Interview with Jeremy Geddes

May 2009: Jeremy Geddes is based in Melbourne where he spends his time creating photo realistic paintings that portray extremes in emotion. He’s been published in several books and magazines, picking up a Spectrum Gold Award for his comic cover Doomed #4.

Hey Jeremy, tell us a little about your background, when did you start painting?
I was born in NZ, but grew up in Geelong, these days I live in Brunswick, Melbourne. I’ve been painting full time since 2003, before that I was working in video game development, and before that art school.

What are you currently working on?
Right now I’m finishing off some work for the 3A cosmonaut figure, whilst gearing up for some larger scale work. I’m also in the process of re-building my painting technique, to give me greater flexibility.

could you talk through the process for one of your recently completed projects? (Heat Death?)
Heat death took a long time. My process is very methodical. I start with a small preliminary painting, where I try to nail down the composition, colours and tones of the final painting. I usually rework these quite a lot, I try to do most of my experimenting (and mistakes)  here. It’s not uncommon for me to burn through a few of these small paintings as I try to iron out the problems. Once I’m happy with the prelim I begin work on the larger painting. On Heath Death I began with a grisaille underpainting to try and establish the tones. Once this was dry I worked across the entire painting with an opaque color layer. This is where most of the work occurs. At the end of this layer I usually end up with a painting that has all (or most) of the forms and detail. Then I begin the glazing layers, modulating the colours and tones to bring the whole painting together, as well as adding subtleties to textures. I do as many glaze layers as are necessary to bring the painting together. As I mentioned before though, I’m rebuilding my technique, so some of this is changing.

Heat Death

Your new series of paintings which feature a weightless cosmonaut in urban settings, what was your thinking coming into this series?
The cosmonaut paintings are a step away from my old method of painting, where every element was strictly controlled to enforce a particular narrative. I found that controlling the structure too tightly limited the stories that the viewer could bring to it. With these paintings I’m trying to leave the narrative ambiguous and open to interpretation, whilst juxtaposing enough disparate elements to make some sort of interpretation necessary. I’m keen to never give enough clues to block any potential explanation the viewer might bring. I want to spark questions, rather than answer them.

I see you’re Collaborating with Ashley Wood on a cosmonaut figure for his 3A toys, how did this come about?
Ash and I have been friends for quite a while, and the possibility of doing the figure came up. His toy company, 3A does fantastic detailed work, so it would have been hard to say no!

You’re also quite involved in comics, How did you come about illustrating for the comic Doomed?
Again, this came about through my friendship with Ash.

What do you hope the viewer will take away from your paintings?
I don’t mind what they get from them. I have certain feelings that I’m trying to capture in the paintings, and hopefully they pass on to at least a few of the people who view them, but any sort of transmission of this nature is muddy and imprecise at the best of times. Everyone brings their own baggage and you can’t control for that, so I just try to make an image that will create a spark that the viewer can take and make his or her own.

What have been the highlights in your art related career to-date?
It’s all about trying to paint well enough for me, I guess the highlights are when I get at least a bit of a painting good enough, it doesn’t happen too often, but it’s nice when it does.

What can we expect to see from you in the future?
More paintings! Hopefully always better paintings!

Links:
www.jeremygeddesart.com
jeremygeddesart.blogspot.com
3AToys.blogspot.com