Who are your favorite artists?
When I try to answer this, I realise how many different kinds of artists have shaped me — musicians, painters, printmakers, visionaries. David Bowie and Björk come first to mind. Both are multi-disciplinary, constantly reinventing themselves, each new phase an experiment in sound, image, costume, and emotion. They remind me that art is not a fixed thing; it’s a lifelong performance of curiosity.
When it comes to people who put marks on paper, the list overflows. The books on my shelves tell the story — Raphael, Caravaggio, Hockney, Ravilious, Paul Nash, Picasso, Miró, Da Vinci. I’m drawn to the human hand visible in the work, to texture and process — chine collé fibres, brushstrokes, scratches, pencil ghosts. Among the contemporary printmakers I admire are Aga Kubish, Helen Brown, Michelle Hockey, Tadeo Beutlich, Catherine Cartwright, Kelli MacConnell, Rosamund Fowler, Hugh Ribbans, Vicky Gomez, Roger Dean, Otto Dix, Matisse, Mel Calman, Lawrence Weiner, Carolyn Trant, Frank Brangwyn, John Craxton, Eric Ravilious, Thomas Bewick, Angela Harding, Barthelemy Toguo — and yes, Picasso again, because he never stopped evolving.
There are others I keep returning to: Eileen Cooper, whose figures swim, dream, and grow roots like mine; Steven Appleby, for humour, tenderness, and absurdity; Chagall and Klee, for the lyricism of memory and imagination; and Basquiat, whose raw energy and coded language still feel urgent.
I love the printmakers who carve their stories into wood and metal — Leighton, Raverat, Andrews, Power, Nash — and the moderns who made line into poetry — Klee, Miro, Steinberg. And then there are the artists who step outside the frame altogether: Laurie Anderson, Cornelia Parker, Andy Goldsworthy, Kiki Smith, each turning art into an act of inquiry.
If there’s a thread running through all of them, it’s restlessness — an urge to translate the inner life into form. Whether through Bowie’s shape-shifting personas, Cooper’s mythic swimmers, or Ravillious’s pale English light, I see the same desire to make sense of being alive through mark, sound, and texture. These are the artists who keep me company at the press, in the studio, and in my head.
What about you? Any common ground? Who comes to mind? What art do you have on your walls, what books on shelves?
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