I finally pinned Neil Bousfield down and interviewed him on the day the children went back to school - back to it with a bang!
I had set up a Zoom meeting for 10am so thought the interview would last 40 minutes at most, in fact we had to set up a second meeting as we simply weren't done and we used almost the whole 40 minutes of that one too! Transcribing it has been rather a labour of love, I used an app, but it needed checking (and Neil has a north-eastern accent so it had a field day every time he said things like 'coast' or 'coal'!) It wasn't much better with me, I think I speak too fast for it and I have yet to find anything that can recognise 'Cezanne'!
Anyway, I had sent Neil a few questions to give him an idea about what I wanted to discuss as I thought I would get better answers if he'd had tie to give the questions a little thought in advance. Talking to him was simply wonderful! I've listened to the interview repeatedly and every time I think I find a new gem!
I was particularly struck by the fact that he started off just making work about where he found himself living and only discovered the theories of place etc. when he was forced to identify an area of research for work (he lectures on the illustration BA course in Norwich university). He made me chuckle when he described the idea of research being done by people in white coats and there was him wandering about a beach with a dog and a pencil and paper!
Since discovering that artists can, in fact, research things it seems to have blown open his way of working and thinking. He seems very deeply absorbed by the research but includes collecting things from the beach and walking etc as an equally important part of his research.
He told me that Where there was tea, now there is sea (2012) was one of the first prints he made about his new home. He also told me about collecting ceramics on the beach and using the patterns he found in his prints which is where I assume the pattern in this came from. He told me that this street and the houses have long been washed away by the sea.
The image above was made before he started explicitly making images 'about place'. But as he said, it's undeniably about place rather than just an image of a place... the dogs represent daily routine, the pattern is from something found there, the feeling of movement and fragility is about the fact this particluar view will be claimed by the sea shortly.
Looking at more recent work you can see the influence of Neil's interest in maps. Below the North Sea, Whimpwell (2023) is described as being about "remembered and lost places, and vanished lands"(Bousfield, 2023). There are ideas of aerial views as well as the suggestion of a horizon and the bottom half of the print being below water. Neil's skill in making images with so much meaning yet keeping them simple enough for viewers to 'read' them is amazing!
I feel really privileges to have been able to talk to Neil and have an awful lot of reflecting about my own work to do once I've fully digested the interview!
References & Images from Neil Bousfield's Website: