How do you feel the art world has changed in the last thirty years with the introduction of computers and technology?
I don't think it's changed that much to be honest, but I'm not a brilliant goer into the art world in the sense of galleries and museums because I spend a lot of my time at home making art. I have seen a computer in the Tate, but I thought they could be more sophisticated on the level than they really are. So I would say not a lot yet, but I think it will change, inevitably.

Has making digital images effected the way you paint on canvas?
Yes. It's affected the way I paint in that I do studies for a canvas on computer first. Before I got a computer, I used to do studies on paper. Studies are very meticulous, and very exact, and I never start a canvas until I know exactly what I want to do, and I make hundreds of changes before I start the canvas. So now I do all that on the computer.

I draw with a mouse on the computer, which is different, and sitting still to draw is different to standing up to paint. So there's physical things that change because my physicality is different, and then technically the computer can do some things better than I can do with a paintbrush. But I can do some things better with a paint brush than I can with a computer.

So there's an interaction between the two types of drawing and the finished product. The more I work on the computer, my finished product is shifting in a way that I can't really define but I can see it. It's a sort of intangible thing. I got the computer thinking I was just going to archive my past and make collages, and in fact, once I started looking at my work from photographs on screen, they it didn't look good enough, and I ended up remaking them digitally, which was essentially retracing them.

Then I started making collages with them once they were on screen. This led to making my old works feel like new works, because I'd taken images from paintings that I'd done maybe in the late sixties/early seventies, mixed them with images from other periods, but it became a new piece that I was making now on the computer. So, some of them have popped out of the computer into being prints, and some of them have led to me drawing in a different way on the computer, which has now led to me drawing slightly differently on the paintings.

So, do you think it improved your work, having a computer and using a computer?
Let's say it added dimensions and changes that I couldn't make. I've just got new tools that allow me to do new things. But it's still me doing the things. If I get better, does one get better? I can't answer that.

Has using the Internet changed the way that you look at art?
Now I don't know about that, because I've looked at a lot of art on the Internet, but I haven't actually come across much that I thought was fabulous. The Internet's like a great reference library and it has stills and it has animations. As an art form in itself I'm not sure.

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Content last updated: 01/04/2005

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