Interview

Andrew Radcliffe sat down with Cory Dunham, photographer and lifelong friend,

in NYC in April 2026

Cory Dunham What is your earliest memory of creating something?

Andrew Radcliffe Actually, painting watercolors is... my earliest memory, period. Also drawing.

By about four or five it was always the thing that I did, and was “supposed” to do, because

my family said “he’s the artist ..he’s going to be the artist” They gave me books on how to

draw and art supplies. Later on I excelled in art classes in school and joined the art club

after school. By age 14 I was already life drawing and painting from a live model as well as

landscapes outside.

CD What did you have to unlearn to become the artist you are now?

AR You’re always fighting to unlearn the skills or gifts that you’re given. Fortunately or unfor-

tunately, I can draw or paint anything quickly, easily. That can be a curse. I had to traverse my

academic rendering skills, and find new more original ways to paint.

CD 1993 - the Black and White Drip Paintings… how did they come about? What is the ap-

proach? How is it different from what preceded?

AR The different approach of being in a studio, having a longer term objective and involve-

ment resulted in making a different kind of visual experience. In the first abstract painting

series it seemed important to have a conceptual idea. There was a period in the early 1990s

in New York painting called ‘Conceptual Abstraction”. This was actually the title of one of the

final group shows at Sidney Janis Gallery (1991). I knew a few of those artists, and I was

interested. With the Black and White Drip Paintings I simply said, okay, the white drips are

going up to heaven while the black drips are going down to hell… and that’s all this painting’s

gonna be about! As the viewer steps back observing the drips en mass, the painting becomes

gray. It becomes atmospheric…real entertainment for the eye. I thought.. we all live, sort of

somewhere between heaven and hell, or good and bad, black and white.

CD So they’re kind of a nice tight little package. There cannot be a white drip going up without

a black drip going down nor a black drip going down without the white drip going up?

AR You’re either going to heaven or to hell, but the real condition is in between when you step

back from the painting, it is in the gray area, the struggle of life. Each viewer gravitates to

white or to black as a Rorschach test reflecting their outlook of life. In later paintings, bodies

are placed in the middle of a similar allover abstract environment and the viewer can deter-

mine whether they feel the body is descending or ascending. I often wonder if the ascension

to heaven above may be more terrifying than to hell below.

CD The pointillist paintings you arrived at are very interesting. How did those come about?

AR There’s several artists who began in pointillism, from the Post Impressionists, Matisse

and his circle, several abstract expressionists or some of the optical artists like Bridget Riley.

I resolved to reduce everything to a dissolution of objects, matter, flesh, space into flattened

information that is simply marks of color and nothing else. I made many purely abstract as

well as figurative pointillist paintings which eventually shifted my priorities toward the desire

to signal to the viewer that you are looking at paint. Here’s the paint! The optical experience

coupled with a paint experience is one of the most important that a painting can provide. 

Whether it’s vivid color, vibrating, advancing, retreating, linear patterns, the graphic interlaying

of white dots over color, forcing the viewer away as the detail of a figure draws the viewer

back in, double printing on a painting I try to create something that engages the eye which is

also a result of employing the paint.

CD This earlier pointillist Diver painting is strong because the figure is puncturing space, He

jumps out from these flat areas of light conditions which read as the background, the con-

crete and the pool. The implied shadow of the diver over of the pool as well the suspension

of the diver seems perfectly located, a very taught composition which is well done. A tension

is there not just formally within the frame, but also with the figure penetrating space. Did you

take that photo?

