The Revue: Paul Housley

Welcome back to The Drake’s Revue, where we ask some of our favourite people about some of their favourite things. The art, music, food, objects and philosophies that matter the most to them, that have shaped how they see the world.

Paul Housley is one of our most treasured artists. A painter of rare skill and poise whose work documents the human condition, in its all joys and miseries and humours. We spent the afternoon with him at Cedric Bardiwill Gallery, on Old Compton Street, to see his latest body of work, Echo’s Raft, which finds the artist working at a larger, immersive scale.

He’s also brought some personal mementoes for us, to give us a tour through his life in the books, music, films that have helped define him, as well as the first ever artwork he made, aged twelve.

1. A clay figure of a caveman, made aged twelve

Can you remember making this artwork?

Vaguely. It’s pretty crude isn’t it. It survived because my niece looked after it, and it moved around the family. Eventually I got it back.

What can we tell about Paul the artist now, from this very first surviving thing?

The caveman as a motif is definitely interesting, you can trace it right back to the very beginning of art: the earliest artworks ever made were cave paintings. I like that duality of painting, because it's very intellectual, but it also has a very primitive side, it fulfills a very basic need. I think you need both of those things.

Did making things fulfil a basic need for you when you were at school?

It was the only thing I enjoyed. You were left on your own to do what you wanted. I suppose I've been doing that ever since. You've got to like your own company if you’re a painter, because you're going to spend a lot of time on your own.

2. A live LP from The Electric Circus, Manchester

You were growing up in Manchester at quite an interesting cultural time.

I was a little bit too young for the original punk scene, but I felt the aftershock. There was a TV programme called So It Goes, which made a big impact. It was hosted by Tony Wilson, who obviously played a huge part in Manchester’s cultural life. He was a local celebrity but also something larger than that. He had a great civic pride, and really believed in the idea of promoting Manchester. It wasn’t in a parochial way, but he wanted to show Manchester’s rich history of science, music, literature, politics. One of the problems with this country is that everything is so London-centric, so it's good when other cities break into the story.

Where did you study?

I did my foundation in Tameside, in Greater Manchester. Then my BA at Sheffield Polytechnic — another city with a lot of cultural history, especially in electronic music. It was a very good place to be a student in the eighties. I did my MA at the Royal College in London.

You've been slowly making your way further south.

I've been in London since 1993, the longest I've been anywhere. But there's something about my northern heritage that feeds into the work in its character and humour, whether I want it to or not. I've learned to embrace it, though you don't want to be a caricature. The work is made up of so many different things, but you can only use your life as source material. If you're from a certain place, that's going to feed into how you make work and see the world.

3. The Fall by Albert Camus and The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac

You chose two French books, and you also named an exhibition after a novel by Emile Zola. What draws you to French literature?

Yes, The Masterpiece by Emile Zola. It's a depressing book, but it's a brilliant book. I don't read enough, but I'm attracted to French literature. There's quite a similarity between The Masterpiece and the Balzac story as well, isn't there.

Both are about art and failure.

And all art is about failure to some extent. It's a great way to spend your life, but it can be soul-destroying, and it's certainly not without cost. It can crush you. You have to develop the right kind of ego. I'm always aware of the ridiculous element of what I do, and the fact that there's no reason why anybody else in the world should be remotely interested in it. But you've got to find the nerve to put it out there.

You're essentially welcoming people in while also being completely self-contained.

Exactly. You're a complete loner, but you also need people to see the work. I don't know if it's validation exactly, it's more that if you disappear completely into your own world and no one ever sees it, something is missing. When other people see it, it completes the equation. I do think most of what I'm saying is fairly universal, that's the point of the human condition as a subject and one of the reasons I work figuratively.

4. A photograph of Charles Laughton as Rembrandt, 1936

Was Rembrandt a particular love, or more specifically this film?

My love of Rembrant ties into my love of romanticism. As an artist you have to keep something of that romanticism because without it, it's so bloody hard to go on working. On some level you buy into the struggle. Art i's a combination of Stoicism and romanticism. Life is hard, but here we are.

The Rembrandt film, well all those kinds of films are concoctions of half-truths, but they're still interesting. When you actually find yourself living that life — this is what I do, I make paintings — you feel attached to everyone who's ever made a painting going back to the cavemen. You feel some kind of kinship. Every painter paints about other paintings, it's a total cliché, but it's completely true.

What made you choose the actor playing the artist, rather than just the artists themselves?

They do it better than the actual artists, with a few exceptions. Picasso was good at it, for example. You've got to want to play up to it. I'm not particularly interested in that. I don't want to stand next to my work and do a little dance. I want people to see the work, but I don't need them to know who I am or what I look like. The autonomy is important.

5. Vincent Price reads Percy Bysshe Shelley

The other object you chose was a Vincent Price recording of the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The main reason I chose it was for the poem I know best, Ozymandias, which has always stuck with me. The first time I encountered the poem was at school, when a teacher brought in a record by Jean-Jacques Burnel, who was also in the Stranglers, because he'd done a version of it. Quite a weird version, performed in a mock Laurence Olivier delivery, very fast. It’s such a great poem. It left a real impression.

What was it about it that got you?

I remember seeing the label and it said Percy Shelley, and I thought, Pete Shelley. In my head it’s still somehow connected to the Buzzcocks. And somehow the mix-up becomes part of the appeal. If you've got a lively mind, you're constantly looking for things to interest you. Whatever sticks, whatever jumps out, takes you somewhere else. And when you find connections, some link between an ancient Egyptian king and a new way of seeing things in Manchester, it's reassuring, it's encouraging. It's that feeling of being plugged in.

6. Echo’s Raft at Cedric Bardawil Gallery

All of the pictures in the new exhibition seem to feature a lonely man in the middle of things.

I have recurring characters, but they're all stand-ins for different tropes and archetypes. There'll be artists, cavemen, astronauts, but they're all involved in the same thing, which is the contemplation of the human condition, and how to navigate life. Art is my way of navigating life, so everything goes through that filter.

And this is the first time you've worked at this scale.

These paintings are the first time I've really done successful larger-scale work. It feels really good to finally do them. There's something about larger works where you have to commit earlier. The smaller paintings I can just bash away at. The larger ones, you have to have a better idea before you even start, because if you don't get a strong composition quite early, it can be really disheartening.

Do you chuck a lot away?

There's a point in a painting where you know it's going to be successful, and oddly I often put it aside at that moment and start work on something else, then go back and finish it later. It's some kind of weird ritual where I have to delay the ending. Finishing a painting is always strange. Some of them come very quickly, and some you really have to work at. A painting can go through five or six incarnations. There's a mystery to it still, even to myself. The final thing is usually some kind of surprise. There's always a moment where you're trying to figure out yourself what's going on. What is this painting about? It's about everything and nothing.