This artist paints the things around her, yet her pictures are resolutely undomestic. She tells Sarah Edghill how she likes to reveal the elegant, spare geometry beneath the muddle of the everyday
HOW I WORK HOW I PAINT
AFTER SUMMER SCHOOL AT THE SLADE Summer School and then completing a foundation course at the Chelsea School of Art, Debbie Urquhart did a BA in Fine Art at Newcastle University. She then got a job working on the shop floor at Colefax and Fowler on Kings Road and whilst there, the director, Emma Burns, saw her work and purchased one of her paintings. A friend of Emma’s, who owned a gallery, saw the painting and offered Debbie a solo show. She was still in her early 20s and her career snowballed from there. Debbie has since had several solo shows and exhibited in galleries and art fairs across the world.
From an early age, I had an instinct to separate my colours.
I was first encouraged to do this at a summer school I attended at The Slade after my GCSEs. The lecturer blitzed lots of colourful fruit in a blender and the result was a grey sludge! This was to illustrate what happens if you mix your colours on your canvas, rather than on your palette. This stayed with me, although there was already a natural instinct in me to separate out colours. There’s a clarity to mixing a colour and putting it on your palette, then adding it to your painting. I wanted my marks to be strong and for there to be no ambiguity in my work. I have never wanted to hide behind anything. I always want to be in control of the choice of colour I use and for it to be bold and clear in my painting.
I won several prizes from Winsor & Newton while I was in my 20s.
These included being shown around the factory and given a selection of paints and brushes. I have been loyal to the brand ever since. I’m now so familiar with its colours and know how much pigment goes into them, and therefore exactly how much of each to mix together to achieve what I want. I was never taught how to mix colours; it’s something I always remember doing. I like to have a range in my work – from pure undiluted colours, all the way through to the spectrum of paler colours and whites. I then punctuate paintings with strong pinks, reds and oranges, as well as using a range of pure to pale earth colours.
I mainly work with oil paints on boards and canvas.
Canvas better lends itself to revealing the subtle colours and to larger works, but I’m very familiar with the texture of boards an