AR Yeah, it’s a pre-cellphone photograph, of my then brother-in-law, Uncle Matty…sweetest

guy…probably after a long day pouring concrete together. It’s a key painting because the fig-

ure is falling and floating-he’s taking a leap. He’s going from one atmospheric space, jumping

away from a vertical wall of the blue light of a glass window behind him into another horizon-

tal atmospheric space, the pool, also of blue light beneath him… kind of reality into fantasy or

or flat space into deep space. Like 2-D Gumby becoming 3-D. The in-between is a metaphor

for life’s journey, again a certain human vulnerability I keep painting about. I don’t feel a nar-

rative needs to be over complex. Right there beginning in earlier paintings such as this and up

to the present there is an insistence in placing the figure in the situation of in-between. I have

really tried to explore that territory. The figures are tumbling across, falling down or ascend-

ing up through spaces of atmospheric forces made visible by dashes, swimming out through

densely patterned areas to a far horizon line, on a journey through forests of paint, spinning

across spaces of pure blackness, always folding back on abstraction and the formal possi-

bilities inherent in paint itself. They describe different transitional states, the presence of the

figure invites the viewer to imagine those states.

CD Your perspective is the motivation itself, it’s in this state of terror that is the state of being

naked in nature. How do you find balance from being thrown into this?

AR When we enter the world, we’re thrown out. Unclothed. We go out into the world. Naked-

ness and vulnerability is, when you get down to it the condition of life. I would rather get to

the point and expose that sooner than later, life’s an adventure, it’s difficult and complicated.

CD The falling paintings. That’s another place where you’re talking about the vulnerability

serialized almost through a film strip where the figure is falling through the painting in several

poses. How did you arrive at that?

AR Most viewers will see a body falling. This is the suffering more in our imagination than in

reality. Why is this body not ascending, or in a state of equilibrium? I was hoping to express

instability by way of exploring poses the body might make which express that. Not finding

anyone actually willing to pose in these ways I had no choice but to employ myself. Using a

pool with harsh lighting a professional filmmaker videotaped me flailing, twisting, writhing,

facial expressions and all - completely naked..resulting in stills which became the poses for

the paintings. This process, being in a film doing that of all things, was surprisingly emotion-

al, challenging, and very, very defenseless. I really pushed myself to get the look which was

needed. Not intending to be the subject of the painting, I backed into self-portraiture. Yet I will

not deny that I feel susceptible at times, we all do, vulnerability is not incidental to life. So in

those falling/ascending/equilibrium paintings, the source is the same figure, stacked up 9 or

10 poses which occur over 2 or 3 seconds. If you look carefully the body is moving as a filmstrip.

I thought that was interesting because now there’s the experience of time, the viewer

can follow that body in motion.

CD When you have the slashing bands of the dismembered figure in the forest, the forest

obscures your ability to see clarity. And as a result, arms and legs fragment into slices nearly

becoming tree branches. Why do you paint the forest?

AR I grew up with many memories in forests in Vermont, also in the islands I lived for 18 years

on a mountain surrounded by the jungle. The forest is a grand theme, particularly in myth as

well as in German art. I can never forget those apple trees in The Wizard of Oz, who come to

life once Dorothy picks an apple - absolutely terrifying.. the branches become arms that can

throw things and grab her!! I have witnessed trees doing just that during hurricanes. There

were people being blown away and never found or found in pieces, in the jungle. I lost one

friend that way out to sea.

CD What about the precision or the perfection of the slicing?

AR It’s extremely violent that the body would be sliced up, yet the slices are so clean there

is no blood or mess. Everyone experiences those wavy funhouse mirrors. You see yourself

divided up into pieces, deformed or exaggerated like Andre Kertez’s photographs of nudes

in the mirror called the Distortions series which I am very fond of. It is comic and horrifying

at the same time without blood or gore somewhere between humor and terror. In fact Kertez

somehow eroticizes the deformed bodies. One sees oneself sliced or distorted yet without

pain. Phycologists would say we are all puzzles, made top of different pieces. The sliced bod-

ies represent us as pieces of our puzzle in disarray on the table. In these paintings the entire

body is usually there in whole however rearranged out of order as sliced flesh or pieces of

meat. Strangely people giggle at them and try to visually put them back together as a puzzle! I

am amazed at our capacity and addiction to violence in the arts.

CD All of these paintings show the incredible nature of the dispersal that a body may undergo.

Talk about the double printing technique.

AR That’s an optical experience that is embedded in an action, involving the use of the paint,

the result of a chance operation. I stumbled into a technique that needed to be explored.

