Interview with the Artist

On a first floor studio in the picturesque market town of Hexham, resides the artist MJ Forster. Typical of his pragmatism, Forster also manages a fully functioning art gallery bearing his artwork below yet doesn’t regard this as the ultimate distraction.  The studio is refreshingly archetypal, a healthy balance of artistic invention, experimentation and downright honest untidiness.  But what is remarkable in this scene is the truth to materials, and one medium in particular, watercolour.  The artist has made it his life work to tackle this much maligned of substances - the traditional preserve of the weekend painter - with startling results.

Has painting always been your passion?

Yes, it’s been something I have been engaged with since childhood although it wasn’t until my early teens that I began to realise that there was more than potential.  Despite enjoying art at school, it was in my own time that my interest in the subject really developed.  Getting out of the classroom became more important for me, and the immediate landscape started to have a direct influence on the work.

I was fortunate that a locally renowned artist demonstrated to me the basic principles and techniques of watercolour. It gave me a confidence to build on this knowledge and through practice I was able to understand and overcome the perceived limitations of the medium resulting in my own distinctive style and techniques.

The passion has always been about the application of the paint, that’s what drives me, it’s the whole point of putting the paint on the paper and creating, it’s like magic.

Your education initially took a different path, how did you arrive back at the idea of being an artist?

After a-levels I undertook a foundation course but felt frustrated that it didn’t fully expand my skill or way of thinking, it confirmed my initial sentiments toward education within the fine arts. There is a point where solitary dedication, practice and above all ideas become the essential components.  Frustrated, I embarked on a degree in Sports Science but spent all my spare time painting and drawing.  During the holidays I would organise selling exhibitions to fund my university life.

Have you always engaged in the sale of your own work?

Initially yes, it always seemed very natural having that face to face contact. Quickly after graduating from University, I established my own Studio Gallery in Northumberland in 1997. This was highly successful both in terms of artistic development but also in establishing me as a recognised northern painter.

No sooner had I established myself that I felt the need to travel.  At the time, I thought that if I was to be taken seriously as an artist, I first needed to deepen my skill range, the most important being observational drawing.  Gallery sales had allowed me to fund a two year period abroad spending extensive periods in Mexico, North America, and Asia before settling in Otago New Zealand for fifteen months.  During this period, I immersed myself in the practice, painting and sketching literally non-stop. I also spent a great deal of time researching painting and its history. This enabled me to produce a very wide body of work that I returned to the UK with in 2003,

On your return, you expanded your galleries….

Yes we have The Art Works Galleries in Newcastle and the M J Forster Gallery in Hexham. The Art Works Galleries is a platform for new and aspiring artists as well as more established names who believe in what we’re creating through that Gallery, the space in Hexham is focussed on the sale of my work.

From this busy schedule of running businesses whilst painting, a new style emerged in your work, can you briefly outline it?

It was only possible for Über to emerge as a result of the very exploratory way that I work.  I decided to confront the three main components of 2 dimensional work; tone, line and colour.  Through the medium of watercolour, I then sought to heighten these components to a sense of hyper reality.  The development was relatively organic, I can see the roots of this style in work in paintings from six years ago, and I’d been painting them for a while. When I realised the significance and potential of the new work and fully embraced it a whole new dimension was open to me.

There is an element in your work of a modern interpretation of impressionist landscapes, is that how you see them?

To a degree yes, although the process and execution of my work are the exact opposite. Where I share common ground with the Impressionist movement is the need for the work to have solid drawing skills. I also admire their spontaneity and courage to break with the conventions of the day.  However, I too am seeking to represent an essence of a place, rather than striving to accurately record a location.

The process of my work takes an initial image through a series of refinements, a journey if you like, where the final piece is often very different from the initial study.  It’s akin to sculpture in a way; the first painting is like a cube of stone, I chisel away from piece to piece until the image emerges. So within the creation of a finished piece there are numerous individual works created as the final design is refined, and the core, the essence, the überness if you like of the subject is revealed.

An Uberpainting is like as screen print in watercolour and they consist of five layers of different coloured paint applied independently and sequentially darker in tone. I mix colours from a primary base and it is the application of these successive layers that provides the images with the startling three dimensional impression.

The process of your work appears to be a long and precise one, do you think this will change with time; will the finished piece be perfected earlier in the painting process as you move on to new collections?

The structure I use to develop the work remains unchanged. I suspect the development of a work is a kind of cathartic process that I need to undertake. I liken them to a sonnet in the sense that they are created within a restrictive frame work and out of this restriction a greater creativity emerges. I aim for the finished pieces to be the end of a journey striving toward a vision of perfection. It is however possible that the process and structure will morph in response to different subjects, that remains to be seen.

Is there an element of improvisation in the work?

The whole design process is one huge improvisation, although in the execution of a single painting I am following the course of that design fairly rigidly within my own established set of rules. The fifth and final wash always provides room for a little variation.  However, as watercolour provides no room for error at this point its tempting to play safe, although I never do.

Your work has initially focussed on the British landscape, what inspired you to paint this particular subject?

ÜBERBRITAIN arose from a larger body of landscape painting I was tackling at the time. British landscape painting has a rich tradition; this fascination comes, I think, from being surrounded by a unique and diverse island. What I have tried to do is capture the essential elements of each location; this was very challenging and has created a very different collection of paintings.

Can you apply this process to other subjects?

Yes I have experimented with still life and figurative work.  As I mentioned earlier I was seeking to reduce a work down to the core elements of shape, line and colour as all subjects are comprised of these components essentially I see little difference between them.

And who inspires you?

I mentioned earlier the Impressionists.  I think they were the most important group of artists historically, it really was radical what they did at the time and it must have been very exciting. I like Van Gogh particularly - he was grounded in his ability; he was studious, very expressive and had fantastic skill in colour.

When I was very young and first learning to paint, I enjoyed interpreting the watercolours of Rowland Hilder.  He was a superb draftsman, his compositions were perfectly balanced and he had a real understanding of the medium. He was able to control it yet retain an expressiveness which really is the key of my work.

Painting is a solitary, sometimes lonely act, how do you keep sane in the studio?

It’s always tough in the studio I paint these paintings because they are fantastically hard to do. I’m not really interested in easy things. The thrill is overcoming problems one by one so there are small and larger rewards all the time. The radio or  a CD is constantly on I wide mix of everything, it works well to be distracted to a degree from the painting  I always get the best results when I’m not really thinking to hard, its sort of existential.

Where do you want to be in 10 years?

I want to be producing outstanding Avant Garde watercolours. I have been painting in this medium for 20 years and feel that I am only at the start of understanding its potential. If I can produce work like this now then in 20 years who knows what will have happened. Obviously I would like to be internationally successful and exhibiting worldwide, but the painting comes first always.