Andrew Litten is a staple of the Cornwall art scene, has been exhibited worldwide, and is now on the roster of JD Malat Gallery. Despite his south-west surroundings, the work is not sunny, laid-back, or coastal; it is raw to the bone with a disturbing intensity, yet imbued with empathy, figures are stripped back until only emotion is left. He is a very good artist making fucking weird art.
Alcohol Now
We faced one another on plush sofas at the back of a Mayfair gallery, when I said that I had seen somewhere Litten say that he wanted to disturb the senses of the viewer, and then later say that he does not consider the viewer at all when he’s painting. How can those two things be true?
“I feel differently about what I am doing now compared to ten years ago when I said I don’t think about the viewer.
“My creativity is genuinely exploratory and if people want me to put words to things, then I guess I should always reserve the right to be completely contradictory if it works out that way with time.”
Sexual Intercourse
I then asked whether he had an image in mind for the viewer.
“At the beginning, the paintings are so far away because they often take years to make,” he began, “when I start its always with a really clear sense of the subject. It’s always something very particular to me, that I can not only have an image in mind, but I can research and take interest in learning about it and accumulate lots of images from different sources.
“There’s this constant running thread of the paintings changing all the time, it always has to be held together by a very strong sense of the subject that I’m trying to articulate. That’s my way of achieving the intensity that I feel is important, pushing the picture beyond just being a flat image and being something that feels actually tangible, completely convincing, and authentic.”
ArrayWhen looking into Litten’s paintings, you are caught by a permeating anxiety. There’s something in the work that is fearful, human, and worried, despite the distorted figure.
Knowing already that the great Louise Bourgeois is an influence on Litten, his work reminded me of one of her quotes, “this figure I feel pushed to make is going to dissolve or appease my anxiety”, yet that anxiety still leaps from her work. I asked whether Litten had the same feeling when it came to creating and depicting anxiety.
“I think it’s incredible how you can use paint or clay or any hand manipulated material to transmit energy,” he stated, “and she [Bourgeois] was an amazing master of imbuing any material she was using so full of energy, so exciting, and unexpected, and I think that’s the challenge for me. I’m not necessarily interested in always portraying an anxiety, I would say it’s more fragility or an intensity.”
Head of a Dying Man
This translates into an emotional honesty, the drive behind his work’s impact is the unguarded nature of the image. The animal instincts, the desire and fear, are believable and relatable because of this fragility.
“I think the thing is, there needs to be a point to it – the whole point is that when you experience something meaningful, it needs to be treated with care and empathy… there’s an incredible power to empathy that we’re given as humans.
“I started to realise quite recently how powerful empathy is as a creative tool and as a way of uniting things with a purpose, with that purpose being humanity at the centre. It’s kind of a really obvious thing, it means you can speak to anyone, it’s something that anyone can understand.”
Copulate
In my mind, the central focus of his paintings are the eyes; they absolutely pierce. Despite their surroundings, the eyes stare back at you, clean, crisp, and human. They are the centre of how we understand and navigate the world, and where we see humanity in others. I told Litten as much.
“Yeah. The face is obviously where we go primarily to read emotion, to read people’s feelings, the eyes and mouth. It’s endless, the worry and care I try and give to the eyes and mouth to make sure that it reads the way I think it needs to.
“It shouldn’t be too obvious – The level of subtlety that you can get in the shape of the eye and mouth is extraordinary. I like the stillness you can get with the eyes; in my case, the paintings are quite turbulent, so the stillness of the eyes can offer an interesting level of intensity.”
Boy vs Man
If the paintings are taking years to be completed, I asked if the number of pictures he accumulates prompt new directions or whether it was all a constant churning progress of ideas and image.
“It’s all mixing together, it’s a complete chaos in my mind and I like it that way.” Litten remarked, “I like it to be a challenge, too much information is great. I don’t feel bound by any stylistic starting point, it has to be able to go off on a tangent,
Despite their surroundings, the eyes stare back at you, clean, crisp, and human
I have to be able to feel like I’m exploring the world and learning about the subject through that painting. If it’s specifically about anxiety, or feeling paranoid, I will actually explore that and do lots of reading about the topic. Also, through talking to people about how they’ve experienced these things, that’s when the art starts to allow you to explore life, rather than just being a cold image of something.
In exploring life, Litten’s paintings are less portraiture and more about the emotional connection between figures. He is a painter of emotions, merely using the body to let the emotion flow through the brushstrokes and into our consciousness. Interview over, we thanked each other, and he left with a bottle of water and a 5-hour train journey ahead of him.
The Artist
