An Interview with *Lien

Neil James (lien), has been a member of deviantArt for several years, sharing his amazing abstract works. In this interview he discusses what motivates his art, as well as his process and choice of materials. He also shares his influences in abstract art.

1. Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a 39-year-old man living in Cambridge U.K; I am a full time artist and have been painting for over twenty years.

2. What in life motivates you as an artist?

Simply being alive and having a consciousness is constantly amazing. As far as my paintings are concerned they are the product of my experiences, a reflection to me about what is going on deeper in there. My motivation is the desire to explore what it is, for me personally, to be alive, and in doing so I consider my job as an artist is to allow others to explore their own experience through my work. The other thing that motivates me as a painter is the actual physical act of painting. I enjoy working with the materials to an almost addictive extent.

3. Which artists have influenced your work?

Most of the Abstract Expressionists from the New York School have at one time or another influenced my work. When I discovered Mark Rothko en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rot… and Barnett Newman en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_… I was in my teens so these two painters had a profound effect on the way I considered the spiritual or emotional response to a pure surface value. Also the English abstract painters John Hoyland and Victor Pasmore have been influential because both of them instilled a sense of belonging in me, on a physical and philosophical level. Antoni Tapies and Anselm Kiefer have also been an influence in the last few years regarding the way I go about my work on a physical level.

4. Tell us a little about your process, or how you work.

That’s a difficult question actually; I have to be on my own in the studio with no distraction, I also tend to have music or the radio on in the background. But as far as physically painting is concerned I don’t really consider the process while I’m working as I think it gets in the way of the creating. Obviously I have different techniques I use in different paintings, which are the product of twenty years of practice, but I can’t go through those individually here. The easiest way to describe the process is that it is the application of technique sympathetic to the feeling I am exploring. I do what the painting wants when it wants it using my knowledge of the different techniques I have learned, until the painting is finished. The process is the product of many years of experiment.


5. You use a variety of materials to create your abstract paintings. Everything from alabaster dust to gold leaf to blood. Tell us why you choose the materials you use.

The materials I use are extremely important to me in the making of a painting. I am trying to create in my work more an experience of feeling, sensing and emotion than one of pictorial observation; I want my paintings to be as much a "presence" as a "picture", so they have to be tangible events in space with tactility to them. The different dry pigments and stone dusts I use have their own distinctive qualities, which create this tactility and sculptural aspect. The other materials are chosen for their symbolic value and/or physical qualities relative to creating the presence of the finished piece. Basically, if a certain material feels right for the piece, it gets used.


6. Do you ever think that abstract is a catch-all category? How do you define or determine if a work is abstract?

It is a ‘catch all’ category for most people. I think that abstract as a term to define visual art is mostly used to separate that which is not very obviously figurative from everything else, which is where the problem starts, as there are many different degrees and styles of abstract work. I think how the term abstract is used is relative to the artistic education of the person using the term. I personally don’t like the word abstract very much as I think that everything is connected to everything else. To paraphrase Victor Pasmore; “We are all part of the natural process, there is no getting away from this, the circle was here long before the wheel and the bird long before the airplane. Everything a human makes will either look like or work like something in nature”.


7. What are your favourite abstract works? Choose one of your own, and one from another artist.

It’s difficult to choose one of my own pieces as a favourite, but ‘Wake Alone’ is a very important piece to me so I will pick that. I definitely wouldn’t sell this painting; it’s far too close to me in its brutal honesty about the loneliness I feel. lien.deviantart.com/art/Wake-A…

It’s equally difficult to choose just one piece by another artist, as I know hundreds of paintings. But I think a painting I would really love to meet personally is ‘Jerusalem’ artchive.com/artchive/K/kiefer… by Anselm Kiefer en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm_K….


8. What do you want people to know about you and your work that they may not already?

How much I appreciate them looking. Being an artist is a very lonely experience and if it were not for the support and concern I get from collectors and other artists I would definitely not be able to continue, so I am incredibly grateful for any and all support.


Here are a few of the works from lien


Please take some time to check out the rest of his work here: lien.deviantart.com/gallery/