Article

Interview re. Self portrait painting donation to the Royal Hospital

1. Why did you become an artist?

I’ve always felt compelled to grapple with weighty universals such as agony, ecstasy and death. Art as an activity is nourishing and its service to my questioning of universal notions both satisfies an expressive drive and my curiosity.
During a competition I entered I was fortunate to meet Jane Wilson and Brian Sewell who were enthusiastic about my work and they encouraged me to be an artist.



2. What is your practice and what types of projects have you done?
3. Do you have any patrons and what is your clientele base?

I’m best known for my moving image work that covers the spectrum of both commercial and non-commercial strands of the visual arts. I employ an array of media which include video, animation, sound, sculpture, installation, performance and drawing. I aim to combine explorations of our relationship with technology, liminality, the multiple dimensions of existential self with expressions of hypnagogic and abject states of body and mind. I’ve worked on a range of projects some are immediate streams of consciousness that explore private memories others are premeditated multi-layered elliptical narratives. I’m passionate about the creation of dense and rich narrative structures. I’ve worked on the production and direction of music videos and experimental audio visual collaborations commissioned by various record labels. I sell work on the international art market.



4. Who inspires you as an artist and why?

A lot of inspiration comes from past and contemporary artists, philosophers, musicians, film-makers and writers. There’s too many to mention. I get inspired by peers and observing others.



5. What work have you produced for the Diabetic Clinic project and why?
6. What do you hope the patients, members of staff and public who see your work in this medical environment experience from your art?

I was interested in the notion of healing and the great phrase of Joseph Beuy’s which is “Show your Wound”. The idea of showing your wound lays you open to all sorts of vulnerabilities. Another inspirational phrase which reverberates is the great alchemical saying which was ‘If you cut yourself, bandage the knife’.
The medical association of diagnostic truth with the internal structure of the human body inspired me to associate psychological introspection with the exposure of the nervous system in self portraiture. Health feels like it depends on everything around us and we see a microcosm of the environment in a excavation of ourselves. Our polluted cities reflect our polluted psyche's. Portraiture made me rethink that it could reveal a wide range of mythic narratives, the tragedy and absurdity of our current condition. We have sayings like if we could “read their minds”, see “behind the mask” that associate the concepts of “inner” and “outer” with knowledge and ignorance. Knowledge of other peoples states of mind is expressed as having access to their “inner” space. When we speak of having an inner life and outer demeanour, introvert or extrovert, we think of the mind in spatial terms. Employing the powerful association of medical practice, the idea of deceptive appearances and that a “reality” lies beneath, to get to a kernel of truth one has to excavate the surface. This resonates with the psychoanalytical notion that states consciousness as the surface of our mental apparatus. I experimented with this parallelism of the psychical and physical in a music video where I explored mark making as a violent act drawing and painting with a scalpel dissecting a surface and exposing the raw psyche.
In this painting lashing strokes and subtle mists exude my reignited
enthusiasm for paints sheers materiality. Due to the subtleties of oil paint tiny tonal changes can vastly change the implications of the image.
The left side appears bruised, battered and turbulent but the intelligibility of the image hinges on the evocation of internal anatomical layering going through a sweeping healing process.
Blue known as a healing colour echoes three points of outline where a gestalt principle of closure reinforces the receding notion for recuperation. The slight impasto on the watch face symbolizes time as a healer, the thickness of the paint reflecting the time taken to create a substance. The epidermis of the left (my right) defensive arm is almost transparent, sinews, veins, arteries and nerve endings are visibly exposed on the surface of the skin.
I've implied a waters edge dividing the lower body showing the individuating process by losing the lower self to reach higher achievements etc. The reflection is distorted by ripples created, as if by the viewers presence wading through the same pool. Submerged waist deep in an implied reflecting pool, the reflection is distorted by ripples from a front viewpoint. The direction as if the viewer is wading at in the same reflecting pool within the pictorial space, the viewers interpretation of my self portrait is also a form of distortion. Let the lapping surface settle and then the picture becomes clear.

7. What are your future plans as a professional artist?
I aim to continue experimenting and develop my work and past group exhibition that will tour internationally.

Boyd: Now and Beyond

Written by Victoria Samantha Smith.

Photographs © of Artist.



Chris Boyd, is a young and upcoming artist, with an already accomplished track record. He received the Microwave Award from Fact (Liverpool, England), one of the UK’s leading organisations in the development and exhibition of film, video and new media.



He won the Big Art Challenge where he labelled a ‘genius’ by Art Critic, Brian Sewell, in a Channel 5 documentary to seek the next Damien Hirst or JMW Turner. In 2005, he received the Priestley Prize and had his work screened in Tate Britain in a programme supporting London’s Olymic bid in the lead up to 2012.



In 2006, he was the Curator for the Chaosmos exhibition at the View Two Gallery (Liverpool, England), and was also part of NoiseFestival.com and the Independents Biennial 2006. Both as Artist and Curator to this programme, his work was highly acclaimed.



A beguiling digital video with symmetries of High Art aesthetics on the human form, fractalised, forming and reforming, to imbue human existence and evolution in the start of the universe. It instills senses of provocative spiritual sensuality. His other work follows a similar trend of beautifully executed forms and transitions. He has been commissioned by several bands to produce music videos with distinct symbiosis to the sounds and unique visualisations.



Boyd since 2006, has been working on a several commissions and researching various new media to develop something alternative which he intends to present in 2008. In early 2007 though, he was involved in a mountain bike accident in the Wales and spent some time recuperating in hospital. His passion for life and art though is inspirational and the same energy instilled into the profound art he creates.



For 2007, he has further been working in collaboration with Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney for the Transvoyeur International DV 2007, an international digital video platform to screen new media in Liverpool (UK), London (UK), New York (US), Cologne (Germany) and BBC Big Screen (UK). The title and theme is 'Laissez-Faire, Creative Destruction, Disruptive Technology'. The screening dates are to be announced

Boyd and Boydism