Oliver Clegg

Singled out as a rising star by the guardian in 2007, artist Oliver Clegg has smashed the London art scene with his ‘melancholic’ oil paintings and has now moved onto practice bold prints, tags and graphics. Travelling whilst creating his pieces and set on conquering the rest of the world, Restless catches up with the young 

artist to chat about where he’s been, what he’s doing and what he would be doing if he wasn’t an artist.  

How have you wound up here then?  

I used to draw endless amounts of rabbits on everything when I was younger. I have no idea why I just adored them! And then I studied history of art and Italian at uni which meant I ended up spending a couple of years in Italy studying portrait painting in oil. After finishing my degree, I interned for a year in London in galleries like white cube and counter gallery. I though it was where I wanted to be, but it turned out it wasn’t for me so off I went to Cornwall and shared a studio with the sculptor Alastair Mackie. I was 26 years old and I wanted to do a masters without doing all the rest ( foundation & bachelors) so I worked on a portfolio in the studio day and night till I knew I had something that would get me in. it was ambitious and  a terrifying but exciting learning curve but I didn’t regret it.  If anything I wish I had done it sooner! 

For those who don’t know you as an artist, how would you describe your style?  

Its hard for me to  pinpoint a certain style, as I often work in different media simultaneously. In the last six months I would say that my focus has been mainly on making paintings. This is mainly as a response to only making sculptures after initially moving to New York 2 years ago. Before that, I was living in Europe and I was making paintings on antique wooden surfaces. They were melancholic and I suppose less interesting.  

And now you have moved, your style has changed? 

Yeh, I’ve moved away from that  and i’m now working on larger paintings. The move to America inspired some part of me to create bigger and more colorfull more humorous pieces. I haven’t aborted the aspects of my older European paintings in terms of paint and palette, but I’m throwing in the visual graphic lessons I’ve learnt to create something different. My most recent pieces contain a lot of contrasts, combining text, graphics, figurative painting and line drawing with expressionist brushstrokes. It’s a lot of fun and it’s a refreshing change to what I was doing before. Art is about growing.  

What is it about art, and being an artist that excites you?  

I just love how something so pointless can be so fun!  

So, you think art is pointless?  

Erm… 

If you weren’t doing this, where and what would you be doing? 

I would probably be living on a beach like a native cave man, I already have the beard so I suppose I’m half way there!