INTERVIEW: OA JAMES HART DYKE (C85)
continued. I don’t know where this commitment has come from but since I was about eight painting has been a big Interviewed by part of me. Somehow, I have survived Fitzroy Schofield (J21) as an artist, having undertaken many uncertain projects and taken many Q. You have talked about waiting financial risks. After everything I have for hours in the Himalayan done, I have a strange sense that I’m mountains just for ten minutes just beginning. of the clouds parting to jot down a sketch of the great peak, Patience is certainly important, or flying in a helicopter and although I’m a very impatient person. attempting to sketch as you are The journey as an artist is measured shot at from below on the streets in terms of a lifetime. My work of Baghdad. What has each of moves forward steadily but very slowly. these frustrating and terrifying Patience is certainly needed with each experiences taught you about project, especially narrative landscape your own personal commitment painting where one is completely at the to art and the value of patience mercy of the weather. While watching an artist needs to commit to the art world change and develop, with a project? fashions that come and go, I must stay true to myself and march forward On a day-to-day basis, I often feel quietly making the paintings that are deeply uncertain and worried about within me. It often feels like climbing what I’m doing, about the value of a mountain in a storm, one must just my paintings in relation to society put one’s head down and step by step today and about the practical business push up the slope. of making a living. I’m so engrossed with the future; I rarely think about Q. When I look at your work, I what I have done. However, looking feel a whole back story, a whole back, I realise I must be committed world that we as a viewer don’t to painting, otherwise I wouldn’t have know but you are letting us see a 44 | SUMMER 2021 | AMPLEFORTH DIARY
rare showing of. You have seen so many amazing and versatile back stories and worlds across your career, from landing in total darkness in Helmund and jumping out with body helmet on the wrong way or climbing up the Himalayas with Led Zeppelin playing on your personal radio as you painstakingly navigate the many mists and altitudes to paint - in my personal opinion, your best work. How does an artist so successfully charge all the information and events they have seen and experienced into one single image whilst keeping the visual power and rawness of the single image? I should say that that all the projects I have undertaken have directly or indirectly come from my interest in landscape painting, from the painting of remote mountain landscapes which require physically demanding expeditions to the more pedestrian paintings of country houses. This is absolutely central to what I am about as an artist. Each project presents an overwhelming amount of visual information, however,