Entirely painted on plastic, printed on the canvas, repositioned, and reprinted on a very large

scale, in many the plastic is sliced up and carefully rearranged, which slices the body up as

well. For the Black Paintings I really wanted complete blackness and only a very dim light,

nothing surrounds the body except pure blackness and limitless depth, the light emanates

from the bodies. They carry echoes of candlelit religious scenes, of masses of bodies, the

in-between of transcendence. In the setting of nocturnal darkness, they express another layer

of vulnerability, the dimness creates fear and psychological gravity.

CD It seems so Baroque..What else concerning technique?

AR In most of my paintings, the paint that you see is the paint which rests on the surface in

that spot. Paint is rarely caked on over and over other colors in layers. Other than the Black

Paintings, I prefer you see luminous pure color in which light bounces off the white surface

underneath and reflects back though the pure pigments capturing their full powers. I scrape

off a lot of paint to return to placing colors on the virgin surface and often push things around

allowing some history to be revealed. It’s very important to divulge the effort, struggle and

most importantly the compassion which goes into painting, this conveys further evidence of

the human condition as well. Looking at art all over the world, throughout art history right up

to today I see things never even imagined one could do with paint. It is a miraculous material

with thousands of variations for self expression and the present is a great time for painting.

CD Those accidents and explorations of the paint are another word for the discovery of the

way through, which is kind of metaphorically part of the journey.

AR It’s very important to absorb mistakes or imperfections. They can become important

virtues of of a painting. It takes courage to recognize imperfections and use them in a positive

way. Preoccupation with control is not going to get you through life. I’ve backed into several

techniques by making so called mistakes. In order to really embrace painting, you have to get

out of its way, be susceptible to what it shows you and be interested in things you didn’t mean

to do. Over time, you see what your involvement is telling you about how you want to use the

material and how you’re using it more successfully or less so. In trusting the process you ar-

rive at something fruitful. Some artists are able to get in touch with their specific talents early

on, which is wonderful, it has taken me a longer time.

CD In these traversing the ocean paintings there is that horizon line. That is the barest

minimum of code for this to be read as above or below horizon, then everything else is this

strange, otherworldly aspect that the figure exists in.

AR The only difference between above and below that broad horizon line is a different treat-

ment of paint. Both areas loosely signify ocean or sky, and convey the optical densities and

differences between them. The weightless freedom one seeks above in the sky and the com-

pression or containment one experiences in the ocean or on the earth below again returns

to the earlier theme of separation and unity presented in the Black and White Drip Paintings

many years ago. I have placed the body within both of these as well as in many other situa-

tions.

CD Where do your ideas come from?

AR Everything begins with a little sketch. I have a consistent drawing habit over 30 years

which I use Japanese ink pens on a small pad of very good paper. Most importantly I seem to

draw all the time, anywhere and of anything without limitations…a doodle, a portrait of some-

one, a scene in front of me, a dream, real, imagined, abstract patterns, even comedic char-

acters all potentially feed paintings. From these a few may seem interesting, so, a couple of

versions become watercolors, which will become a more formal painting. Most painters draw.

Bonnard would say “a well constructed painting is half painted”. In drawing I am fleshing out

all kinds of ideas that are coming directly out of me in that moment eventually resulting in

paintings which feel honest and sincere.

CD There is a certain consistency in that one way or another the human experience has been

portrayed over several years.

The persistence with the unknown and embracing ambiguity shows that creativity thrives with

sustained relinquishment. There’s an emotional temperature in the paintings that is reflective

of the adversity. Do you still find that there’s a positive way through without being defeated?

AR Painting must deliver a human to human experience, with evidence of emotion and

compassion. Over time, I find that this is true across all art forms, drama, music, literature.

I sustain my involvement as an artist by not apologizing for pursuing sincerity. I find that art

which expresses emotion seems to last for decades and even centuries.CD That’s definitely

palpable. There’s humility. Humility and compassion is a vital aspect of communication.

