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MIKE NEWTON

My oil paintings explore aspects of MELANCHOLIA using traditional methods of oil paint on canvas and on wooden panels. These themes range from "despairing under a cloud of black" associated with a sense of loss or impotence, to the Neo-Platonic concept of Melancholia as an emotional state surrounded with the halo of the sublime. I engage with a variety of artists from the history of painting, notably Francisco Goya and Edvard Munch, and draw influence from contemporary painters such as Gerhard Richter, Elizabeth Peyton and Luc Tuymans. I am also very attracted to film, particularly the work of David Lynch, and inspired by this enjoy building fragmented narratives by hanging different combinations of my paintings together.

I work initially with oil on paper combining elements of my own drawing with my photographs and found images. Working directly onto the support with oil glazes, I subvert the original meaning of these images through collaging elements together. These sketches form the basis for a loose and immediate style of painting that has a freshness of execution despite the melancholic themes.

My love of film is most strongly evident in the luminosity of the paint and the choice of colours for my work. The former is achieved through a meticulous preparation process, applying primer in several layers, sanding after each application to achieve a smooth gesso surface. This combination of flat white ground and transparent and semi-transparent paint ensures I get the maximum benefit of the reflected light whether it is on canvas or panel. The colour combinations I borrow from film, ranging from Kieślowski 's nauseous colours to the sickly Kodachrome "glow" of Lynch. In each instance, I take a still image of the scene from the film and then match the range of colours by painting colour swatches. I try to keep the mixing as simple as possible to prevent increasing paint opacity.

I prefer to complete the actual painting process within a day, ensuring my energy is concentrated into finishing the image and not dissipated by refining and correcting. I started this approach after being inspired by the "Urgent Painting" exhibition in Paris in 2000, and since then I have been experimenting and refining my methods to achieve this even on large canvases. However, it is not a rigid recipe and recently I have been developing new strategies to give me more flexibility in both the materials and process of painting, whilst retaining the urgency.

The title of this exhibition is "Alphaville" - a double reference to alpha male "display" and the 1960s Jean Luc Goddard film of the same title. In Jean Luc Goddard's film, the citizens of Alphaville have lost their ability to think, to communicate, and to love, their lives dominated by the perfect logic of a super computer. Today television and the media dominate our behaviour beyond the capabilities of any super computer and for many the struggle for existence is reduced to mimicking the same "plumage" as the logo encrusted media stars. How long before we sublimate "sexual selection" altogether and turn to parthenogenetics (cloning) for selection instead of attracting a potential mate? In this body of work I try to fuse these two ideas together through memories specifically related to my own experience as a teenager and comment on the pressures of living in today's celebrity driven environment.

For example, the painting "Northern Soul" depicts a young man practising his dance moves in front of his bedroom mirror. I for one was much more comfortable in the confines of my own bedroom than I ever was on a dance floor - more Bambi than John Travolta! Tying together both the ideas of dance as a form of sexual display and the teenage bedroom as the contemporary sanctuary reserved for sexual development (a space Foucault calls a heterotopia), I have tried to capture the energy of the scene and instil a sense of ambiguity - the gesturing could easily be interpreted as pure aggression.

Perhaps less obvious is the small painting of the tent in the landscape "Iron John" which refers to Robert Bly's 1990 book of the same title. In the book Bly analyses the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Iron John and finds lessons he believes are relevant to modern man. For example he is critical of the way corporate advertising pushes an ideal of maleness, recommending instead that man gets back to the wilderness and experiences "real life" not a simulacrum. He advocates a sense of masculinity that lies between the "sensitive male" and the "warrior" male". Taken from a photograph I recently took, the tent behind the fence reminded me of my own "back to nature" experience on an "Iron John" weekend in the Lake District.

I recall my teens as a time suspended, waiting for something to happen, and pathetically dreaming about being someone else, usually a romantic Byronesque character (a self destructive melancholic, thwarted in love). Issues of ennui, ritual, role-play, stereotypes and confusion about identity all feature in the work. That said, I also look back with a sense of nostalgia for a those years, and specific scenes half remembered, half forgotten take on a new life as I reinvent them, absorbing inspiration from contemporary film, painting, magazine photography and music. Floating somewhere between the "reality" of then and the "actuality" of today, my paintings hopefully evoke my sense of loss for a time when everything was simpler and less confused.

Mike Newton

Lives and works in the UK.

EDUCATION

MA Fine Art, Bath Spa University, 2006
PhD Fine Art, Bath Spa University

EXHIBITIONS

Group Show, Mauger Modern Art, Bath, UK, July 2008
My Private Idaho, NETTIE HORN, London, February 2008
Mike Newton, Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales, December 2007
The Islanders, NETTIE HORN, October-November 2007
Dorian Gray Project: Happy Days, John Jones, 11 October - 30 November 2007
Beauhemia, NETTIE HORN, London, July 2007
Peace Camp, The Brick Lane Gallery, London, December 2006
Alphaville, the Brick Lane Gallery, London, 2006
Jerwood Café Space, London, 2006
Full Spectrum (finalist), Sherborne House, Dorset, 2006
Celeste Art Prize (finalist), Truman Brewery, London, 2006
Hotbath Gallery, Bath 2 week Residency, 2006
Paintworks, Bristol, 2005
Widdicombe Studios, Bath, 2005
Walcot Memorial Chapel, Bath, 2005
Boundary Gallery, London, 2005
Bath Spa Degree Show, 2004
Walcot Memorial Chapel, Bath, 2002


PRIZES

Boundary Prize (3rd) Figurative Painting, 2005
Minerva Prize (Best Painting - Degree Show), 2004