by Richard Wolfe (Penguin Books $72)
In 1967, the year after completing a Diploma of Fine Arts at the Elam School of Fine Arts, Richard Killeen took possession of his first studio. It was in the attic of what had been the Junction Hotel in Newmarket, and its façade was distinguished by a large, flickering neon
Coca-Cola sign. His later studios were always at home, so he could enjoy the proximity to his family, and the present one - built in 1988 - is beside his house in Epsom.
Killeen worked part-time for his father as a signwriter until 1981. He then became a full-time artist, taking on what was more than just a nine-to-five job: "That's the whole point; if you are full-time it gives you time to do it. You can't get better at something if you don't do it all the time. You can't just do it some of the time - it doesn't work like that." He doesn't believe he ever made the decision to be an artist: "I think it's something that you don't actually choose to be - I think it chooses you."
While his father may have had other expectations, the younger Killeen was "never really interested in signwriting ... It was really just a means to an end. But everything that you do does have an influence." Working in the commercial area exposed him to methods not usually associated with the fine arts, and his career as a professional painter has seen him move away from the traditional brush. This was encouraged by the history of art - Pop Art in particular - and the fact that he never particularly liked paint: "It wasn't something that I felt was part of what I was doing. Again, it was just a means to an end. So I realise now I have spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out ways of doing art which didn't require paint."
He describes some artists as "painters' painters, where the paint is a part of what they're doing ... part of the meaning ... I've never really felt that. The image was far more interesting to me."
Pop Art gave Killeen the licence to lift imagery from existing sources, such as magazines, a practice which was "really to do with convenience more than anything", although it was also common among signwriters. At Elam, Killeen's lecturer Colin McCahon pointed out his different way of doing things: "Someone like Matisse would paint over a whole work, whereas I would paint one bit and then another bit, and then another bit. I'd paint in the sky, then I'd paint the mountain in front of it ... it was a whole lot of bits that were being brought together." This assembling of elements paved the way for his cut-out aluminium images, which he began in 1978: "It's a mindset; it's the way I approach things ... and it's the way the world is now anyway ... more contemporary art is based on collage."
He describes his working process: "You go through periods when you have to do 12-hour days to get through into the next thing. You get into problem areas and you can't go round them - you have to go through them - and the faster you can work your way through them the better. So I've had periods when it's been a nightmare, problem-solving, but in a strange psychological way you're really dealing with yourself. And it's your own attitude that you're trying to change. You can solve the problems that you're having ... by altering your attitude to the way you're doing things ... working out what the block is. It's a very strange business."
In 1986 Killeen bought his first computer with graphics capability, recognising the technology as the way of the future. It allowed him to "take images and change them in ways that you couldn't necessarily anticipate ... It's a particular way of seeing the world."
But an early problem was getting the image "off the computer and on to the wall", and he devised a method of photocopying computer generated and found images on to tissue paper, which he then collaged on to aluminium. Today's computers are far more sophisticated and Killeen finds them simpler to operate: "You get better at it, and you pick things up and learn along the way. Things that used to be quite difficult have become much easier ... It's just driven by what you're doing, just a feeling that you want and where you're at in your mind, and you're just following your intuition really. And if I needed to pick up a paintbrush then I would."
He is aware of a resistance to art made by computer: "It doesn't have the hand of the artist in the way that other things do ... It is hand-made in that sense but it doesn't come out looking as though it is."
Killeen's images typically consist of large numbers of seemingly disparate objects melded together and given rich textures and multiple perspectives. This bringing together is in fact what Killeen has always done. His images are constructed with an electronic pen, from basic geometry: "In a way they're like little sculptures, so you can move them around. You can look at them from different angles, you can use the same image in different situations."
And in another departure from painting, the computer allows him to save images at selected stages in their evolution, and then return to develop alternative versions later. When a work is completed it is transferred to a memory stick and sent out for ink-jet printing, on paper or canvas. If on the latter it then goes out for stretching. And while this technology allows an unlimited number of images, Killeen is interested only in "unique" prints, thereby maintaining the individuality of traditional oil painting.
The computer has enabled Killeen to move from flat representations - as in his cut-outs - to an intensely three-dimensional effect: "It adds a realistic element that wasn't present in the other work, which has its own problem ... it can undermine the actual strength of the image because of the reality factor. Whenever you pick up a brush and paint something on a canvas it is a metaphor, because it's not the real thing. So, when you introduce a three-dimensional element, which looks more real, it is not as metaphorical in a way that other things are. So you're dealing with a different sort of thing ... You tend to be seduced to some degree by reality if you're not careful."
In the beginning, Killeen saw the computer as "just a tool on the way to doing something else that didn't actually look like a computer was involved, whereas now it looks like it is involved". But not everything has changed: "You can use a computer, you can do what you like with any modern technique, but in reality art is still exactly the same as what it was when cavemen did it. It's an illusion ... and it's an illusion to think that it has actually changed, to think that you're doing something more modern, newer or better. If it doesn't have the qualities of what the cavemen's art had then it's not art."
Killeen describes a lot of contemporary art as being "in the head ... but it lacks the body". For him, without that body it doesn't "transcend its everyday-ness, and that's what it has to do. If it doesn't do that, in my book it's not good art". His interest is in art that goes beyond the everyday: "That's why it lasts. It has that universality about it, that connection with the great metaphors to do with what it is to be alive, all the contradictions involved in that. That's what you're aiming for in some ways, and it is very difficult in a culture like ours where we take everything literally."