AR Everyone has life experience and appreciation for the humility that comes with being a

naked human being in the ocean, or dreams in which you are falling for example. That’s a

visceral memory which is not something you have to be an expert about. I am only asking the

viewer, could you imagine yourself in this position? If this helps you to understand the world

or if you’ve ever felt this way then the experience may affirm life in a helpful way. It’s very im-

portant that emotion, compassion and a deep relation of the human experience be conveyed

to an audience.

CD These blue paintings of the figure tumbling through the forest, do you have a personal

anecdote about that?

AR There was tiny area of forest in my childhood backyard, the first setting which I could

escape to and be in the wild. I was able to go there at my father’s passing and take some

photos at a beautiful time in late afternoon. It occurred to me that I knew every tree there

so I felt connected and used these particular photos for this series. My father fought bravely

in the forests across Europe during WW2, he lost some buddies in Belgium but survived. I

imagined the moment soldiers die in a forest, the trees, the bodies and the silence. The body

is flesh and the trees are solid, yet now the laws of nature don’t apply to them. I painted the

flesh translucent and as thin as weightless tissue floating up.

CD They seem disembodied from agency. Like the diver in the early pointillist painting, a

moment of suspension, the in-between thematic element is consistently impressed upon

the viewer throughout all of your paintings. What about the different ways that the body is

dissolved into the painting, dissolved back into pointillism later on? You seem to explore the

process of becoming, appearing and disappearing. There the body, covered and engulfed by

dots, dissolves into something like Star Trek when they get beamed up or dematerialized.

AR In those paintings thousands of white dashes of paint are double printed so they appear

to have movement like invisible winds, currents of water or forces made visible. The body tum-

bles helplessly…“sucked screaming through life” as John Ashbury wrote in one of my favorite

poems. The viewer senses a kind of friction the surrounds the body. The white veil of dashes

across the painting is graphic rather than optical. The viewer can see through yet the overall

recognition time is moderated.

CD What can you get away with legibly, where the painting signals itself as a painting, not as a

representation of a subject?

AR There is a limit to what you can represent or not represent. There is an inherent conflict in

the act of trying to represent formal and anti formal elements of recognition across the range

from an anatomically correct figure to pure abstraction for example. The tension lies in the

resistance of being too illustrative while in some way still marginally including recognizable

aspects. Yet the medium of paint is well able to expand or contract across this broad range

of recognition from exactitude to exaggeration and the viewer benefits from the exploration,

discernment and perception of this.

CD Another subject of interest are how these emotional landscapes exist more in your mind

than are representations of an actual place. They feel less like places and more like condi-

tions.AR When one swims in the ocean, it’s something like being back in the womb, because it’s

salt water. It is actually alive and is connected throughout the entire earth, you swim in the

plasma of the planet. That’s a condition. Over my entire life, there has been a certain addic-

tion to risk, both physically and at times emotionally and thus to vulnerability itself. This feeds

my particular creativity. I want to go somewhere wild, survive and come back, and seem to

put myself and my body into incredibly foolish experiences, in all kinds of places. I think I

have 9 lives and have used up several. Many real situations I attempt to somehow translate

through paint into these conditions.

CD Narrative doesn’t need to be complex, does the simplicity and innocence makes it more

binding in its truthfulness?

AR Emotion is really the most important thing to deliver in an art experience. Color is the

primary way of delivering emotion in painting and is the boldest tool of communication in the

visual language of painting. Beyond that it has to have certain formal elements such as com-

position, line, space, texture, scale, an original way of applying the paint, and most important-

ly light and mystery. Those attributes have to add up in a logic of their own that is enduring.

Including the figure adds another layer of emotion onto those basic visual experiences. For

me it serves as an advocate or avatar to which the viewer hopefully may sympathize with.

While including the figure seems sort of comic, it is also humbling which circles back to the

painter in the studio creating the painting. This figure is the artist and I strongly feel an artist

is within each of us. The figure endures the pictured situation, just like one endures everyday

life. I attempt to covey the value of recognizing the gratification in the navigation towards rath-

er than the attainment of or arrival at the other side. I can’t claim any answers or conclusions

only that we are all on a continuous unknown path which we try to navigate.