Sohei Nishino

Nishino says, 'we are overmapped...we over-analyse, today.'

His composite images, Dioramas of New York, where everything connects somehow, make for an interesting subversion of the expected geography of the city.

Imaginary maps

Someone has said that my faces resemble maps. I like that idea. A face is a map, in a way. I think it's important to understand that portraits are a form of personal geography. Someone else very kindly compared my work to that of Alison Lambert (see the picture I have cut out in my scrapbook, below).

Playing around in my work, I have tried floating faces over a photograph to create a kind of dream landscape.

John Stezaker

John Stezaker (like Daniel Gordon) rips up the usual idea of the photograph. These images are obviously untrue and they give a different, disturbing image of modern culture. He slices and splices pictures from magazines and postcards, classic publicity shots of film stars - making hybrid faces that combine male and female faces. It's surreal and grotesque, but there's still a sense of glamour - and this reordering of photographic truth appeals to me.

Daniel Gordon

I saw one of Daniel Gordon's portraits in a Sunday supplement. And then came across his work again at the Out of Focus exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery.

None of this picture is part of a face. In places it looks as if pieces of paper are stuck on a real face. The nose, eyes and mouth are casually, loosely applied and well hidden among the ripped-up pieces of paper. This seems like photograph, sculpture and collage in one.

I like the idea that NONE of this is done in PhotoShop.

"When I started making these pictures, Photoshop was really blossoming in the photo community," he recalls. "I was interested in pursuing a project that would showcase traditional methods of manipulation with straight photography. I can fly, just not very well."

Sometimes he sources images from Google...

Would like to try this idea of modelling up a face shape - maybe around a polystyrene ball.

Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern

In the second room were a couple of large dot canvases but what captured the attention was a big glass box in the centre of the room. In the box were swarms of big black flies. A great many of the flies crawled over a cow's head that lay on its side on the floor in a pool of congealed blood. It was shocking, and I suppose it did throw up issues of life and death.

The shark tank - The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living - seems intended to provoke fear and awe, but the shark looked a bit done in. Its skin was wrinkled the way skin wrinkles when it has been in the bath too long. When I stared at the dead eyes of the shark, though, I could get a slight sense of discomfort.

The exhibition was set out like a factory, or like an amusement park. Many of the pieces seemed unconnected with one another. One or two very simple ideas did make a big impact. For example, a giant circular ashtray filled with cigarette butts, called The Acquired Inability to Escape. The stink of cigarettes and the scale of the piece gave me a feel for the nature of the addiction.

Another room was laid out like a pharmacy with a counter, with a coffee cup on the counter. Normal items on the shelves, a clinical feel to the room. This, by the way, was the second reminder, for me, of another exhibition - that of Jeremy Deller at the Hayward Gallery...in his exhibition was a giant cup of tea (instead of an ash tray) and a full-size sixties cafe (instead of a pharmacy). On the counter were big glass vases filled with coloured liquids that were meant to symbolise the four elements and are meant to suggest the power of modern medicine. The neatness of the cabinets, the packets and packets of pills and tablets, were striking. However, Hirst's view is that 'you can only cure people for so long and then they are going to die, anyway'.

The exhibition did confront me with life and death, the decay of corpses, all the dead animals in formaldehyde, and even the chemist's shop. There was also some vivid colour in the splatter pictures, beauty in the butterfly patterns.

Hirst said 'Life and death are the biggest polar opposites there are. I like love and I like hate. I like all these opposites. On and off. Happy and sad. In artwork I always try to say something and deny it all the time.' The diamond skull is a great example of this, the preposterous decoration of a skull with precious stones.

William Utermohlen (1933-2007)

I want to create work based around things I'm interested in. Sounds obvious, I guess. But work that I will feel proud of, the journey and the result. The question, then, I guess, is what interests me? Work that has details and attention to details.

