Dennis Spicer shares his thoughts about his intuitive approach to colour and form and the sense of ‘stillness’ in his still-life oil paintings

MASTERCLASS

Painters Table (Red Bowl), oil and cold wax on linen, 153⁄4×193⁄4in (40×50cm)

Although I have drawn since childhood, I was in my midtwenties when I first went to art school, the Byam Shaw School of Art, London, after encouragement from a teacher at a life-drawing class. There I was at first attracted to the discipline of the life room, which was primarily run along the principles of exacting measurement of the Euston Road School. Although I am glad I learnt to draw like this I think that, at its worst, it can become a style that can lead to rather dreary uninspiring paintings; I now feel able to break free from this exactness and combine drawing with a more intuitive approach to painting.

Content and form

I am drawn to a certain kind of still-life painting where the painterly qualities and formal design within the frame are as important as the objects depicted. All pictures can be reduced to two fundamental elements, content and form. Content is what is depicted – a landscape, still life or a portrait, and form is how it is depicted – expressionistically with loose brushwork, photo-realistically, brightly coloured or muted, and so on. I have always liked a balance between the two, where the handling of the paint takes equal importance with the subject matter, so you can see the hand and thought processes of the artist.