Simon Pierse interviewed by Laurent Benoist in January 2011

LB How did you become Vice-President of the RWS? SP I was elected by the society. Actually the Royal Watercolour Society has two Vice-Presidents. President David Paskett put my name forward as one of them and it was approved by a show of hands at the AGM.  LB What are the present aims and goals of the RWS? Have they changed over the years? SP The Royal Watercolour Society was established in the early 19th century because artists working in that medium felt that they were being marginalised in exhibitions at the Royal Academy. I think I’m right in saying that watercolours were grouped together under the category of drawings. Oil painting was seen as the ‘serious’ medium. Cotman used to mix gum arabic into his paint to give his watercolours the richness and sheen of oil paint. The aim of the RWS today is to represent the finest in British contemporary watercolour and to promote the broadest definition of watercolour – to get out there and spread the word. But another raison d’etre for the society is to be a place where artists can come together and meet. Painting is a pretty lonely business sometimes. The RWS is very fortunate in having its own gallery just next to Tate Modern in Central London, so that’s our home, our club if you like.  We have lunches and dinners there – it’s somewhere in London to belong.

"Painting has to be an extension of life really, an expression of life, of character, of outlook."

LB Although the RWS is the oldest watercolour society in the world, would you agree that it is also perhaps the most dynamic and least traditional of all societies?

SP Well, it depends what you mean by ‘all societies’.  I think it would be fair to say that generally we are considered to be more traditional than the Royal Academy but less traditional than most other watercolour societies worldwide. In any society that elects its members for life it is inevitable that change happens slowly and filters up from the bottom so to speak, as new younger members join and bring fresh approaches to the medium. But to answer your question, yes, I do think we are a dynamic society that is focussed on the work rather than on mere technical brilliance. Watercolour can tend towards being a virtuoso medium, particularly when it is used transparently. The Royal Watercolour Society defines watercolour much more broadly to mean a painting in a water-based medium on a paper-based support. So this includes gouache and acrylic as well – even, I suppose, egg tempera. But, you know, in a historical sense transparent watercolour isn’t that traditional.  Artists in the 18th and 19th centuries worked much more opaquely, using body colour and gouache, often on toned paper.

LB Are there, if any, links between Australian and British watercolour societies?

SP Yes, thanks to David van Nunen, President of the Australian Watercolour Institute, we have recently established links with Australia. The officers of both societies showed paintings in Sydney and London last year, and in Scotland, at the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour. I hope this will become a regular thing. Also, the Australian artist Kenneth Jack was a member of the RWS until his death in 2006.  

LB You have travelled and spent time in Australia. What is your opinion on Australian watercolour?

SP I think it’s important to talk of artists first … whatever medium they work in is really of secondary importance to me. I particularly admire Brett Whiteley, Lloyd Rees (especially his late work), Blackman, Fred Williams. Nolan too, for his vision of the Australian interior. Some if not all of these artists occasionally worked in watercolour, but they are not particularly known for it. I saw some wonderful work by John Wolseley in Melbourne a few years ago that included drawing, watercolour and collage combined with text. Australian watercolour is of a very high standard but suffers – or so my Australian friends tell me – from being a slightly discredited medium over there, even more so than in the U.K.  Take Hans Heysen, for example.  He was a fabulous watercolourist but he tends to be sneered at a bit these days, perhaps because he spawned a whole ‘Gum Tree School’ of imitators. His work has become a bit of a cliché. I love the work of Albert Namatjira and the Hermannsburg School painters. There’s a lyrical quality to his work but also a rawness. And in the hands of painter like Otto Pareroultja it becomes something else again – rhythmic and very beautiful. I long time ago I was in Alice Springs and I tried to buy one of these Hermannsburg watercolours. We went through a whole pile and I selected one and paid for it, and left them to wrap it up. When I returned to the gallery a couple of hours later, they had changed their minds and didn’t want to sell it to me anymore.  I don’t know who the artist was but it must have been a good one!    

LB As an avid admirer of Australian art, do you try to promote it in the UK?

SP Not individually as an artist, no, although the Royal Watercolour Society is building links with the Australian Watercolour Institute, as I have said.  But as an art historian I have written about Australian artists in the 1950s and early 1960s at a time when many of them were over here living and working in London.  It was a boom period for Australian painting in Britain. The British fell in love with Australian art for a time and the market got very overheated. I’ve written about it in a book called Antipodean Summer that comes out later this year. 

LB How is Australian art perceived in the UK?

SP I think the general public may think of Australian art in terms of Aboriginal art these days.  I’m not sure.  Other than that, I don’t think the majority of British artists know much about what is happening in contemporary art in Australia. They’ve heard of Ron Mueck, but probably don’t know that he is Australian. When I first went to Australia in 1992 I was amazed by the work I saw there, by all these artists I had never heard of. Yes, we are pretty ignorant about Australian art over here, unfortunately.    

LB As an artist you were trained in oil painting; what made you switch to watercolour? Do you still paint in oils or only in watercolour?

