Dean Fox - The Interview

SR From London to Central Saint Martins, and then into the commercial world of advertising and gaming, your early career seems to have been shaped by both traditional artistic training and a highly structured visual environment. Looking back, what did those formative years teach you about seeing, composing and constructing an image and what eventually made you feel that you needed to return to painting?

DF Those years were not separate from painting in a way. They heavily trained my eye in composition, teaching me to reduce what to put in to convey the task as efficiently and directly as possible. Those were extremely useful times in making me think of art professionally and helping me deal with the stress it can bring. Ultimately, I needed the freedom to lead with my own creativity rather than meeting briefs; deadlines change but now it's about my creativity meeting my needs! Maybe it was a call to becoming more authentic in myself and returning to something that I picked up so naturally as a child within oil painting to express myself again. 

SR Your practice has undergone a significant evolution, moving from recognisable figurative subjects towards increasingly fragmented and abstracted compositions. What was the moment or the period in which you realised that painting could no longer remain within the boundaries of straightforward representation, and what were you searching for by pushing the image apart?

DF I don’t think there was one particular moment. There was a gradual realisation that, as an artist, we are here to create something that goes beyond what’s already been created, beyond what we already see and to open up as much possibility and fun doing so while pushing myself. The recognisable image became a starting point for me, rather than a destination. So I became interested in what happens when you take that image apart. What’s here that can’t be seen and how can I express that? I believe an authentic journey involves building oneself in the world we think we know only to realise in a way it doesn’t work for us, then tear it all down at some point of maturity and aim for an expression of subtraction, sincerity and openness. It’s less about abstraction as a style, more about trying to get beyond what’s already familiar. If we are just reproducing what we know how to see, we aren’t really adding anything to life. 

SR Art history is deeply embedded within your practice, particularly through your engagement with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters such as Monet, Degas, Vuillard and Matisse. How do you approach the difficult balance between learning from an artistic tradition and allowing yourself to move beyond it to transform historical references into something that feels entirely your own?

DF You have to know what has been done, but it’s not about copying it. All creativity is borrowed and I think art history is a starting point, not a boundary. The danger is getting stuck in the references. My balance is treating them as a catalyst, using something old to create something new. I love seeing what happens when I stop thinking about them and allow something to unfold! Most importantly, the painting has to stand on its own, not as a homage.

SR Your paintings often seem to exist in an unstable space between what can be recognised and what can only be sensed. When you begin a new work, are you ultimately searching for a specific image, or for a particular feeling, atmosphere or state of mind and how do you know when the painting has reached the point where it should stop?

DF I don’t think I’m searching for a specific image when I start. The image is more a doorway into something else. I’m more interested in that space between recognition and a removal of intention or nothing beyond the intention of creating something I feel is beautiful, and the process of creating itself. Honestly, I never really know where a painting is going when I begin. I don’t want to force it towards something predetermined. Knowing when to stop is probably the hardest part. I tend to stop when the painting feels like it can stand on its own and doesn’t need me to explain it anymore.

SR Throughout your career, you have experienced a number of important exhibition milestones, from The Edge of the World to Contemporary Classicism and, more recently, your presentations with Matt Carey-Williams and international galleries. Is there one exhibition, encounter or moment of recognition that fundamentally changed the way you understood yourself as a professional artist?

DF: I think I realised the paradox of letting go of the things I wanted to achieve in some way, yet still doing it as the thing you love to do without expectation or any premise it defines me as a person or brings me fulfilment or happiness was key. I stopped thinking of painting as something I was trying to build a career in, and more something that I simply did and to be as authentic and honest in it, doing it, as possible. That’s a constant challenge you have to keep yourself in check with. Recognition doesn’t really change the work. If anything, it just makes me more aware that I need to keep moving forwards. I don’t think there’s a point where you arrive. The goal is to keep pushing the work somewhere you haven’t been before. 

SR Your recent paintings have introduced an increasingly complex dialogue between memory, interior space, fragmentation and abstraction. How much of your own lived experience enters these spaces, and how do you decide what should remain personal and what should be transformed into something more universal?

DF I think my lived experience inevitably enters the work, but not in a literal way. I’m not interested in painting a memory or trying to tell someone what happened to me. I believe what you produce is an expression of one’s maturity spiritually and how receptive you are to the creative process, allowing things to flow. Everything you experience becomes part of how you see, whether you’re conscious of it or not. Art is very much an authentic expression of the very moment you are creating, if approached with the right intention. The personal gets transformed through the process of painting. It becomes less about my particular experience and more about something that might be recognisable or resonate with somebody else. I think that’s where the work becomes interesting to me: when something that seems personal stops belonging to me entirely and I am completely removed from it . 

SR After years of developing your language, what still feels unresolved in your painting? Are there subjects, formal possibilities or territories of abstraction that you feel you have not yet reached—and that you are now particularly interested in pursuing?

DF This is endless and probably the biggest frustration of the artist that keeps the pursuit going. We are constantly trying to express that which is indefinable and so always fall short of the task but only in our mind's interpretation of it. I think a lot of it is unresolved, and I actually think that’s important. If I felt I’d arrived at a finished language, I probably wouldn’t have much reason to keep painting and there would be no evolution. I am heavily aware that the journey is far greater than any destination. I am interested in taking the work further into abstraction but without losing that sense that there’s something recognisable underneath it all. I want to keep testing how far you can take an image before it stops being an image, and what exists beyond that point. I don’t really have a destination in mind. I think the interesting aspect is the bit I haven’t found yet that often expresses itself as frustration. As an artist, we’re here to create something that goes beyond what has already been made, so I’m more in a process of discovering what I don’t know than repeating what I already know.

SR Ultimately, beyond references, technique and the history of painting, what do you want painting to give you today? And when someone encounters one of your works for the first time, what would you hope remains with them after the image itself has disappeared from view?

DF I want the painting to give me the ability to do more and to create without restrictions. I also want the chance to find something I don’t already know about myself through it. For the viewer, I don’t need them to remember the image as such. I want them to be removed from a sense of anything defined. I want them to feel the painting or its memory and allow that experience to be something they can’t quite put into words. If something lingers, after the image is gone, then I think that’s the real success.

@All images are courtesy of Matt Carey-Williams and Dean Fox