Welcome to 15 Questions With…, a new interview series in which art writer Gary Grimes picks the brains of artists, curators, and other creatives to understand what makes them tick through a series of quick-fire questions. This series aims to showcase the varying approaches creatives take to making art and how their relationships to the so-called art world differ, but also reveal what unites those responsible for the art we love.

Born in Saudi Arabia and raised in London, David Shillinglaw is an English painter whose work spans various mediums, though he is best known for his paintings and murals. Through his signature style, which combines playful doodling with cultural references from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics to medical symbols, he creates both lar. In his career, he has held solo exhibitions in cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Hamburg, Lisbon, Bristol, Amsterdam, Berlin and London, and published a number of books of his work.

Next month, his next solo show, entitled Only Human, opens at the Eritage Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal. The show will be on view from 10 October through to the new year. He is also a participating artist in the Sounds From A Safe Harbour Festival, which runs from September 11 - 14 across Cork City.

1. What is your earliest memory of a work of art?

A very early strong memory is a trip to the Tate, pre-Tate Modern era. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. I remember being a bit freaked out, but drawn to the Francis Bacon triptych ‘Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion’. We were all asked to choose a postcard to take away and reproduce at school. I chose Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Whaam!’. My mum let me paint it on my bedroom wall.  

2. Where do you turn to when you're in need of inspiration?

Books, music, documentaries, podcasts… An artist whose work always inspires me is Jean Dubuffet. I also love his collection of outsider art and outsider art in general. I often return to a documentary about outsider art presented by Jarvis Cocker; it's well worth a watch.

3. What do you like to do when you need to take a break from your practice?

Spending time with my daughter, cooking, reading, and going for a walk. Something that relaxes me but keeps me close to the work is tidying the studio. I like to organise the space and prepare it for working in. There is something calming about cleaning the studio, like sweeping the dance floor before the party.

4. Who is your favourite artist?

It changes all the time. I learn different things from different artists. Dead artists that I love are Matisse, Dubuffet, Basquiat, Guston and Klee. Living artists I admire are Tal R, James Drinkwater, Joe Bradley, Eddie Martinez and Marria Pratts. Honestly, I am most envious of the drawings my five-year-old daughter makes. 

5. What's the biggest crime an artist can commit?

Not titling a work of art. Duchamp said, “The title of a painting is another colour on the artist's palette”. I like titles a lot, to me, they are the punchline to the joke. 

6. Which gallery or museum should everyone try to visit at least once in their life?

Collection de l'Art Brut, in Lausanne, Switzerland. 

7. What is the worst thing about the art world?

The illusion that it is a singular thing. There are multiple art worlds which collide, overlap and bleed into each other. And all the bubble wrap! I hate bubble wrap.

8. Whose opinions on art do you actually care about?

I enjoy the feedback of people who don’t know me and who react to the art on its own terms. Strangers can see or read something into the work that I haven’t intended. I also value the opinions of people who know me well; they tend to notice things that strangers wouldn’t. Both are ways to understand how the work speaks, whispers, or sings to people. The work is complete when someone else sees it.

9. What can you tell us about your involvement in the upcoming Sounds From A Safe Harbour Festival in Cork?

I was invited to create a series of posters for the events throughout the festival, and I’ll be painting a mural during the festival too.  I am buzzing to be part of such a magical meeting of minds, musicians, poets, tricksters and troubadours. 

10. Who are the last three musical artists you listened to?

Geese, Chet Baker and Thee Oh Sees. 

11. What's your favourite colour and why?

Blue, for a dozen reasons. Blue was my mother’s maiden name. Blue is the colour of my eyes, the colour of longing, the sky and the sea, Yves Klein, Picasso, Miles Davis, and Joni Mitchell, the steep, winding streets of Chefchaouen, lapis lazuli, and ultramarine. It belongs to the sea. 

I’m reminded of a quote from the writer Rebecca Solnit, who once wrote about blue: “For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that colour of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The colour of that distance is the colour of an emotion, the colour of solitude and of desire, the colour of there seen from here, the colour of where you are not. And the colour of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.”

12. What three items would you grab if your house was burning down?

A stack of Polaroids and photobooth photos. As many sketchbooks as I can carry. My passport. 

13. What can you tell us about your show in Lisbon that is soon about to open?

The exhibition is my second solo show with Eritage Projects, titled Only Human. The show also launches a handmade book by the same name, Riso printed by my friends at Jumbo Press. The show will bring together paintings, drawings, ceramics and many monoprints.

The show celebrates the spectrum of the human experience, exploring the relationships we have with ourselves, each other and the world. The works weave together personal and universal themes, constructing a patchwork of ideas that are both familiar and mysterious. Whether the piece is a landscape or an anatomical study, I consider the works to be maps of emotional terrains. 

14. Which piece in the show took the longest to perfect, and why?

It’s very difficult for me to single out one piece. I work on many pieces at the same time. The works feed off each other. The paintings cross-pollinate, they talk to each other, like different dishes at a banquet, or plants in a garden. I also love how imperfect a lot of the work is, I enjoy the dirty, dusty, smudges and scratches more than ever, and feel like the physical imperfections of the work somehow support or describe the same qualities in our bodies and minds, ripped paper can be reminiscent of scar tissue, a censored word can describe fading memories, heavy glue and collaged paper fragments feel like broken architecture, reconstructed after a battle or natural disaster. 

15. What impression do you hope people get after seeing your show?

I hope people find something in the exhibition that reminds them of what it is to be Human. I want to celebrate being fallible, insecure, and overwhelmed. I want to create spaces where it is okay to fail and be confused. I hope to shine a light on the brutal beauty of the world and help people locate themselves in this messy mass we call planet Earth. I want the paintings and drawings to feel like poems or songs that sing about the human species.