Andrew Mercer
Andrew Mercer
Welcome to the Artists Blog !!
1stAngel: When did you first become interested in art?
Andrew: My earliest memory of art must be at primary school.. I painted a picture which the teacher praised I was probably 7 or 8, I remember being surprised that anyone would comment on it. It was a street scene with figures. I can still picture it. For some reason one of the figures is wearing a turban.
At secondary school a teacher I hardly knew made a point of telling me I would make a good artist. I won the final year school prize for art and then got accepted into art college. So art has always been an important part of my life. I have a good memory for pictures and colours, not much else though 
1stAngel: What style of art do you do and What made you choose the style of art you use most?
Andrew: Big question… I find it very hard to restrict myself to a single style. I suppose the style that people most associate me with is the style I call “urban naive” but I have worked in quite a few styles. For me every picture presents a new challenge.. often I can see the finished picture before I start. The idea hits me and the required style is also very obvious to me.
1stAngel: Has your style changed from when you first began as an artist?
Andrew: Yes.. not something I really take much notice of but it certainly has. But then again my style changes every week anyway.
1stAngel: What medium do you use?
Andrew: Paint, pastel, pen, camera, photoshop, and then for the next work I use..
I have a painting I made with Tippex on blue paper.
1stAngel: What made you choose that medium?
Andrew: I had some Tippex and started to play about with it.. you have to work very very fast painting with Tippex ! But seriously I choose the medium to suit the idea.. or the image I have in my mind.
1stAngel: Do your ideas come from life or imagination?
Andrew: Where does life begin and imagination end ? For me the boundaries are blurred, what we think is external is our brains interpretation of light hitting the back of the retina. So what we say is “external” is in fact internalized by the time we see it. Everyone sees the same image slightly differently. I have some Italian blood and many folks say they see this in my work, so my way of seeing the world is probably influenced by my genetics. I like bright blues and olive greens so it must be true. I also love myths and mythology.. these images exist in that space between reality and total fantasy. My first visit to Italy was like going home.. all the images that have been a part of my inner landscape where everywhere in the “real” world. This is the visual territory I like to operate in.. I enjoy playing about with myths.. I like to imagine aliens in suburbia and Elvis in a Fish and Chip shop in Accrington …that sort of thing. But apart from this I am quite normal
1stAngel: How do you choose your images and colours?
Andrew: Generally I am struck by an image or an idea for an image. Its a largely instinctive process for me… so the image and the colours just happen. The more contrived and deliberate about things I am.. the worse art I seem to produce. I admire people who can consistently produce good work in one style, I don’t know how they avoid boredom.
1stAngel: Who is your favourite artist?
Andrew: Phew.. where do I start. I am currently interested in the work of Gill & Ravelious, whose work decorates the walls at the Midland Hotel in Morecambe. I love all the Italian masters.. and Miro, Kandinksy.. and Klee and.. and.. and.. I also have a fondness for Lancashire painters..like Lowry and Theo Major, these guys made it ok to make art in Lancashire. They made art very much about this part of the world.. they captured the essence of their hard times. Major is largely forgotten these days but he was very highly regarded. I had the privilege to spend a day with him … he was an extraordinary man.. he bought the house next door and it was completely full of his pictures..you had to climb over famous pictures to get in. He was like a firecracker.. say the wrong thing and you could see the rage like a volcano rising in him. One critic described his work as “some of the most important works of the 20th century” and I agree with that.
1stAngel: What is your favourite piece of work by yourself?
Andrew: Again a very big question.. it constantly changes. If I am working on one picture then I tend to look again at similar pictures I have produced and start to get into them again.
I like my little alien avatar picture..
not because its particularly good but it means quite a bit to me. If I feel like giving someone a work I can print “him” off using the inkjet and hand them an instant copy. If you look closely it includes some random computer code at the top of the picture that looks like a page printed from a PC but also looks a bit like a message from an “alien”.
I am also rather proud of the Hillsborough picture
not because I think its my greatest work or anything.. although reproductions sell pretty well. I dedicated it to the victims of the Hillsborough tragedy.
I am also very fond of “Aliens mowed my lawn”
and”Triple Kings”
1stAngel: How much time (on average) does it take to complete a work?
