Interview with Chris Silver
Your artistic journey seems deeply intertwined with your personal experiences, particularly regarding mental health. How do you navigate the delicate balance between expressing your inner world through your art while also connecting with a diverse audience?
My artistic journey is intricately woven with personal experiences, especially those related to mental health. Navigating the balance between expressing my inner world and connecting emotionally with a diverse audience is crucial. I believe good art should have soul and evoke emotions, making use of varied themes like nostalgia, pop, and expressionism to ensure broader accessibility. By playing with colour, I aim to depict inner anxieties and spark emotions in viewers.
Could you share how your background, experiences, and personal beliefs have influenced your artistic style and the themes you choose to explore in your work?
Looking ahead, I’m keen on painting historical figures, integrating impressionism, fauvism, and postmodernism. I was brought up in the southside of Glasgow, Scotland. I grew up going to a Catholic school. After high school I went to college to do photography, which paved the way for creating a portfolio for art school. I was accepted into Painting & Printmaking at The Glasgow School of Art. Ever since art school, I have wanted to do a master’s in art psychotherapy, as I feel art can be so therapeutic for your mental health I try to explore the psychology of colour in my work and the emotional connotations of mark making. As an adolescent I had to deal with the beginnings of a mental health struggle and also coming out as gay.
You’ve mentioned a fascination with vintage photography, especially in monochrome, and the act of injecting color into these images. Can you elaborate on how you decide which colors to introduce, and how this process reflects your interpretation of the original photograph’s emotional context?
I try tell a story with an empathetic approach, put myself in the scene like a writer gets engrossed in characters in a novel. Whatever emotional response I feel, I react with certain colours. Some can be dreamlike or haunting. The choice of colour is often intuitive and I want to get across a certain mood and atmosphere additionally, so the work can often be quite spontaneous, idiosyncratic and based on how I’m feeling. I love electric and neon colours but sometimes I feel different palettes are necessary.
The influence of artists like Henri Matisse, Gerhard Richter, and Andy Warhol is evident in your work. How do you draw inspiration from these artists while ensuring your unique voice and approach remain at the forefront of your creations?
The influence of artists like Henri Matisse, Gerhard Richter, and Andy Warhol are a big influence in my work. However, I believe in experimenting and making mistakes during the process of emulating paintings I love and enjoy, leads to the development of my own unique visual language. In terms of colour, fauvism and pop are really inspiring, I like how you can create unreal colours that have their own visual language and narrative. The language of colour is important in my work, and I hope the little touches of all these movements create something unique.
What inspired the choice of color palette and texture in oil paintings collection?
The choice of colour palette and texture in my oil paintings collection is deeply personal. Inspired by love, I explore emotional connotations in colours. Texture, influenced by artists like Jenny Saville, involves layering and scraping, adding a multidimensional aspect to my work. My mother died in May 2023 and it has been the worst thing that has ever happened to me, I miss her tremendously. So I decided to honour her and create a portrait I thought would capture her essence and personality. I used a mixture of oil paints and pastel. It is one of the pieces I am most proud of. This year, I have been working on painting people I know and reacting to them emotionally when painting through visual elements such as mark making and colour. Depending on the person, work can be loose, gestural or impasto. My mood also comes into play.
Can you tell us about the themes or stories behind these paintings? How do you see these paintings in relation to each other? Is there a common thread that ties them together?
Themes in my paintings vary based on the series. In 2022, nostalgia was a central theme, injecting colour into vintage black and white photographs to create new narratives. Portraits aim to represent individuals’ psychology and inner beauty, drawing inspiration from artists like David Hockney, hence working with people I know. The colours and textures in my work, although they are evolving, maintain a certain continuity.
How do you approach the process of layering and depth, as seen in the complexity of these works?
Exploring layering and depth is a gradual process. Starting in a graphic, technical manner, I transition to a more expressive approach, experimenting with elimination, blurring, scraping, and mark making. The journey involves trial and error, sometimes resulting in the need to start afresh. I often ruin canvases. It’s frustrating but with layering you need to know when to stop.
Looking forward, you’ve expressed an interest in painting portraits of historical figures and integrating elements of impressionism, fauvism, and postmodernism. How do you envision this evolving your current style, and what challenges and opportunities do you anticipate in exploring these new themes?
I hope to create more complicated compositions, experiment with monochromatic works, and paint historical figures. Anticipating challenges, I recognize the difficulty in capturing a vintage vibe while keeping the artwork contemporary. I really hope that the work will continue to develop, and hopefully I can work on compositions that are large scale, utilise lots of different media and lots of different figures and props. I have been inspired by Jenny Saville, Adrian Ghenie and Andrew Salgado.
As an emerging artist, what do you find to be the most challenging aspects of establishing yourself in the contemporary art world, and how do you navigate these challenges to create and showcase your work?
As an emerging artist, my advice to others is to persist, practice continuously, and be proactive in seeking opportunities. Challenges include difficulty in getting exhibited and understanding the diverse preferences among galleries.
In today’s digital age, social media and online platforms play a significant role in how art is consumed and appreciated. How do you integrate these tools into your artistic practice, and how do they influence the way you engage with your audience and the wider art community?
Acknowledging the impact of social media in the digital age, I constantly explore other artists for inspiration, document my work in progress, and share studio shots. Social media serves as a tool for staying updated with the art world, gathering fresh ideas, and engaging with a wider audience. Sometimes I get depressed though and find it hard to keep up with it, I am naturally introverted too. But I love art and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
