Grant Preston – The Artist
Written by Patrick Humphreys
Having Googled Grant Preston before going to interview him I realized that there was a lot more to him than just the well-known contemporary artist. He was listed as having done 7 international feature movies, numerous local television shows, and over 50 stage productions throughout South Africa. Not to mention his two novels and a CD released under the name of Gebo.
“Yes… I do sound like a Jack-of-all-trades”, he admits, “but I started my working life in the advertising industry as a copy writer, and realized it was not for me when I wanted to write my own briefs. I then joined the acting profession, when again after about seven years or so I realized that I was not very good at taking any form of direction. The only thing left for me was to follow my passion, so at the ripe old age of 37 I decided to learn to draw.”
So at least he’d brought me up to date. Now all I had to do was get through the next 23 years, and I would know all there was to know about Grant Preston, the artist.
The interesting thing about this self-trained artist is that in teaching himself to draw he never followed any of the basic conventions of drawing. Consequently his work always had a strangely naïve uniqueness, which has been his hallmark ever since. He never learnt to draw by copying what was seen, but more by what he thought it should look like. He was eclectic, but more in concept than in visual interpretation. “I went out of my way to find artists that I admired,” he explains. “Without Derain, Cezanne and Gauguin, I don’t think I could have sustained my love of painting: the purity of motivation they had in pursuing their passion, not to be commissioned to paint religious, political or social content, but to paint purely in search of portraying the ultimate tribute to beauty.”
“I see painting as the ability to manipulate paint into a desired effect – an effect that can promote a feeling of love. One takes on silly little rules and laws when entrusted with taking up the cudgels in the cause of fine art. One must learn to clearly define the difference between art and fine art.”
“Another quirky little something that I have come up with about fine art, is that it should contain some fine definition, not necessarily in detail, but certainly in application of the medium. I have never rated subject as particularly important in fine art, as I believe the process to be the most important ingredient.”
Just going through Preston’s body of work one can see the clearly defined periods within his ever-evolving progress. Firstly the portraits in pencil and crayon. Then the inclusion of the entire body with movement and emotions. Then the efforts at Abstraction and Cubism, Pointillism, Impressionism and Expressionism. And although these ‘isms’ are there to see, they are still uniquely Preston in their interpretation.
“Colour has always been a major part of my mind’s eye, and it was only after studying Matisse and the German Expressionists that I found an application of colour that suited my particular style.”
“I like it when colour moves across and integrates into a composition; when tone and contrast help the eye move into and through a painting; when white comes forward and black recedes. I don’t think much about colour any more. I just put it where I think it should be. If it’s wrong…I change it. That’s the nice thing about working in oils. They don’t rush you, and they help harmonize colour so that it spreads secretly across from one hue to another.”
And colour is something that Preston is not scared of: bold primaries with sensitively blended complementaries make his paintings ring with an energy that is innate. He calls his latest works ‘expressionistic’, and I can see that they live up to his statement that he works ‘to document his time with love and integrity.’
