Danny Leyland: Archive of Sensation

Danny Leyland gained a Runner Up Award within the Jackson’s Artwork Prize this yr together with his work Hunters of the Black Swan. Right here, Danny shares how his childhood years within the artwork class nonetheless encourage his method to the studio now, in addition to discovering the worth in unlikely supplies, and the way he tempers the velocity at which his work are seen.

Above picture: Danny within the studio

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Danny Leyland: Archive of Sensation

 

Josephine: Might you inform us about your creative background?

Danny: I’m unsure that there was a specific eureka! second as a toddler. I all the time preferred making artwork, and I undoubtedly drew loads, significantly once I was imagined to be doing different issues, comparable to concentrating at school. I used to be by no means the most effective at drawing, and dealing arduous to play catch as much as those that have been extra proficient could have been essentially the most useful lesson I might have discovered.

With a gaggle of different youngsters I spent a variety of time within the artwork classroom, even outdoors of classes. We used it as an area to hang around in addition to make work. We’d take heed to music and play pranks on one another, like utilizing glue weapons to stay the chairs to one another’s butts, or scrawl messages on the again of one another’s work, a lot to the fury of the trainer. I feel these occasions established firmly inside me the thought of the studio as being a extremely inventive place, the place you possibly can let free a bit, and create your personal sense of which means by means of supplies, moderately than have a set of prescribed meanings shoved down your throat.

I studied for an Artwork Basis at Oxford Brookes College, a course on which I now educate as an affiliate tutor. Afterwards, I went to check Portray on the Edinburgh School of Artwork, from 2013-2016. I stayed in Edinburgh for a few years, working at a studio after which in my flat, exhibiting at artist run areas, till, in 2018, I made a decision to enter educating. I labored as a trainer in artwork & design in Additional Schooling in Oxford after which in Cambridge. After the Covid restrictions started to ease off, my associate and I made a decision to maneuver to Sydney Australia. I had a studio in Sydney the place I labored up till 2023, once I returned to London to check for my MA in Portray on the Royal School of Artwork.

 

 

Josephine: What does a typical working day within the studio seem like for you? Do you’ve any vital routines or rituals?

Danny: Probably not. Like lots of people I work finest early within the mornings, or within the evenings. I attempt to eat healthily. Consuming lunch is a specific pleasure, and an effective way to interrupt up the working day. I all the time cycle to work. For the time being the route is about 45 minutes, which is an effective period of time to assume by means of some concepts, pursue a few tangents, and usually fantasise about portray.

 

Delight of the vanquished, 2024
Danny Leyland
Oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm | 35.5 x 47 in

 

Josephine: Which supplies or instruments might you not stay with out?

Danny: Usually talking I’m fairly averse to settling upon a technique of doing issues, one system or “course of” to make use of in direction of making artwork. For that cause I’m fairly allergic to the thought of an ‘artist assertion’, as if one piece of textual content might pretty summarise the wonderful plurality and sophisticated community of concepts which make up one’s artwork follow.

I get pleasure from gathering issues round me, and responding to the supplies and surfaces I come throughout. Lately, for example, I had some stretcher bars delivered, and I ended up making a bunch of work on the brown packing paper through which the bars have been wrapped.

Since my undergraduate research my work has continued to evolve and alter drastically. I discover this extremely thrilling, a minimum of looking back, the place I can see how a lot I’ve discovered, and simply how a lot of the world I should have absorbed and responded to. I was afraid that the inconsistency of my method advised some form of lack of creative integrity, just like the artist Stanwell in certainly one of Edith Wharton’s brief tales, who displays that ‘he had by no means been very happy with his adaptability. It had appeared to him to point the dearth of a person standpoint.’ However once I skilled to be a trainer, and browse a little bit of pedagogical concept, I got here to know that it’s higher to conceptualise one’s capability to be taught as one thing that isn’t fastened, however one thing that’s fluid and ever-changeable.

I ponder whether I might really stay with out pictures? We stay in an age that’s so dominated by pictures, and I feel it’s vital to consider how this shapes our work as artists. I’ve been attempting to organise my method to utilizing pictures a bit extra fastidiously this yr, by archiving my completely different sources in ring-binder folders, and by permitting myself to revisit the identical picture throughout a number of works.

 

 

Josephine: What are the phases of your work on a portray? Do you make drafts?

Danny: The work I make appear to require a strong place to begin. This would possibly take the type of {a photograph}, a drawing, or a movie nonetheless. Generally I draft a model of the composition in a painterly sketch, or a extra detailed drawing, however I don’t all the time. Generally I work extra immediately on to the canvas.

I wouldn’t need to plan with an excessive amount of element what’s going to occur throughout the entire portray. The method of portray is crammed with downside fixing, an actual voyage of discovery, and a number of the most fun outcomes come out of taking a danger, attempting one thing new, like introducing a brand new picture, or erasing a number of the present varieties so as to merely and unify the composition.

It appears to me that if the thought for a portray have been too deliberate out already, then there can be no level in portray the image.

 

 

Josephine: Mark-making appears to play an vital position in your work. Even when portray a flat airplane, you utilize a variety of marks that add texture. How did you develop this semi-impressionistic fashion, and the way does your material work in tandem with that?

Danny: Work are like memory-banks. Working layer upon layer, erasing and including data, the painted floor turns into a form of archive containing the sensations and experiences of the artist throughout the time of the portray. Typically once I take a look at an older portray of mine, I’m instantly reminded of the music I used to be listening to, or the e-book I used to be studying, the concepts with which I used to be grappling. A lot of a portray’s time-travelling potential comes from the mark-making.

