Ben Luke

But with each iteration, he brings to the painting something new, moments of small revelation that might be the way the light falls on an object or across a space, the delicate hues that describe the landscape, or a particular focus on pattern.

These repeated scenes are always in flux.

Another munificent aspect of Andy's paintings is in their titles.

Some make deliberate reference to cultural sources or act as homages.

Others, like Torture Chamber Music from 2020, a memory of classical musicians playing at his school, engage in wordplay.

Many are out and out funny, like the blissful 2021 landscape dominated by white and yellow hues that's called It Was Your Birthday and a seagull shat on your head.

Again, while these relate to personal events, Andy's framing of them means that he shares them with us rather than simply describes them.

We met in April 2026 at Modern Art, the gallery in London where Andy was showing new paintings, many of which referred to sports, including two pieces relating to golf, one relating to cricket and another using a squash court as an opportunity to reflect on geometric abstraction.

The exhibition's title, I'm Going in a Field, of course relates to the places in which games happen, but it's also a direct quote from a song by the absurdist Scottish poet and musician Ivor Cutler.

It's one of Cutler's more sincere lyrics in which he reflects on lying in said field and notes the yellow of a flower and the blue of his lover's eyes.

As with many of Andy's references, one can identify a clear connection with his approach to painting, the way in which within an atmospheric scene, particular and sometimes unexpected details might leap out.

He's discussed how his art is a fight with visibility, a game of making things seen, barely seen.

And I began our conversation by asking him, is that game the central concern of his work?

There's a really nice example, I think, in the sense that you said that in one of the paintings...

you could read one form either as a snake, because you paint a lot of adders, but also you could read it as a piece of measuring tape.

And I think that's the sort of productive ambiguity that lies at the heart of the work, that we're encouraged to look and to find in the work.

in a way that is a kind of creative act on our part, if you like.

Are there moments where you feel that a form is almost too clear and you will deliberately muddy it, if you like?

Would you even go to the length of taking a photograph of your work and looking at it in black and white to establish those tonal relationships?

It's something that some painters have done.