IN RETROSPECT

I have painted all my life.

Like most children, my earliest efforts were abstract ones! I went on to draw the obligatory houses and people – nothing new there. While at the pretty hideous prep school to which I was sent (for reasons that confound me as no school could have been less suitable for a withdrawn, poetic child than this one was) I began to draw birds.

My birds were extremely detailed and I was obsessed with them. I think that birds, apart from their sheer beauty (which still moves me), represented freedom; freedom from that hateful school where I felt so alone, and from the home life which was becoming more dysfunctional by the day as my father's narcissistic and controlling personality took an ever greater hold.

My mother, a wonderful trained artist and teacher, nurtured my gift and soon I was painting Cézanne-inspired still lifes and rustic country scenes in the style of Constable. I adored painting and I would shiver with delight at the smell of the oil paints that I had been given for my birthday, which I kept in the little wartime leatherette case that my mother had used at art school.

While I continued to paint sporadically, with occasional fevered bursts of activity when it seemed that something was trying to break through to the surface, it was not till many years later that things got serious.

In the mid to late part of the first decade of this century, I was in a state of personal crisis. Among other contributory factors, I was experiencing frustration and anger with my career as a concert pianist. I had released a critically acclaimed CD of incredible piano compositions by Peter Feuchtwanger and, proudly, was becoming more and more involved with living composers who often wrote cutting-edge music for me to perform. I found the audience for this music, however, to be depressingly small, and did not want to peddle the 'best-loved-classics' to an audience who had no interest in being challenged.

I saw no future in playing the piano for a living. I decided to reinvent myself.

Artist friends, whose company and influence I was already enjoying and cultivating, knew of my dissatisfaction and restlessness. Three in particular held great belief in my talent in the visual arts and, quite suddenly, after a period of drawing expressive female nudes and on the advice of one friend especially, I began to produce abstract paintings with a creative intensity that I had never known before.

I embarked on a series of exhibitions, including one in a new local gallery where I soon became the best-selling artist.

Fast-forwarding a few years to 2010, I was forging a style and an artistic voice, and beginning to sell and exhibit in Europe as well as in the UK.

I thought it might be interesting to readers to see a selection of work from the past twelve years, one painting for each year, together with a few contextual anecdotes and memories, in so far as I can recall them.

Let us start then, in 2010.

HOLD IT - HAYDN DICKENSON 2010

I have great affection for this mixed-media painting. It was made at a time when I was practising Tai Chi and Qi Gong, and I felt the mass of marks in the centre of the painting resembled the energy that can be felt between the hands during the practice of Qi Gong.

REMEMBERING CY - HAYDN DICKENSON 2011

This picture was painted in memory of the great Cy Twombly who had recently passed away. Twombly's retrospective at the Tate Modern in London 2008 lives in my mind as one of the most phenomenal exhibitions that I have ever attended.

UNTITLED - HAYDN DICKENSON 2012

Influenced by the Gutai group, I was currently experimenting with pasting extra layers of fabric on top of canvases, slashing or puncturing them, and letting the paint soak in.

UNTITLED - HAYDN DICKENSON 2013

Another painting which I remember fondly. It did not take long to sell.

UNTITLED - HAYDN DICKENSON 2014

By this time, I was in a passionate and beautiful but problematic long-distance relationship. Obsessive elements are starting to emerge in the painting style.

DON'T BLAME US FOR MADNESS - HAYDN DICKENSON 2015

From a disturbed period, turbulence and malaise continue to be evident in this painting.

ZHIVAGO REVISITED - HAYDN DICKENSON 2016

A modicum of tranquillity returns.

BREAK FREE - HAYDN DICKENSON 2017

Admired by many for a while, and later sold to an overseas buyer.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION - HAYDN DICKENSON 2018

Sold to a collector of my work in London.

FACE UP TO THE FACTS - HAYDN DICKENSON 2019

I have always been pleased with the wild expressionism of this piece.

SPEAK YOUR MIND - HAYDN DICKENSON 2020

A notable minimalism appears in this as yet unsold piece.

HAYDN DICKENSON - A STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION 2021

Another unsold picture, and a personal favourite of mine.

EMERGENT INTIMACY - HAYDN DICKENSON 2022

Another favourite of mine, but not for the faint-hearted. This painting's energy is quite overwhelming to many.

I hope that this survey of the past twelve years has been interesting. I had to stop at twelve years, for 2023 has only seen one completed painting as yet!

Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2023