My art first went public at the age of ten, when I sprayed graffiti on a factory wall. No Tags, no stencils, just colours and shapes. I was excited and happy. The security guard who discovered me didn’t share my enthusiasm. He said:

EXPLAIN YOURSELF!

How does one explain oneself? I can’t remember what I said at the time. I probably shouted some expletive as a scuttled back through the hole in the fence. As an adult faced with the same question I’m expected to be a little more erudite. So here goes…

I have always been fascinated by texture, colour and finish. My paintings combine glues, resins, powdered metals, leaf metals, oils, acrylics, inks, acids, ammonia, Shellac and lacquer. These substances do not mix willingly: some are water-based and some are oil-based; they are applied in different ways, react chemically to each other, and dry at different rates. They have to be integrated through layering and juxtaposition. And alchemy.

I never make preliminary sketches. I face the canvas and the world stands still. Shapes, textures and colours start to flow, seeking form and balance. When these settle the result is sometimes scary, sometimes ecstatic but always ‘contained’. Some paintings come easily, others struggle for resolution. The latter are far more interesting to me. They make me call upon that boy who tried to give factory walls a voice: who didn’t know (or chose to ignore) the rules.

So far I have explained my method and not my meaning. Meanings are harder, especially in abstract work. Labels can limit the creative process and the viewers’ experience. But here are some sentences upon which to hang your own responses to my work:

The Expansion series explores the expansion of matter
The Descent series explores the decent of particles
The Colony series explores growth and order
The New Works explore containment fields
The Early Works explore flow and depth

So that’s a kind of an explanation. I could waffle on. But I leave you, the individual, to interpret the works and respond to them openly. I hope you enjoy them. If you’d like to commission or buy a painting or discuss my work, please get in touch. I have studios in London, Brighton and Lancing. I live with writer Anita Sullivan, an Irish Jack Russell, a geriatric rabbit and a shoal of fish.

Ben Fearnside