Richie Culver on SundayS

Feature / Richie Culver

I have never seen myself as a painter.

It is something I try to distance myself from. My work is largely autobiographical, naturally this gives me plenty of space to manoeuvre, be it sculpture or mixed media works using images I have collected from my phone.

The majority of my work atm begins and ends with my phone, something I have a love hate relationship with.. mainly hate to be honest. But it is a vital tool to my practice.

Trying to work with it rather than against it. I realise technology will move on so it’s something I can be slightly at ease with for now knowing this is not Permanent although the works will be.

When I started making work i started with photography and text, it has now come full circle and photography is back in the driving seat, albeit using my mobile phone to snap mundane moments of my life rather than the more serious approach I used to take with a camera.

Through photography I gained some vital information that would lend a hand throughout the timeline of my work, composition, colour, timing etc. Language came next.

I am subconsciously downloading information, phrases, words, conversations I hear, that always makes it’s way into my notes on my phone, then i usually blow up large scale on canvas as visual Proof of my inner dialogue. This is my main resource for my work today.

It has taken time, but finally the time is right to give text the front seat within my work. Titles were always one of the more enjoyable segments of my process, to have them as the focal point in my work has not been easy, or perhaps it was too easy ? And that is why it has taken so long.

I spent so many years trying so hard and over thinking my entire life and process.

I was brought up fairly religious, I lost this element in my life for sometime. Since having my second Child and other life circumstances, I can say there is definitely some kind of faith back in my life and that also reflects heavily in my work and the way I work.

Something has been lifted and my process has became seamless and free.

When I paint, be it the more conceptual text works or the Photo paintings, i work in one go. Performance elements within the studio help the subtle gestures and abstractions within the work and the painting slowly takes shape.

Sometimes blindfolded once the text part is visible on the canvas. I try to give myself as much of a disadvantage as possible.

I enjoy luck and error most, Luck is something that’s I have been brought up believing in heavily, that one day my life would change for the better because I found a four leaf clover or for the worse perhaps because I walked under a ladder.

I think growing up this affected me deeply thinking my fate was in the hands of fate.

This state of mind is still with me today so I try and guide it all into my work. It has a really strong grip on the outcome of a painting. Naturally my sculptural works are a totally different concept, but with my paintings it becomes a moment where everything stands still and I work from quite a youthful fearful place.

The outcome on a good day will look like it has been worked on by someone else which is where the freeness comes from.

On a bad day… there is no such thing as a bad day.