Neil Perry: A 21st Century Artist of the People
Interview by Rea Cris

Although not a household name at the moment, Edinburgh-based artist Neil Perry is set for bubbling success. Originally from the North East of England, he has a friendly, talkative manner.  His work is a modernized rehashing of nature versus urban primitivism. Brutally honest and down-to-earth, he has a child-like curiosity and wonderment which seeps into his work without belittling the content.  Since January 2009 he has established, on a full-time basis, his own ethical and eco-friendly t-shirt company which he operates out of his flat. 

It is only really in the last two years that his artistic career has taken off.  Originally trained in Media Studies, Perry passed through a variety of jobs before settling on the arts. The breaking point came when working in a bank. 

“It was the first time that I was in a 9-5 job and I didn’t feel good about what I was doing at work… I was miserable… I needed to do it cause I need the money but I didn’t feel good about it, or about myself and I decided I needed something that when I came home, I felt that I was doing something creative.”

Being creative increasingly became a necessity. Don’t be fooled by Perry’s child-like manner, he has an effective pragmatic logic.

“ I realized I was never going to be happy enough, so I thought ‘Okay, what will make me happy?’ And I realized drawing and painting makes me happy, I could do it all day long. So I thought I needed to find a way to do it, make it possible. It’s easier to sell 50 t-shirts for 10 quid than one canvas for £500… I’ve come to the conclusion that often the job that you want isn’t out there unless you create it for yourself…so that’s what I’m essentially doing. I’m being pragmatic about creating the job for myself that I will enjoy doing.”

Perry is not simply a commercial t-shirt manufacturer. His body of work is impressive and at home both on t-shirts and canvas.  Perry’s work has the same naïve style as French post-impressionist Henri Rousseau’s. Both self-proclaimed self-taught artists, Rousseau was ridiculed during his lifetime but Perry seems to be his own harshest critic.  He admits that he is still exploring and experimenting to develop his own style. Though he seems slightly apologetic and insecure about his self-taught status, Perry has the advantage of being free from the inadvertent preconceptions and ideas imposed upon artists that attend art colleges.  In an art market increasingly obsessed with conceptualism, Perry’s main concern is the aesthetics of his images. 

“I went to a Roman Catholic six-form and it was pretty reserved and if it wasn’t ‘fine art’ it wasn’t really encouraged. I think technique and how to use material, how to draw was stuff I learn while I was a child. It’s almost like bicycles, you know how to draw and you won’t forget how to draw.  But I think in terms of style I haven’t probably developed in the way that other people have who gone to art college. You know, you go to art college and you develop and change and probably by this time you would have a style, which people recognize and associate with you and I don’t really feel like I have that at the moment.  I want to experiment with a lot of different styles and I think that’s because I didn’t get the opportunity to.  . . . I don’t actually have too many direct influences … the things I tend to focus on are more practical things, techniques they [other artists] use. I’m kind of like a child I suppose, still kind of learning so everything influences me. It’s really hard not to see things and not take them on board.” 

Perry has no sketch book, but rather “scraps of paper around the flat that are easier to get rid of. I don’t like people seeing all the mistakes along the way. I want people to see a perfect version. I usually hate what I’ve draw yesterday. I always think things I did earlier are worse than what I do now, which is probably a good thing, because I’d hate to think that things I did a year ago were better than things I am doing now.”

Perry admits that at times conceptualism can be more of a distraction than a starting point. 

“You want your art to be meaningful and people to say how wonderful that is on so many different levels, you want to be seen as a genius, but I think there is too much emphasis on that really, from my point of view, but I’m not an art critic. I generally now look at things, if I find them aesthetically pleasing that is enough for me. If there’s a message there as well then great, but its not like you shouldn’t try or that there shouldn’t be nothing there but I don’t think it should be the starting point. I think for me personally I want to draw something or paint something that looks good.”

Perry’s attitude is refreshing in that he is not bothered about what other people might think of his choice to be both an exhibiting and commercial artist. 

