Thomas Allen

How did you get into making art?

I’ve always been captivated by image-making. As a young child, if my parents ever wanted to get me out of their hair, they only had to give me pencils and paper. As a result, though, they discouraged me from studying art academically because they saw how absorbed I am by it and feared my other academic subjects would suffer.

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently focused a fairly large oil painting as a commission that will be going out to Spain. Formally, I’m experimenting with combining graphic mark-making and soft washes of colour by folding them together in layers. And as a development of an earlier piece of mine titled ‘HABERCADABRA’, the subject matter of this piece centres on the question of how soil biodiversity is impacted by pesticides. It belongs to a growing body of work that explores how our relationship with the land is mediated through modes of consumption.

What inspired you to get started on this body of work?

I’ve felt a close connection with the natural world throughout my life, and I see our external landscapes and internal ‘mindscapes’ as two sides of the same coin. Our interior worlds reflect and are reflected in our environment.

During the pandemic, I spent a year living in a cabin in the woods doing coppicing work, learning how to manage woodlands sustainably and create products with the wood, such as timber-framed buildings. The experience of living a pretty Spartan existence out in the elements, cooking all my meals over an open fire, inspired me artistically to explore how we relate to the land.

We are framed as consumers and so I’m intrigued by what our modes of consumption say about how we see ourselves within the context of the land that ultimately feeds us in every sense of the word.

Do you work on distinct projects or do you take a broader approach to your practice?

The process of creating one piece generates ideas for half a dozen others, so the creative process is one of elimination. If I try chasing too many of them at once, they can all get away. So I tend to focus on one piece at a time, seeing it through to completion before starting the next. This is truer of drawing than of painting due to the drying times, but even then, I don’t tend to work on more than two paintings at a time. Otherwise, they risk being abandoned.

Creating artworks is like having dreams. Each one seems quite unique and distinct from the others, but you see common threads when you look back over them – recurring themes and an evolution of thought. It’s a strange experience to look back at very old work, or even childhood scrapbooks, and see elements of my current work in embryonic form.

What’s a typical day like in your studio?

First thing in the morning, when I get to my studio – an abandoned pool house I rent from a friend – I’ll pour myself a tea and contemplate what I’m working on in order to figure out how to move forwards. I like working in a messy environment surrounded by the detritus of image-making – scrawls on the walls and sketches pinned up and colour testers and unfinished canvases and open books – because that’s where a lot of cross-pollination occurs: chance meetings between visual cues. A once-forgotten doodle can be the answer to a problem in the piece I’m currently doing battle with. I say battle because there is an antagonistic quality to the process; it’s a love-hate relationship. When it’s going well it’s a dance, and when it’s not it can be a real struggle. And the rest of the time it’s a war of attrition and a meditation, methodically applying marks to the surface.

So after my tea, depending on what stage I’m at with a piece, I might be stretching canvases, making preparatory sketches or mixing paints, before getting into the act of painting. Then I’ll work pretty solidly, with a brief lunch break, until the evening, sometimes in silence and sometimes listening to podcasts or music.

Who are your favorite artists?

Of course there are a lot and my preferences shift over time, but artists – dead and alive – that come to mind as key influences over the years include: Paul Gauguin, RB Kitaj , Hilma af Klint, Joan Miro, Odilon Redon, Leonardo da Vinci, Tal R, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Chris Ofili, Peter Doig, Howardena Pindell, Michael Armitage, and Pam Evelyn.

Where do you go to discover new artists?

I’m lucky enough to live close to London, so I visit galleries in the city. I also come across artists in my general reading such as on Artnet newsletters.