MANCHESTER
1. Alan Hawkins, Painter
2. Cathy Read, Visual Artist
3. Stephanie Morris, Illustrator
4. Patrick Macaulay, Visual Artist
Stephen Riley, Visual Artist stephenrileyart.com Circles seem to play a key role throughout your work, why are they so significant? There are many ways of approaching this. For one thing, I’m a big fan of Robert Ryman. I love that idea of setting up a question or force-growing ideas through the exploration of a simple set of possibilities; in his case, white paint and/or surfaces, with little else. He got white; I got the circle. It’s also a response to art history and the question of what one can do with so much already done; what should one paint, and how? The circle, therefore, became a site for exploration; a place where I can do anything, but where integration takes place through the repetition of the same shape, regardless of what’s in it. What influences your creativity? Things I see; sometimes unimportant things; things dreamt or half remembered; unexplained arrivals in half-sleep; backgrounds. Architectural space and surfaces seem to matter a lot. But often the source is something I've already done but might have done differently: one piece of work suggests another. Is your work personal or universal? Both, I guess. I do it because I want to, but I can’t escape the world and what’s in it, and nothing I do can escape connotations known to everyone else. Do you like chaos or complete calm when you are creating? Calm. I need peace and quiet. Noise drives me crazy. In three words, what is art to you? Can’t answer that in three words! It's what separates us from the animals; it's what separates us from the need to do useful things; things that matter or earn money. Art's usefulness is its uselessness, because that gives us freedom.