Biography

Steve Mills painter

Location: Kent, United Kingdom
Style: Abstract

Encouraged to paint by a friend when in my twenties and living in London, I found something that hooked into me immediately. I didn’t think about being an artist or that I’d never been trained, I just wanted to put paint onto canvas. It was a primal urge.
It was a brief but very productive time and I sold quite a few. I then met someone special, had children and a whole new set of responsibilities took precedence. The recent pandemic has given me the opportunity to rediscover the hook.

What initially interests and compels me is the blank canvas. The unknown before you start, trying to envisage the image that will finally emerge.
And then when you do start, when the paint goes down, you might have a conscious thought of what you’re trying to do but one colour or maybe a brush stroke will take it somewhere completely different and, either by accident or guided by the sub conscious, you trust the process and hope to arrive at a place of finality.

I always take photos of the process and when I’ve finished I look back through them and mourn the paintings that will never be. The stages gone through to reach the end. And then it’s forgotten. Onto the next.

To quote Bacon : ‘Painting today is pure intuition and luck and taking advantage of what happens when you splash the stuff down.’