of art, fashion, style and design magazines in town, take my word for it. Real quality ones like Idea, 125, Neo2, Relax and Purple. And listen, I don't have much money – God only knows – but money is no object when it comes to art, fashion, style and design magazines. You see, my name is Nathan Dilworth, I live in the now, I can't fall behind, fall asleep, I mean, you can't take your eye off the ball - I may live in Europe but I ain't European, and there's no way I'm losing it. You see, with art and with fashion it isn't good enough to have your finger on the pulse. You gotta be the pulse. My girlfriend Kate, she used to admonish me for spending so much money on these…these thick, glossy, high resolution tombs of gold and I'd say to her, I'd say, "Kate, faces turn when Nathan Dilworth walks down the street. I am noted for my fashion prescience. If I lose that, I lose me, Kate. Me! And let me tell you something else, I did not catch your eye and steal your heart at RIDSE wearing American Apparel, uh-uh." And it was true. I remember the first time Kate…my California babe…saw me…it was in the lecture theatre…what was the class? Yeah, it was The Persistance of Painting, Christopher K. Ho's brilliant series on contemporary painting…a lecture theatre filled with shapeless misfits, the whole lot of them in baggy jeans, wearing layers of T-shirts – call that fashion. And there I was, topless – and it was cold out, like minus 10 - lime green old-style surfer shorts and my mauve velvet stetson Charly – I give all my stetsons names – which I brought from DT. No girl, boy, man alive could take their eyes off me. My girlfriend Kate didn't stand a chance. So anyway, after I was done at Athanaeum Boekhandel, I'd walk over to the Weiner – with bags of the good stuff under my arms – and I'd stare at those words for hours, literally for hours on end. A TRANSLATION FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER. Like the best of Weiner, they meant everything. I used to wonder, hell I wondered a lot of things, but I used to think, by translation did Weiner mean people as well as words? A TRANSLATION FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER. He made this work as an American in Holland. Welcomed…naturalised, accepted. But some people, like words, are untranslateable. All you get is a rough approximation. Close but not exactly.

PREGNANT
WITH
MEANING

 noun

   Thanks Sam!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
JULIAN SCHNABEL:
Never listen to anybody when it comes to being responsible for your own paintings. It's a mistake for young artists to want to please older ones. They're going to make you take out of your paintings the very things that most characterise them as yours. You might think that someone is really smarter than you, and they may be. But you can't listen to them because nobody knows better than you what you need to do. Most older artists are going to try to get you to conform to the standards that you are out to destroy anyway.

…from his brilliant ‘Nicknames of Maitre D's and Other Excerpts From Life’ which definitely deserves reprinting. Warhol thought he was ripping him off a bit with this book!

