Greg Becker

Photograph by: Julie Tsimara Mellis

Your work often carries a sense of nostalgia particularly through references to past eras, could you speak a bit about this?

Greg- Going right back to my very early work there was always desire to make a connection with the art of the past and even five decades later I still have a slight aversion to making contemporary references. I don’t ever seem to draw cars or computers and recently I painted an old thatched barn and thought that was embarrassing because it was a corny, olde worlde subject but I tried to paint it as a ghost barn which was sort of materialising or maybe disappearing. Generally though my nostalgia obsession is a bit of a mystery, its maybe partly an escape, the way we all want, at times to escape. Painting itself is a way of stepping apart from mainstream society, escaping from the mundane and this, I think links in directly with my attraction to nostalgia. Past Eras are fixed and only change through the way we imagine them.     

How do personal experiences or intimate environments shape your work?

Greg - Part of why I like working from drawings I make on location is that they are a direct link with the personal experience of being at a certain place at a certain time in a way that a photograph isn’t. Its like you are absorbing or taking possession of something by standing perhaps for an uncomfortably long time studying a particular place. And in the act of this objective study, paradoxically, through the drawing your soul is somehow embedded in the record of that time. 

Greg Becker, Paysage, Oil monotype on paper

You’ve spoken about your love for historical imagery, is there a specific period that particularly resonates with you and how do these references inform your approach?

Greg - As an illustrator I relished making reference to the Victorian & Edwardian Era’s and this followed through to my early paintings which often involved Edwardian Ladies & Gentlemen lost in topiary mazes or Napoleonic Soldiers parading through hay fields. They were stage sets with a slightly whimsical feel but I was also trying to evoke a timeless reflective mood, something I still try to do only without the need for overt historic references.   

How do you merge the sense of mystery and longing for a forgotten era with the more concrete, everyday experiences that you incorporate into your work? Does one influence the other more deeply?

Greg - While I’m out walking, although I’m not conscious of it, I’m always looking for something. An image, a scene or place that suggests a narrative. It can be as simple as a field  high on a hill with unusual markings that somehow evoke the idea of something mysterious. So, perhaps this searching and selectiveness helps the process of creating an image that reflects my interests and preoccupations.   

In previous interviews, you've mentioned the importance of spontaneity in your process. How do you balance detailed, deliberate work with that more immediate, impulsive?

Greg - My relationship with spontaneity is very much that of compromise. Ideally I would like not to rely on any previous realisation of a composition and for the composition to completely evolve and in my mind this something I’m always working towards. But in reality I nearly always base my studio paintings on the composition of location drawings. However, the way I translate these drawings into a painting usually involves many changes and nothing pleases me more than to have a ghostly remnant of these previous workings still evident in the finished piece, perhaps as a homage to the ideal of spontaneity.    

Greg Becker, Divided Field, Layered monotype on paper

With your background in both painting and illustration, does one inform the other and how do you navigate the shift between these mediums?

Greg - Although now, I’m completely happy as a full time painter, I do feel grateful for the experiences and things I learnt as a practising illustrator. It was certainly worth giving up the some of the many expressive freedoms of an artist to avoid the necessity of having to get a ‘proper job’. Although being an illustrator did feel like a job, because it involved giving price quotes, working to deadlines, working with agents and clients and having your work judged by the public, but these also continue to be part of my life as an artist, so in many ways the two rolls are very similar.

What are you reading at the moment?

Greg - That’s a very nice question. At the moment I’m halfway through ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde. It is utterly brilliant, beautiful, repulsive and fascinating in equal measure. After having read quite a few (very good) books that don’t have any obvious connection to my work its nice hit on something that has some links, namely, painting - the pursuit of beauty, being delusional, not wanting things to change and hence idealising the past. The book is of course many other things and the themes of guilt and denial seem to get stronger the more I read. Themes which tragically became such a part of Wilde’s personal life.   

You live between London and Sussex can talk about the work you have made in Sussex specifically?

Greg - Having a caravan in West Sussex not only changed my work, it changed my life, giving me easy access to the south downs and making life in London infinitely more bearable. The Downland between Arundel and Worthing I find particularly inspiring. Its a  landscape that hides many secret joys within its soft folded valleys. And although I’ve never been keen on depicting stunningly beautiful picturesque views, the downs somehow make me forget myself. I’m completely drawn in by their unusual mixture of the grandeur and intimacy. About 3 years ago, after 4 decades as a purely studio artist, I started seriously drawing and painting pleinair and found to my surprise I really liked it. A big part of the attraction of this was enjoying the peace and solitude of the downs and how that chimed with my need to create images with a contemplative, reflective atmosphere.   

What element of the Sussex countryside do you find most intriguing or find yourself coming back to time and again?

Greg - What I find most intriguing about the downs are the valley’s that are quite deep but still fairly narrow, giving a closeness to details on the far side. This almost plan view angle seems to create another landscape above the normal horizon line, replacing the clouds with more fields and doubling the narrative possibilities.