SP The first watercolours I did were in Italy in 1981 when I was on an Italian Government Scholarship. I’d abandoned my easel and my studio to travel in the south and before I left Florence I bought a set of watercolours and a sketchbook. So those were the first serious watercolours I did. Later on I suppose I became bogged down with oil painting, I don’t know why, but my colours kept on getting darker and darker. I think I had an obsession with tone or something, but watercolour seemed a way out of an impasse and helped me return to oil paint much later with a better sense of colour. I still paint in oils, yes, but most of what I do now is in watercolour and mixed media on paper.  

LB You switched to watercolour 30 years ago; in your opinion how has the perception of the medium evolved over the years?

SP A lot has happened, much of it good. David Hockney has been a great champion of watercolour over the last ten years or so and really taken the medium to new levels in terms of scale. Watercolour has become more mainstream and acceptable as a contemporary medium with artists like Chris Offili, Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry and Anish Kapoor using it. On another level, the television series Watercolour Challenge helped to re-popularise the medium for the general public and, I suppose, brought it a bit more up to date. It’s a question of what goes around comes around. 

LB Would you consider yourself to be a watercolour “purist”? Do you use transparent colours only, for instance?

SP I’m not a purist, no. Not in the sense that I use transparent colours. But I think many painters would consider me a traditionalist, even a conservative kind of painter. That doesn’t bother me since I’m painting in the only way I know how and developing as best I can. It’s a journey you have to make in your way and at your own speed.

LB You seem particularly drawn to landscape painting, is there a particular reason for this?

SP I think there is greater scope for abstraction in landscape as opposed to most other types of figurative painting. There is also greater potential for feeling – for an emotional response – than in other kinds of painting. The romantic painters of the 19th century have allowed us that. What was it that Constable said about painting being ‘just another word for feeling’?  

LB Your landscape paintings sometimes verge on the abstract (particularly your Western Australia landscapes). Is this because you see the landscape purely in terms of rhythm of shapes and colours? In other words, it seems that you strive to paint the essence of the landscape rather than its simple depiction?

SP I’m pleased you think that. Yes, I am after an essence of place. A distillation.

LB There is also a sense of geometrical simplification in your painted landscapes as if your artist’s eye has purged the landscape of all its unnecessary elements; would you agree?

SP I think it’s the other way round really. I choose strong landscapes because I feel I can make strong paintings out of them. That’s why I paint mountains and deserts. Nature has done all the hard work for you. I don’t think I simplify that much, except to look for symmetry and a sense of rhythm. I do have a horror of the picturesque, so I seek out places without trees, without buildings – extreme landscape. Those Purnululu landscapes were done after a ride in a helicopter so in a sense you are experiencing the geological rhythm from above, in a way you could never see from the ground.          

LB Do you tackle different subjects such as the Alps, Ladakh and the Australian desert with the same eye?

SP I see them all with my one pair of eyes, yes. But you only see what I choose to paint. There’s a whole load of stuff out there that I look at but I wouldn’t choose to paint.

LB Are all of your watercolours painted on site?

SP No, I make small watercolours in situ, often they are done in handmade watercolour books that I buy from Cornelisson’s. A few years ago I dismantled one of these books to make an exhibition of framed work but generally the work stays in the sketchbook. I have done full-sheet watercolours in situ, in India for example, but generally I work large paintings up in the studio from digital images and from memory. I used to use slides but now that everything has gone digital I use a data projector or a computer screen for detail.  

LB Do you paint wet in wet?

SP Sometimes, yes.

LB Any odd techniques used?

SP In a painting finished just recently I have used watercolour in conjunction with ink, dyes, gouache and household emulsion. I suppose people might find that a bit odd. A few years ago when I was working on a series of paintings to do with landscape and memory, I used watercolour in combination with colour photocopies transferred to watercolour paper with cellulose thinners. I also used Lazertran, which is a sort of photocopy transfer film that you can lay down on paper using turpentine. I was working with old photographs and wanted lots of translucent layers as a sort of visual metaphor for memory. I guess all’s fair in love and war and watercolour!    

LB Are there particular colours that make up your base palette or does the subject dictate the colours you use?

SP Well, yes, the subject has to dictate the colours used, doesn’t it? But I do use certain colours a lot – whatever I’m painting: Naples Yellow, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Violet, Lemon Yellow. It was once pointed out to me that these are all ‘opaque’ pigments – I think the inference was that they weren’t ‘proper’ watercolour pigments to be using.  All four of those I mentioned tend either to granulate or to leave a slight sediment on the surface of the paper when they dry, which is something I really like. I trained as an oil painter and I use much the same pigments in watercolour as I did in oils. That might also have something to do with it.

LB Are there any artists, living or dead that you particularly look up to?

SP There are some artists that I look up to by way of their example. They have beaten a trail, so to speak, and they show you a way … how to live a life as a painter. Painting has to be an extension of life really, an expression of life, of character, of outlook. Jeffery Camp and Anthony Eyton do that for me.