In his third solo – Panorama – at Valentine Willie’s, abstract artist Yusof Majid talks to Kakiseni about his unpretentious, child-like perspectives of various landscapes, represented in oils on large pieces of canvas. This time around, Yusof has placed still life representations of nature – such as flowers and shells – onto his minimalist backdrops of beaches and other landscapes. Yusof attended the Chelsea School of Art in London from 1988 to 1993, and currently teaches Creative Studies at the Lim Kok Wing Institute of Creative Technology (LICT).
Part I: at the Valentine Willie store house
Kakiseni: As you were saying, they’re all about landscapes or incidents of landscapes, beaches, and … ?
Yusof Majid: Also about literature and what I read at the time while I was painting. The last work I did was about The Sound and the Fury (by William Faulkner, which won a Nobel Prize for literature), and about the stream of consciousness that happens in his work and in literature, where everything’s rushing by and you don’t really choose what to take, what to remember, what to think about, and that happens in the painting as well as in the process. Well, in my work, anyway. So I’m constantly taking things, or going over things, or bringing them back through over on top of other images. I had a good time with that book and I related it to the painting.
And now I’m reading (Ernest) Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls. That’s really good because it’s about Spain, and there is a lot of landscapes about that.
Kakiseni: And matadors … are you going to put matadors in?
Yusof: Um, no. But I’ve read the Aeneid (by Virgil), and that was good. It’s Roman, about the fall of Troy, so I did a whole series of drawings based on that. So a lot of the images are derived from: one, the very real sense of landscape viewed from my balcony or when I go away; and then also the images that are in my mind, of what I imagine from the books I read. So I try to sort of generalise the notion of landscape and what it should be and how I can see it in my mind. So you get sometimes horizon lines or objects -organic objects – in the landscape or in a situation. Or views … sometimes like in a view, like a beach … you know sometimes in England, in Brighton, the place you get the coloured sands in bottles, and shells and stuff … and here (gestures towards his paintings) you have a plant, a flower, an insect, bee, flower pot … some of them are very minimal, very simple.
Like this one (focusing on a piece in his triptych), it is very simple, but there is a lot of texture. If you look up close, this is where it’s like a horizon, or you could read it as this is the star, this is the sea; or this is the sand, and this is the sea … and these again (moving on to the other two pieces), horizons and things about passages of time as well: night and day, I like that as well. So these three go together …
I’m going to break them up (display his paintings) with some red as well as some greenish-browns, but most of them are going to be in this colour (mainly browns).
Kakiseni: So your red series is still current and is going to appear in your solo as well?
Yusof: I’ve got them at home. I’ve got one, two, three, four … four red ones. Very, very red, so it’s going to break up the show … or (else) it’s just going to be all brown, organic.
Kakiseni: Now, how would you say you have evolved with your style over the years? Because you’ve gone through different phases and …
Yusof: Well, I started off extremely minimalist, I’ve now started to bring images. Very flat background but then with a stark sort of image in the centre. So I’ve actually put some very abstract images onto my sort of really minimalist – my work used to be very minimalist – or flat background.
Kakiseni: Do your colour themes reflect your mood or your changing maturity as you go along?
Yusof: I used to work in a lot of blues. I used to do a lot of blue paintings, but I’m focusing more now on this show, it’s called Panorama, I’m trying to get that feeling of landscape, so I’m using very green, very earthy sort of colours. Because the landscape is so amazing, so bright, and (there are) lots of lovely colours. So I try to generate that, that sort of organic feel with deep greens and browns. But I want them to work – especially the large ones – to function as if you are looking, or you could be looking like hundreds of yards away, or you could be looking very close, depends how you want to see it. Like this (gesturing towards a large oil painting), this could be at a distance of maybe half a kilometre away, or you could see it in another way. This is very close and this is very far; or is this far and this is close – the distance. So the way you read the painting, that’s how I want people to understand the landscape, or the way I generalise landscape in these paintings.
Kakiseni: It could even be aerial, couldn’t it?
Yusof: Yah, it could function that way. But I like that idea of near and far.
