Biography

I have made a video, in which I talk about my career and showcase my work This was for a presentation in November 2024. I am in the process of editing the video so I can make it public, via a YouTube link. In the meantime the transcript is provided.

Art and Imagination exhibition at The Playhouse in Alnwick (November 2024)

Edinburgh College of Art 1999

Entry to ECA was by portfolio only, no talking about art. Anyway, I got in. I loved Edinburgh, especially the record shops. The Art course was very traditional with lots of drawing and painting skills: life drawing, portrait classes and museum and garden visits.

It was a funny time for art. In London you had the Saatchi, Sensations exhibition and the YBA shock tactics with Tracy Emin’s Messy Bed and Damian Hurst’s Shark in formaldehyde, I didn’t really go for that. I didn’t really like it. I thought it was a bit pretentious. It wasn’t for me. I decided I wanted to capture real life, real people, doing real things. I was inspired by the films of Ken Loach, and I decided to paint North East football fans. That’s Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough fans all going to the game. Some of my friends on the course went down the Sensations route. One had a light in the corner of a room, and he just switched it on and off. That was his degree show. My degree show sold out, which was good going for a student.

Mural Art 2000

After I graduated, I got a job working for an interior design company, called In House Designs. They specialised in decorative paint techniques and mural art. I was employed as their mural artist. I traveled all over the North East and Yorkshire, to very wealthy peoples’ houses, painting murals on walls. One of these houses was the now ex England Manager, Gareth Southgate. One day I remember he came into the room, where I was painting. It was his kid’s room. He said, “Hello, Gavin. Would you like a cup of tea?” I’m thinking, ‘Gareth Southgate making me a cup of tea!’ Anyway, I said sure, and he came back with the tea and his kid. He said to his kid, “I bet you wish your daddy could paint that.” I remember thinking, ‘I wish I could do what you do’.

One client wanted an entire room painted as a jungle. When she saw it she was overcome with pleasure. That was nice. Unfortunately paint techniques went out of fashion and the design company folded, so time to move on.

Dancer Paintings 2004

I went to work in a small gallery in Corbridge, called The Art Café. This was interesting, because it gave me a real insight into what it’s like working in a gallery. What paintings sell, what customer’s like, and how to price your work. I remember picking up this leaflet. It was for a ballet performance in the Queen’s Hall in Hexham. I could see it had everything: it had the lighting, it had the people (I like painting people), it had an atmosphere, and it had the story. So, I contacted the theatre, asked if I could take photos in the performance, and they agreed. After that I produced a series of dancer paintings over a number of years. These were successful. Galleries all across the country took these dancer paintings, and I sole lots. One painting was nominated for the ‘Not the Turner Prize’ and exhibited in Mall Galleries in London.  Six images were taken up by a print company. These prints were in John Lewis, Next and other high street shops, which was cool. I was young and a bit naive. Unfortunately, I didn’t really know the ins and outs of publishing rights. I don’t think I got a good deal. Lots of prints were sold, but I didn’t really see the money. You live and learn. Overall, though,  painting dancers was a very successful time for me.

Graphics 2009

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been interested in graphics. I would make up and draw graphic novels. I grew up in the era of the ZX Spectrum. The graphics were really basic. We’re talking 48K, but I was really in how they made the graphics for the games. Anyway, after the Art Café closed, I started looking into graphics a bit more. PlayStation had just started, in the late 90’s and graphics were developing. I decided to find out about concept art. I got various books. I looked at a lot of the Star Wars books, and books about computer game art. I remember thinking, ‘They’re not painting these, they’re using something else.’ I was oblivious to programmes like Photoshop. I hadn’t trained on it. I got a copy of Photoshop, and worked my way round it – even though as a kid I was drawing with a light pen on an Amstrad CPC464. I applied for a course at Sunderland Uni, which is good for graphics and design. I learnt Photoshop, and got good at painting on a Wacom Tablet.

Eventually, through that I got a job at Mere Mortals, which was a games developer in Newcastle. This was a new environment for me. You had the programmers on one side, all busy with dots and one’s. Then you had the artists on the other side. We thought we were slightly cooler, but all nerds really. There was a bit of friction between the programmers and the artists, so that was quite interesting. More about that later. When I was designing for Sony and Microsoft you had a long list of meticulous changes and tweaks. Fortunately, they always quite liked the art work. I did art work for a murder mystery game, which went off to the San Francisco games convention, where they tried to sell games ideas. I am not sure the game was taken up, but it was considered. Games development is pretty ruthless, and eventually that company folded, and I had to move on from there.