Andrew: The longest is probably ten years.. the shortest is probably my “now famous” Tippex work. I can have several works in production at one time.. so I might leave one for a week or a year.. or longer then go back to it.
The ten year one started as a sketch which I then forgot about until one day I found a frame in a junk shop and I knew instantly which picture it would suit.. it then took several goes to get right so all in all it took about ten years from conception to completion. The picture has won quite a few accolades … and I have had several good offers for it but curiously without “the frame” it doesn’t look anywhere near as good.
Title : “Three old ladies in the park”
1stAngel: How well do you take criticism?
Andrew: It could put me off for months when I was younger but these days it doesn’t bother me anywhere near as much. I wanted to borrow a couple of pictures from a collector friend recently to photograph, it was like trying to steal their children.
Art either makes connections at a deep level with people or not at all. Anyone who really connects with your work wouldn’t dream of being be very negative about it. You’re going to get praise and negative criticism, so you need to learn to handle both. Too much praise can be just as destructive.
1stAngel: What do you do to overcome a ‘block’?
Andrew: Play poker, write, walk, socialise, cook, watch football(soccer). I find taking photographs a good way to get past a block. I don’t know a great deal about the technical side but I find simply snapping.. starts to trigger visual ideas. I think a lot of it is to do with using different parts of your brain.. sometimes that part of your brain gets tired or you are stuck in a different way of thinking. Sometimes I just get a few old images out and have a look and then lots of other possibilities I had at the time come flooding back. I also get visual ideas from writing..
| “The midges up in Scotland may be small but they work in packs ! Sort of like flying piranha’s in kilts.” |
1stAngel: How do you know something is ‘finished’? Is it easy to walk away?
Andrew: Thats a very good question.. my work goes through stages and transitions. I just generally know when its finished (for now). When you press the button on a camera the work is completed at that point. It can be the same with art..
I like digital art because it means I can take an image I painted 15yrs ago and make 20 new digital versions… and keep on working from one to the next saving each version as a finished work. It appeals to me that some works are like “lost children” that only exist as digital files out there in cyberspace.. and that the only people who have them are those people who order a print, its affordable art for the masses.(Comrade)
1stAngel: Have you had exhibits in galleries?
Andrew: I have had a number of one man exhibitions over the years and been a finalist in quite a few contests. I think I won one major contest but got demoted when I refused to sell the painting to the chief Judge. (Spits) I have works in private collections in England, America, France, America and Mexico.
I have sold my work through a couple of galleries.. I was totting up the other day how many people I have sold pictures to and I was genuinely surprised. In the early days quite a lot of my work went missing.. and I’m pretty certain there are artists out their with guilty secrets. I was very disorganised and never even bothered to photograph a lot of it.. I had a 6ft x 6ft canvas “removed”, I still don’t know how the hell did they got away with it ? I have this feeling one day I will bump into one of my “lost” works in cyberspace.
1stAngel: Have you any exhibits in galleries planned for the future?
Andrew: I don’t really like all the stuff that goes with having exhibition’s. I express myself better in written and visual form that by speaking.. and you need to speak when you have an exhibition. I tend to mumble incomprehensibly when put on the spot and asked to explain a work. So at present I have gone off the idea.. no doubt something will come along. I must admit I enjoy exhibiting my work on the Net.. I get plenty of feedback, and I can reply in writing and I can’t think of a better way to hit the whole world. I like it when someone in the Outback or Brazil emails me to say they like one of my works they spotted in cyberspace.
I have just started a blog.. (I know ten years late !) and enjoy putting up recent works and ideas on there.. pop over and say hello.
1stAngel: What are your plans for the future?
Andrew: Keep working. I would be a liar if I said I didn’t want wider recognition. I suppose I will have to get round to exhibiting again in the next decade.
1stAngel: Looking back, what has been the best part of your work?
Andrew: The doing.. when you get into a piece of work and you know its going well. When someone you don’t know thinks enough of your work to pay hard earned money for it. My favourite saying as an artist h Cassidy is.. “The rules are.. there are no rules”
Thank you Andrew for allowing me the interview. If you exhibit I will have to come and see 
Andrews Gallery http://www.redbubble.com/people/merca
Andrews Blog http://andymercer.blogspot.com