Interview with Paul Alexander Thornton

Hi, Can you introduce yourself for us? (Where you from etc...)

I'm from Hastings, but currently living in Peckham in South London



What's your background? Art school? Self learner? Art for Dummies?

I taught myself mainly, but I've just finished my first term at uni studying surface design, I'm planning to go and do a fine art degree after this



How will you describe your art for somebody who doesn't know your stuff?

It's difficult to describe my work in its entirety to somebody because it changes a lot, I was trying to tell someone who had never seen my drawings about them the other day and I ended up saying "I get into one idea and I explore it until i get bored, and then I move on" which is pretty accurate.



What are your favourite materials to work with?

I love pencils, biros, coloured pens, coloured pencils, tea stain, permanent markers, sometimes a bit of acrylic



How long does it take you to produce a piece? Do you start out with a sketchbook or do you freehand all the way?

I spend hours filling up sketch books, sometimes I like a little drawing in a book so much I frame it, sometimes it works best as a preliminary sketch and the bigger piece comes later. My most recent piece, a large circular repeat pattern that's hand drawn with black and red biros, took me about 3 weeks (minus breaks). That started off as 2 little drawings in my sketch book, one of a skull and the other of a rose, I already knew how I wanted to do the piece more or less, so I just took those 2 drawings out of my sketch book and copied them, into a circular repeat. I drew out faint guidelines in pencil first, and then the final touch was to fill in the center of the drawing by copying some details of a carnation that i drew about a year and a half ago. A lot of my more psychedelic patterns are just completely freestyle while listening to music that inspires me. Each little series of drawings is approached similarly to one another until I move onto the next thing.



Where do you get your inspiration from?

The psychedelic drawings originally were inspired by music artists like The Aphex Twin, Daedelus, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares. I was kind of interested in the idea of synesthesia and wanted to explore that by approaching drawing with those ideas in mind. Before that was a lot of portraits and illustrative drawings of people, they were inspired heavily by David Hockney's work as well as Chris Cunningham's drawings. More recently I've been getting inspired by tattoo artists like Thom Hooper and Yellow Blaze tattoo studio as well as William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Bridget Riley



Do you paint/work outside sometimes? Where can we see your stuff?

I don't really. A lot of my friends do street art and graffiti and I really respect their work, but in a way having never done street art, although I do love it, it would seem opportunistic for me to start now and I don't want to be jumping on the bandwagon, riding off of its popularity. There's a lot of wicked street artists out there though, really amazing work. I would consider collaborating with some street artists on some paste ups if it was done in the right way.



Who influence you the most, any favourite artist(s)?

hmm difficult to pick a favourite, I did forget to mention Picasso and Modigliani, I love their work. I can't really pick a favourite though.



Living as an artist is sometimes difficult financially, any part time job?

I've been doing a bit of work for an independent games designer recently, just drawing what they ask me to. I design prints for fashion labels as well which gets me a bit of money... I'm still broke though! I'm a student so I'm living off my student loan at the moment



What do you think of the current "Street Art" movement?

It's a big scene, some work is better than others but it's definitely a really valid scene and much better to see interesting or beautiful works than a load of concrete. Some of the street artists out there are making seriously amazing works that blow me away. It's really nice for me to be able to exhibit along side them in galleries sometimes and meet them too.

Best Gallery in the world? and why?

I don't know! Impossible to pick one, I've seen some amazing galleries and hope to see many more.

Best City to paint outside? and why?

I used to live in Swansea, I like it there but the city center could do with livening up, visually I mean. Personally I would like to paint somewhere warm like Brazil!



Beer and Fag or Tea and Biscuit?

Tea and biscuit, sometimes wine and fag but I've actually gone from smoking weed all day every day to giving up smoking altogether so maybe just wine on its own, depends how drunk I am.



What are your plans in the near future? Any upcoming exhibitions?

At the moment I've got a drawing in Stolenspace (until the 21st) in their xmas show, I'm talking to a few different people about my next projects, including potential future agents/managers, galleries all over the place inside and outside the UK, interesting future collaborations it's all very exciting but until I've actually confirmed something I'd rather keep quiet about it.

http://www.paulalexanderthornton.com/

myspace.com/paulalexanderthornton