Tom Burtonwood

Studio view, 1995

My first year at LCAD i shared a room in the halls of residence with Andrew Poulter. Andy went on to do his MA at Chelsea College of Art in London then disappear off the face of the earth. His paintings were clemente-esqe and u can see one of them to the left nestled between the larger blue canvas on the right nad the tree of the left. i was utterly lost at this point in my art practice and was borrowing from Andy a bit in terms of figurative stuff, hence the blue canvas on the wall. i guess the arm is “reaching” for something… a figure that seems to be backing away. maybe i knew this figurative stuff wasn’t for me at the time and this painting tells truth. who knows… but i loved the fact we painted in there 24 hours a day all the time to the banging sounds of the KLF, 808 State and any acid house tape Andy could lay his hands on. I think for a while we had every tape, LP and bootleg CD of the KLF in all it’s various guises and would belt them out much to the chargrin of our neighbors i think. the lights we always low and the curtains drawn. Andy painted in these super bright colors but when u took his canvases outside to transport them to school for crits they were like sun beams, painfully bright….. the tree was dragged in one night, i think i wanted to draw from nature so instead of leave the studio we brought nature inside, albeit a dead tree. i think we kept it till pretty much the end of the year. when we moved out we filled the holes in the walls with cotton wool and covered them with paper and corn flakes to simulate the wall paper…. Andy if u r out there and u find this post email me: tom@tomburtonwood.com