I discover mark-making actually fascinating. If a painted mark can specific one thing to the viewer, then equally it will possibly obfuscate or deceive.

Usually, I attempt to keep away from the fatuous, florid gesture. The “train of the wrist”, as certainly one of my tutors known as it. As a substitute I’m looking for a type of mark-making that’s restrained, economical, and lightweight of contact. Lately, and to this finish, I’ve been trying carefully on the artists Mamma Andersson and Cecilia Edelalk, every of whom, in several methods, can conjure up a kind or an area with super confidence and spaciousness.

I all the time like when there’s a state of stress inside a portray. A roughness on the edges, the place it feels just like the portray might rise up and transfer off of the body and stroll across the room. A cost or feeling of potential created when a piece feels unfinished. Phyllida Barlow spoke about this concept. This sense of “becomingness” is a very fruitful place through which to be as an artist.

I’m led by a enjoyment of painted worlds that fragment and vibrate, work which work to dissolve boundaries between the body-subject and its surrounding atmosphere, and to stress the fabric world of objects and issues over the subjectivity of the human particular person. On this approach, the community of painted marks which represent my work may very well be a form of echo of concepts of new-materialism and object-oriented-ontology.

 

 

Josephine: Do you repeatedly draw or hold a sketchbook? If that’s the case, how does this inform your work?

Danny: My sketchbook work is fairly sporadic. Most of my books are made up of written notes, serving to me to replicate and discover new concepts, with little diagrams and stick-figure sketches breaking apart the textual content to report concepts for work. I like to attract in museums, not simply the work however the objects too.

 

 

Josephine: Have you ever ever had a interval of stagnation in creativity? If that’s the case, what helped you overcome it?

Danny: I had a interval in a studio from 2021 to 2023 the place I used to be working within the largest studio I’ve but had. I didn’t need to work that a lot in my part-time job, and all of the situations ought to have lined up for me to create a lot of new work. Nevertheless it ended up being such a irritating time! I hardly completed something. It felt nearly surreal, dreamlike, to be making use of paint on to a floor day after day, however coming no nearer to truly realising any of my concepts. Trying again at the moment, I can see how extremely un-disciplined I used to be. I used to be too cussed to place issues to at least one aspect so as to begin one thing new. I used to be too hesitant to make the agency selections essential so as to change a portray. I feel that being round a physique of different artists who can help you, and to whose vitality you may reply, is totally important in serving to information you thru the harder moments.

 

 

Josephine: The marks in Hunters of the Black Swan seem fairly chalky and matt – do you utilize the oil paint in a particular technique to create this impact?

Danny: I don’t have a tendency to combine my paints with any medium aside from turpentine. Many of the matt high quality to the floor which you noticed comes from the paints themselves. A few of my paint tubes are fairly previous, and I depart them out on my palette for fairly a very long time earlier than scraping them off, and they also get all dense and dried-out after some time. This serves me fairly nicely as a result of I usually like to put completely different colors over and in opposition to one another, making a kinetic high quality with a fuzziness and a way of vibration, and you’ll’t do that with such immediacy if the paint is just too oily. Likewise, should you’re scraping paint again, and portray issues a number of occasions, then I discover that drier paints mark the canvas with an attention-grabbing stain.

The chalkiness and matt-ness of the paint additionally contributes to the “slowness” of the portray, when it comes to how it’s learn by a viewer. Whereas paint with a larger fluidity can reveal every little thing too shortly, can outline a line too neatly, can kind boundaries too definitively. Gwen John was a grasp at this. I imagine she blended chalk powders in together with her paints. And there may be actually a marvellous softness, a slow-release in her work which rewards a sustained trying from the viewer.

 

Woodsman at work, 2024
Danny Leyland
Oil on board, 19.5 x 15 cm | 7.5 x 6 in

 

Josephine: Are there any particular artists or mentors who’ve impressed you?

Danny: The 2 exhibitions which greater than every other immediately impacted my portray have been the Bonnard exhibition on the Tate, in 2019, and the Michael Armitage exhibition on the RA in 2021. After I went to those exhibitions, and appeared deeply into the works, it wasn’t a lot that I felt impressed to go on and paint otherwise, it was extra I felt that I might already paint like that, that I already understood what they have been doing – nearly as if these artists have been really me, and that these have been my works. I’m not saying that I’m wherever practically nearly as good as Bonnard or Armitage! I’m simply attempting to explain the sensation, that, once I noticed the exhibitions, I felt deep down that I understood what these artists have been about.

 

 

Josephine: How did it really feel to grasp you had gained a Runner Up prize?

Danny: It felt unimaginable to have my work seen and recognised amongst so many wonderful artists, an actual privilege.

 

Josephine: What supplies are you trying ahead to buying along with your voucher?

Danny: I purchased an entire vary of Michael Harding paints. I’ve all the time bought by with the funds choices, and I nonetheless assume {that a} good artist ought to be capable to make a fantastic portray with low cost paints. However I assumed I ought to take this wonderful alternative to amass some lovely paints which I often wouldn’t afford for myself.

 

 

Josephine: What’s arising subsequent for you?

Danny: In August I’m setting off to Portugal to attend the PADA residency. I can’t wait to fulfill the opposite artists who can be working there, and, with their vital help, to discover some new concepts.

Comply with Danny on Instagram

Go to Danny’s web site

 

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Additional Studying

Suggestions for Watercolour Glazing

Tremendous Artwork Restoration With James Bloomfield

Sarah Daring: Shifting Views

Recreating the Color Palette of Claude Monet

 

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