Kakiseni: Do you still paint in artificial fluorescent lighting?
Yusof: Yes, I do. The problem is when you paint with the daylight, and then you put it in the gallery, it’s completely different than how you thought the colours would look.
Kakiseni: You were trained at the Chelsea School of Art. What sort of genres did you study there? How did you come to paint what you do these days? Were you taught abstract forms from the beginning, and how were you inspired to move this way?
Yusof: Generally, Chelsea is a very sort of abstract school as opposed to somewhere like Slade which is very figurative. So my work was leaning towards that at a very early stage because I’m not a very great draughtsman but I’m very confident with paint. I like the freedom of working very large. So that in itself when I applied for the degree helped me a lot.
They don’t actually push you in a certain direction. You don’t actually have art classes. You just have a studio space where you’re leaning to what you’re looking at, and what you’re looking at in the library, I suppose, and obviously the other students around you does have some small influence. I suppose what you look at, what paintings you look at – because London has heaps of galleries and museums and lots of stuff – and I just found that I was more swayed towards very abstract, minimalist sort of paintings. It’s always been about landscapes, or memory of landscape.
I started off with watercolours and actually being there. But I actually prefer now to go somewhere to a landscape or beach or wherever, and then come back with a memory. Rather than actually taking a canvas and painting it, I’d rather just have the memory, because it’s very subjective what I do, because it’s very abstract. So I’d like lots of things to sort of … encourage me and allow me to go in that direction …
Kakiseni: How old were you when you started abstract work? Every child sort of learns to do figurative painting, but …
Yusof: I was probably about 18 or 19 when I went to art school.
Kakiseni: Now, what do you teach at LICT?
Yusof: Creative Studies. We try to teach them idea generation, or show them methods to generate ideas, like mind-maps and stuff like that and lateral-thinking methods. But we also set them projects, give them a wide scope for creativity so the final outcome can be very, very different from the next person. So it’s really interesting.
We’re doing a project now called Poetry into Painting, where they go and research poetry. Then they pick a poem and transfer the words into image, and make an oil painting. So they’ll learn the practical side of painting. They could be creative, they could be abstract, or figurative …
Part II: back at the gallery (looking at Yusofs ‘Storm Drawings’ at a group exhibition)
Yusof: These are called Storm Drawings. I’m trying to capture the weather from my balcony.
Kakiseni: That’s a balcony?
Yusof: Well, the red represents the balcony.
Kakiseni: The railings?
Yusof: Yeah.
Kakiseni: I actually thought it was a ship.
Yusof: That’s what Beverly (Yong – of VW) said. Is it like that (tracing the outline) – the ship? That’s good though, because it relates to a storm – subconsciously the ship’s there. Excellent.
Kakiseni: And why the fire engine?
Yusof: Oh, that was a long time ago. I had that lying around. When Beverly came to pick up the drawings, she liked it … It probably has something to do with September the 11th.
Kakiseni: And how did The Swing come about?
Yusof: Er, I have no idea. I was drawing lots of drawings and trying to generate ideas for my big paintings, and it just looked like a swing. So, I called it The Swing. They’re mostly sketches. I don’t do them intentionally to sell. I do them just to generate ideas for my larger works. But sometimes these are more exciting, because they are completely non-commercial. This is where the real thinking starts, the drawing board.
Kakiseni: I like the fire engine. It’s like a boy drawing his ambition to be a fireman with a red fire engine there, but when you link it to September the 11th, it takes on a more serious context. When I first saw it I thought otherwise … which brings me to ask you if anyone has commented that you have a child-like way of looking at things … not in an offensive sense …
Yusof: No, no, no, I realise that. I’ve never been a great drawer, or I’ve never had the patience to sit there and measure … but I like the freedom, I like to think, draw and make mistakes, and go over them and not worry. I enjoy myself when I’m actually drawing, and I’m trying to transfer that knowing to my paintings.
Kakiseni: And how would you profile the people who buy your art? What are the comments they’ve made on why they’ve chosen to buy your paintings?