I also enjoy working in mixed media and for me at the moment this means, perhaps, photography, charcoal, biro. I am interested in the contrast between thick charcoal lines and thin biro, the matt dustiness of charcoal, the shiny glow of the ink.

Recently I visited the GV Art Gallery (49 Chiltern St, Marylebone) where there was an exhibition of William Utermohlen's work. (He was part of a couple that were friends of a relative, so there was some interest, there.)

In 1995, William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. His final portraits, that explore his reaction to the diagnosis, have received great critical acclaim.

This, his Imaginary Portrait of Francis Bacon, 1967, altered 1997, in watercolour and oil, on paper, is remarkable.

He created a cycle of paintings based on Dante's Inferno and in the exhibition there was also an interesting series of lithographs that reflect his interest in the Vietnam War.

What interested me most were his charcoal drawings that were mixed with bright, thick paint. It was unexpected.

I also liked the unusual technique that gave a scratchy surface quality to certain pictures.

At the moment, I find that my work usually stems from photographs I have taken of people at train stations, or of train stations. I'm thinking of working at a very big size and at a very small size.

I'm thinking of visiting the 270 tube stations and taking pictures of any details that interest me at each one, then combining them with paint, perhaps fragments of plastic, giving the images a grimy effect, like looking through the window of a tube, framing them.

People say it's not interesting to paint or draw from photographs, but for me, it is interesting and the result is as different from a photograph as usual.

Looking at the skin I want to emphasise every tone and shadow on the face.

I am now thinking in terms of ink and sticks, different-sized nibs, plus definitely charcoal and paint.

I've also had the idea of collaging my photos then drawing over the top in biro...

Hans-Peter Feldmann

Another wacky exhibition at the Serpentine gallery, but I really like visiting, there's always something that makes it worthwhile.
I knew Hans-Peter Feldmann for his kitsch painting of classical statues, and I really appreciated his inventiveness and daring. Among the exhibits was a collection of women's handbags that were displayed with all contents.
There was a collection of seascapes that caught my eye, briefly, but what I liked best was the shadowplay piece: tables of odd objects (toy dinosaurs, broken barbies etc) rotating in front of spotlights that threw spectacular shadows on the wall.

Lucien Freud Exhibition

The exhibition was very busy but, with so many paintings and so many rooms, it was always possible to find space in front of one picture. Freud’s work was arranged chronologically, but I didn’t follow the path strictly.

Freud’s early work was very detailed with very precise brush strokes, with thin paint quite in contrast to the heavy impasto of his late period. (In his final pictures, the paint was built up in Auerbach-style lumps that disfigured the features.)

I thought I was fairly familiar with Freud’s work, but it’s only when you stand in front of the work that you are able to appreciate the quality of the brush-strokes, the complexity of the colours.

It was also great to see the true colours. I was amazed to discover a picture of Flora where the subject had blue toenails that were entirely missing from reproductions I had seen.

Most of the pieces had simple titles, ‘Woman in white’ ‘Man in blue shirt’. Maybe Freud intended to keep the artwork separate from the person.

As time passed, the size and scale of the pictures increased – and so did the preoccupation with flesh, as exemplified by the pictures of Big Sue…

An exception was the portrait of Hockney, but it’s interesting to note that Freud spent 130 hours on the work (whereas Hockney spent just two hours on a reciprocal portrait of Freud). What obsesses Freud is the colour and variation in colour of flesh. He really gets in – as well as under – the skin of his subject. It isn’t photo-realism, but the brushstrokes have an individual consideration and thoughtfulness that is breath-taking.

In contrast, some of his backgrounds look rushed. The heaps of rags, the basic floorboards.

I began to understand the changes that occurred in Freud’s painting over time. The change in choice of brushes, to a coarse hogshair. The particular white he favoured. The decision not to sit down to paint. Funnily enough, I find I paint a lot more effectively and accurately when standing up.

His last ever painting, ‘Portrait of the Hound’, a large scale piece, is unfinished and made me feel a little sad.