ATOM STUDIOS/BOB THOMPSON

 

BOB: I did try to make a connection between the painting and printmaking I was doing in terms of colour and trying to create depth, through elimination as the way I paint and over paint allowing things to show through.
I wanted to see it happening with the printmaking, I experimented with the etching process which I enjoyed for quite a long time. Then it was screenprinting that I really began to develop ideas with, infact I combined screenprinting with the etching process; aquatints, painting and over painting. Lights important to me.
I also think life drawing is important to keep up your drawing skills.
Creating a number of screens to print over printing and over printing until most of it was beginning to disappear and something else was beginning to develop through it. Once again I didn’t know when to stop… it was the process that I was engaging with.
PETER: It reminds me of the decollage of the old billboards you tend to see, revelation of layers.
BOB: Yes when it’s torn away. I suppose the screens that I created I did an element of that by tearing things and putting them on and then printing and over printing, even creasing them up and crackling the paper, rubbing colour into it and making a photographic image of it and you can see some of these effects.
I quite like Gerhard Richter, there was a piece of work at the Tate Britain at one time it was red but there were 38 stages, it was one his squeegee paintings, but he showed 38 stages and at any stage it could have been finished, but it took it to the final one which was the 39th and he came out with this statement that it was a series of Yes, No decisions with a final Yes and to me that’s what Arts about and it’s getting to that Yes which I find difficult. I have sold paintings and seen them thinking I should have done more on that.
So I try to combine other things in with the screenprinting, I was looking for a way to build up images.
PETER: Would you say your work is influenced on the landscape, light on the landscape?
BOB: There is an element there, I am very much influenced by the landscape, I’m never quite sure if it comes out in some of the paintings. I like to take images quite close and create something abstract out of something figurative and that’s what some of these are. Close up of flowers, close up of the human body but it’s the light that’s very important to me.