Gary Hume
Gary Hume
Gary Stewart Hume is an English artist. Hume's work is strongly identified with the YBA artists who came to prominence in the early 1990s. Hume currently lives and works in London and Accord, New York...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth9 May 1962
duration last outset reasonably
Sometimes I can see the whole painting from the outset in my mind's eye. But more often than not, that idea doesn't last the duration of the painting. Sometimes it comes out easy, just as I had envisaged. But that is reasonably rare.
companion demands drawing either might work
One drawing demands to become a painting, so I start to work on that, and then the painting might demand something else. Then the painting might say, 'I want a companion, and the companion should be like this,' so I have to find that, either by drawing it myself or locating the image.
huge museums narrative paintings
Small paintings can be fantastic. But you can't often get a narrative out of a small painting. In any case, museums are huge places, and you want to take up some space.
tenderness
A painting should be tough; it should have muscle, but I have to find some tenderness in it, too. There has to be that dynamic.
human work
I don't make political work. I don't make work that criticises the state. I make as human work as I can.
informing painting says
I have to go with what the painting says to me. The painting is always informing me. I'm its servant; it's not mine. I'm doing what it wants.
half hour necessary rest time
I'm probably creative for half an hour a day. The rest of the time, I'm just doing what's necessary to make that creativity visible.
liked mum pictures poetry stuff
My mum always liked poetry, and she had pictures on the wall, so there was this visual stuff around.
surface
The surface is all you get of me.
found lived paper stuff
I lived on nothing for years - squatted where I lived and where I worked, stole electricity, made things from stuff I found in skips, used paper that had been discarded - you do everything you can do to keep going and not have to get a job.