DD: What inspired you to use all the song lyrics?
David Spiller: Whenever I was working on these there was a song in my head, and it’s as though what I was doing was a response to the song. It’s a matter of just saying that: saying what is actually there. I do feel at the moment that a lot of artwork is becoming almost like furniture. It’s very beautifully made but there doesn’t seem to be energy or a passion for the materials. Last December, I went to see a show of Frank Auerbach’s paintings at Somerset House and they were the same paintings I saw as a student. They were fantastic. It was like you were standing in front of something that had presence. The structure of making something that is as strong as that... I don’t know, I guess it’s what turned me on to painting. Sometimes you will watch a singer and tears will come into their eyes as they are singing a song, and that happens to me when I am painting.
DD: Do you think of the words you write as abstract forms? In that the way we each respond to a word may be very subjective?
David Spiller: Lots of my work went to China last year. I can’t read Chinese but Chinese words are beautiful in themselves as forms, and I wonder whether Chinese people see these words in that way. I suppose I wanted the words here to be very important though. I mean, when I made these I did think about tablets of stone, as if I could be Moses coming down from the mountain bringing the message to the people. Of course, I am not really saying that, but I did remember the simplicity of an exhibition I did in Holland some years ago where I made works inspired by my top ten pieces of music.
DD: Why do you use icons from cartoons?
David Spiller: They are people that I know. I mean, if you want people in there, it has to be somebody! These are people I know well enough – they are part of my history, just the same as the songs really. I take the characters and paint them as well as I can. They live within the confusion of the whole lot coming together and that is something I enjoy. I work on the floor in fragments, so I can be working on one thing and then I’ll start on another and I’ll forget where I was and then come back to the first one. It alters how you work. One of the things I do love about cartoons though is that kids get it straight away. They don’t say it’s Pop Art. They say it’s Mickey Mouse. What I am saying really is judge it from your feelings, not from what you think about art and all of that, just be young about it.