Travel Paintings 2012

While I was working at the computer games developers, you didn’t have much interaction with customers, and I missed that. Luckily, I landed a job at Balman Gallery in Corbridge, which was run by Andy Balman, who used to run the Biscuit Factory in Newcastle. This was exciting. It also gave me time to do a bit of travelling. I went off to India and took some photos of people to paint. Balman gallery was a good experience. We would curate exhibitions and we would go off to the Affordable Art Fair in London. It was an experience. You had thousands of visitors going through the Art Fair every day. I was all dressed up, but still looking pretty northern down there. You would certainly see some sights. Some of them are serious collectors. I remember one guy. He had a massive brimmed hat, a cape, and a cane, that didn’t even touch the ground. It was just one of those canes…

The thing is, the Art Fair didn’t want my paintings of the Indian heads. I was quite disappointed with that. I decided I needed to set up my own gallery. At the time I was doing up a house in Hexham, with my friends. It was time to move on, so I sold the house and I was looking for somewhere to start a gallery. Then I saw this shop on Narrowgate, in Alnwick. I thought, ‘That’ll do me’. That’s when the next adventure begins Penn Gallery.

Gallery Paintings 2016

One of the urgent problems was I didn’t actually have any paintings to sell. I spent a year frantically painting enough paintings to fill the walls of the gallery in Alnwick. I really didn’t know what to paint. I was painting dancers. I was painting flowers. I was painting portraits, character, all sorts really, just to get in and see what the market is and what’s going to sell. I managed to fill the gallery. It was a slow kind of start. Fortunately, they mostly sold.

Record Cover Art 2019

I was trying to work out what to paint for the gallery, what sells, and even if it is feasible to paint, and run a business, and greet customers at the same time. It was proving quite difficult. Fortunately, I got a message on Facebook from this guy called Gaz Cobain. He’s a member of the electronic band, Future Sounds of London, who were pretty big in the 90’s. They also have another side. For the psychedelic rock side, they go under the name of The Amorphous Androgynous. They’ve done production for Oasis and Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller. Anyway, they messaged me and asked if I would like to do an album cover for them. I thought, ‘Wow, this is my dream job,’ going back to my time in the record shops of Edinburgh. I set about the task. The way The Amorphous Androgynous work is: they sample, and collage music and they do the same with the art. I had to find a way to provide loads of examples of art concepts for them to choose from, and pick bits out. I realised this wasn’t going to be possible with painting and sketching; it would just take too long. So, I went back to the old photoshop skills. I worked with Gaz, mostly communicating online. We were looking at old record covers from the prog rock era. This was the vibe they were going for, a kind of prog rock, Pink Floyd vibe. I looked into artists like Roger Dean and Budgie, who did all those fantastic prog covers. I also researched other iconic covers. Eventually the record, ‘We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal,’ came out. In fact, there were two albums. There was an album of remixes as well. I was super excited, because now I could go into a record shop, pick out a record from the shelves, and carry it through HMV proud as punch of my record.

Digital Art 2022

So ai art? What is it? On Facebook I saw Alan Dougans, who is the brother of Brian Dougans of FSOL. He was posting these images that I thought were really good. I had just rediscovered Photoshop and painting with a Wacom pen. I asked Alan and he said he was using ai art. I investigated a bit. At a basic level it’s typing words to create an image, sor of like coding, like programmers. I thought back to the days when I was working in with computer games, and I thought, ‘Those programmers. They’ve won; they’ve beaten the artists at their own game.’ I was a bit annoyed about this and I thought they had stolen my gift. All that drawing, and painting, and everything I’ve done in my life. This is scary. What am I going to do? Anyway, I got a programme, and worked out the prompting. You can create anything, any image, but it still has its problems. The images aren’t perfect and from my art background I can see instantly where the ai has gone wrong and which bits need adjusting and changing. The programmes are advancing all the time. You can now go into them and change the composition, change bits of the images, re-run the generation, change different aspects. Then you can take it into Photoshop, use up-scalers, and sometimes paint over with a Wacom pen. You have to have an eye for what’s wrong in the images and what looks right. From being initially annoyed at the prospect of ai art I am now enjoying it. I like the distance between me and the outcome, where I can blame the computer.

People will say to me, ‘Don’t you miss painting? Your paintings were great.’ I guess I can always go back to painting, but right now I am excited about the future. I think that humans and technology have always progressed. Otherwise, we’d all be painting in caves. I think ai art is to be cautious of, but if you can make it work for you. If you can make it in a way that can move people, or excite people, make people laugh, then I don’t think it’s too scary. For me it is exciting and I enjoy creating the images.

Video made for and presented at my, ‘Art and Imagination exhibition’ in The Playhouse, Alnwick, November 2024.