1. LowResNobodyUnderstandsMe.jpg
   

2. Ask someone if they've got Sky+ and they always tell you, "No but my parents do." Always the parents!  Sticking it to us with their higher standard of living.  Well, save for the constant anxiety of keeping space on one's memory box, there is nothing I don't like about Sky+.  And for lazy painters it has quickly become an outil précieux.   Its live record action means if you're watching TV and see something that screams painting you can hit rewind, pause and badaboom, you've got your painting.  This is how I made Nobody Understands Me (2008).  I was watching Coronation Street and an image took hold of me.  Soap operas are shot conventionally so when a scene, like this one, is framed unexpectedly it upsets your viewing.  This technique is usually apopted for The Big Stories.  In this case, the Platt family was confronting young David about some E they had discovered.  Gail and Sarah Lou - mothers against drugs - were stood in the foreground, enclosing the two sides of the screen, Audrey was behind them, her eyes cast down, and centrally positioned at the rear, glaring ahead, was Stephen.  Their expressions had it all...wrath, disgust, shame and cunning.  But there was  something stiff and unnaturalistic about the arrangement.  It was too perfect.  It looked like a painting.  I see no reason why I should not attempt all the great painting subjects.  Here would be my family portrait.  And they are like family to me.  I've grown up watching Coronation Street, always taking special pleasure in the tragedy which befalls the Platts.  Sounds obvious, but to make a good painting you must be fascinated by your subject.  Furthermore, I relate to David.  I see a lot of myself in this troubled, misunderstood son.  It is David who everyone is staring at in the scene, therefore as a painting it would position the viewer as the bad child, the subject of their callous scorn.  We've all been there.  It's a universal theme.  So I hit rewind, pause, I had my painting.  A photo taken from the TV!  A painting of the Platts!  Lazy, thin and utterly, utterly needless, Paul.  This was the lowest of the low...I mean, what could I bring to this already perfect picture?  Well don't paint it, shit for brains!  Okay, I'll level with you.  Painting is always worship.  Here I would tackle...commemorate...Gail's hair.  That shiftless crown of gold, a resplendant frame for her face, it grows more fullsome with each year.  How could I not paint it at least once in my life?  Someone has to, so it may as well be me.  I built my stretcher in the proportions of a TV screen, though quite big so it would have a monumental feel.  I wanted the viewer to be in that scene.  I projected the image onto the canvas using an OHP and painted the outline.  I tell people that I don't really need to do this, that it just saves time.  This is a lie.  Lately my painting had become stiff and overworked.  You know you're in trouble when you hit glazes.  Painting becomes like varnishing a piece of wood; the emotional, intellectual connection is lost and what you're doing is purely mechanical.  Thus I worked now with a free-spirited immediacy, facilitated by my fluid handling of paint, and within a couple of days I was finished.  Of course, I had been working on this painting during every episode of Coronation Street I ever watched.  As the photo had been taken from the TV screen it was grainy and it made sense that I should paint in a loose and playful manner.  It's quite expressive.  Audrey's face is a queasy mixture of oranges and purples.  Sarah Lou's breasts are physically shaped with the paint.  I painted Stephen black and white, for the hell of it.  He's an odd one, he pops up in the show now and then, wearing his business suits and talking with an incongruous Canadian accent.  It seemed fitting then, especially as he was stood at the back, like a shadowy character, to paint him black and white.  I considered removing him altogether so that you'd be left with the three women...the three ages of woman, even...perhaps that would have been better...the wrath of woman etc...but I decided against it.  Its new gender slant would not have interested me (therefore I may have painted less well) and I wanted to stay faithful to the perfectly crafted composition (would it work without Stephen?) and to the original narrative.  I painted Gail and Sarah Lou realistically.  This is a virtuoso painting; a showcase for numerous numerous techniques.  For instance, Sarah Lou's face is created in swift, effortless marks, using the paint very thinly (the white is the white of the canvas.)  Gail's face is more closely observed.  Audrey's blouse is constructed from nuanced marks and colours, gradually accumulated until you have something at once uniquely painted yet with the sensuality of the fabric.  Gail's jumper is outrageously rendered with broad, aggressive strokes in which I smeared the paint with a bonus card.  Such changes in technique, within both the painting and a person, are jarring.  The reason they are effective, however, is because the original composition is so powerful.  I have strong foundations.  This technical eclecticism also lends the painting an unsettling, super-imposed aura which furthers the subject.  By painting the curtains in the background with broad, juicy strokes, with paint much thicker than that used for the faces, the painting has no depth.  Everything is pushed to the foreground, again heightening the impact - the confrontation with the viewer.  For the most part, the painting went smoothly.  My control over the medium, and the fact that most choices had already been made, meant that I had a great deal of focus and confidence throughout.  My emotional connection to the subject meant that I tried much harder.  If you gave me a similar image from Hollyoaks, for instance, I wouldn't make as good a painting.  However, trouble did arise with Gail's hair.  How could it not?  I'm hit and miss when it comes to hair.  The thick bouquet of paint on Audrey's head came easy.  I struggled with Gail but I knew from previous experience that I had to avoid the trap of becoming too finicky.  It would kill the whole painting if there was one laboured area.  So I tried and tried, repeatedly wiping back the paint and starting over.  Eventually I won.  Painting, I often think, is like a boxing match in which you lose every round, only to hit a KO in the last.  With Nobody Understands Me I won every round and hit a KO.  But was it a fight worth winning?