“I’m just greedy I suppose, not so much in terms of money but I want to do everything. I’d love to have stuff hung in galleries or I’d like to make books or I want make clothing and it’s probably in my childish mind I can’t focus on one thing.  . . . I don’t see a difference between commercial art and “art art”. They’re the same thing, they just happen to be on a different canvas or, you know, a different medium, one primarily to sell a number of and the other is a individual piece of work. It is all art as far as I’m concerned and there shouldn’t be a distinction.”

Perry’s similarities to Rousseau continue in his choice of subject matter. The fact that Rousseau is known for his numerous jungle scenes might suggest an intimate knowledge of jungles, but he never set foot outside of France; illustrated books or botanical gardens were his muses. Likewise, Perry’s best source of inspiration is the Google Image search engine, where he researches interesting poses or moves and tries to capture that in his art.  Animals are sometimes selected simply as an aesthetically pleasing shape rather than because of the choice of animal and its connotations, such as owls. 

“I suppose I draw things that interest me. I suppose its interesting shapes or interesting animals. Aesthetically I find some animals boring and some really interesting. Otters for example, aesthetically I wouldn’t want to draw an otter. I wouldn’t want to draw a snail. I don’t know why, I can’t really define it, but I love bears and octopuses.”

His current focus on aesthetics does not mean that Perry’s work is devoid of meaning altogether.  His art is a visual trickery - visually familiar, the image seems simple and straightforward, yet the content is evolutionary magic. “Darwin’s Despair” is a fictional creature with the head of a goat, the body of a sloth and the tail of a lobster. Increasingly, animals in his work are superimposed upon the human world, in positions or places you wouldn’t expect them.

“I love the contrast between man-made and nature. I never draw people but I draw the product of people, I draw things people have created. I like to put the two together, like the Cranes for example, the mechanical crane got its name from the bird. I like little connections like that.”

The transition between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ is so smooth that it is not immediately evident. A prime example is “Oweleo.”  Though subtly done, the pictures are highly ambiguous and lend themselves to much personal interpretation. In most cases there is no background and there are strong similarities with natural-science drawings. 

“I like the idea of focusing on an animal or an object but not where it is situated. I tend to put too much details into backgrounds or I get bored halfway through, I don’t know, I always found that a struggle. Now the object in isolation often works well, especially for t-shirts. It’s more about positioning and size rather than filling up the page. Again I like to focus on the animal. It’s the animal itself.

Most of my art I like to be scratchy and raw… I also really like heavily processed art or very clean things…computers clean things up a bit, so computers have advantages…but I like to work fairly organically, with homemade light boxes or blue-tack the drawing to the window, cause generally I draw with pencil and trace with black ink and usually the black ink tracing then gets put on the t-shirts.”

Perry’s t-shirt company, Green Tees, prides itself on being not only ethically produced but eco-friendly.

“I always have been aware of the way I act and I like to make an effort.  I would certainly say it is in my consciousness, and it certainly wasn’t the case of deciding to do it to suit the business, because I thought it was a good idea or a good selling point.  It was more a case of, I don’t like how much of a struggle it is to be ecologically friendly or to buy ethically produced clothing. I don’t like not having the choice. I am giving other people the opportunity to improve their impact.  I can give people that opportunity.”

Despite being commercial, Perry’s attitude is not about mass production, in fact it is the opposite. Perry prints limited numbers of his designs.

I think people like knowing that there are only thirty of those t-shirts in the world and because of the nature of what I do and because screens are quite expensive to buy and expose and things, I’m not likely to hold onto it.…everything is pretty much on a limited run, I think that’s nice and people think its a little different. I’ve sold some in Norway and New York and it’s nice to know that these things, although small quantity are travelling quite a bit, it not just people locally, its reaching beyond that. . . . . I want people to see its just me, its not a big company … its me and my flat…really independent, these are the things I’ve made, I’m the person who has made it and your money is not going to a big company.

Perry is indeed an ‘artist of the people’, all inclusive, he wants to share his wonderment with the world and we accept it with open arms. So what’s next for him? I’m trying to draw dinosaurs and be happy with it! It’s strange that I can’t draw them, or I struggle to draw them. But then I couldn’t draw cats, but now I can. If you draw something that you find interesting you’ll make it work.

http://www.greenteesapparel.co.uk

http://www.upaheight.blogspot.com/

Photo credits: Karen Taylor
http://www.flickr.com/photos/camera-lady