Yusof: Um, let’s ask Beverly that. Beverly, what do people say about my work?
Beverly: I think they seldom have a verbal reaction to Yusofs work. That’s quite rare, because it’s such strongly visual language. It’s not about amazing technical ability to render life … so you find that the people who buy Yusofs work, they tend to be people with a natural eye; also people who might have a more sophisticated sense of thinking about art, actually. People who have been collecting art for a while who know a lot about contemporary art – architects, a lot of architects like the work, maybe because they think visually as well.
Kakiseni: Why have you decided to put in strong images, such as the flower in a vase, onto your minimalist works?
Yusof: I think I want to move away from the minimalist paintings because it’s too conceptual. Because I really enjoy making the drawings, and the minimalist paintings were becoming too much of an intellectual exercise and I want to have fun with it as well, making them, so I think there’s more of a spontaneous look to the new work …
I think my minimalist works were more architectural, very solid-looking, very flat, with one or two colours. A colour at the edge, very cleverly thought-about, but very precise. But now it’s more very certain, you can actually see the making of the work, the bumps, and where images were before, and what has been applied on top. So it’s more about process, the actual painting. Very painterly paintings, I’ve moved towards that.
Kakiseni: Have you encountered criticisms of your work, and how have you dealt with them?
Yusof: Er … (long pause) … there was one criticism that one collector said. That I should be more … what was the word he used? … “more careful” in my drawings, the way I apply paint. But (laughs) you know, if you take that away, it’s not one of my paintings, (hypothetically) if I start using ruler, drawing really carefully, drawing with pencil first and then putting the colour … So, I mean that is the whole point, some people miss the point. I think they’re (the paintings are) supposed to look dirty, they’re supposed to look like they’ve been picked off the studio floor, because that’s what makes them real, more real than what most drawings look. They’re not pretentious, not pretending, they’re not trying hard to be drawings. Most drawings, they’re trying really, really hard to be a piece of art, while mine are very, very natural. They’re not pretentious, they’re not in your face. Take it or leave it, you know.
Kakiseni: So you’re saying that some of these finer-lined drawings are pretentious, then?
Yusof: Yeah.
Kakiseni: How do you think your fellow artists would feel about that?
Yusof: Oh no, (tone of dread, but laughing) I’ve shot myself. No, I mean that’s just my opinion towards most of the sort of technical drawings I’ve seen. They’re very pretentious and they try too hard to be a piece of art. You don’t have to … You’ve got to be spontaneous, you’ve got to be honest …
Beverly: Cut, cut, cut …
Kakiseni: So you’re saying that they try too hard, you said that earlier …
Yusof: The skill factor comes in to the drawing. We’re only talking about it as opposed to mine, to give you an example of why, when we start off with the criticism of why I “should be more careful” in my drawings, so I’m just actually retorting to that and saying that that’s the whole point to it actually.
Beverly: A lot of people who look at Yusofs art will say: “Oh, my five-year-old can do that.” That’s the classic reaction to Yusofs work.
Yusof: Or “I can do that.” One time, my friend’s wife, I gave them a drawing, and she said (voice goes high): “Oh, I can do that for you, love.” So (laughing), go do it then, we’re bloody giving you a piece of work. They actually think they can do my work, but in actual fact they try, and they couldn’t, because they are trying too hard. My drawing comes naturally … You can’t copy it.
Beverly: Yusof reads around … and in a sense, Yusof picks up on the landscapes within (the books he reads), and on the essence within that. A kid can draw some circles on a page, but it will not bring across a particular feeling … Rather than being very child-like, Yusofs actually sophisticated.
Yusof: I was very sort of ordinary in terms of capability. I was a very ordinary sort of draughtsman. I knew I wasn’t going to get any better, so I went the opposite extreme. Instead of trying really, really hard to draw really, really well like you do in your ‘A’ level, I went completely the other way and tried really, really hard to go the other extreme and make really, really bad drawings. And that’s how I got my own style of drawing. I just went the opposite. I can’t draw that well, so why don’t I go the opposite and draw really, really bad (laughing).
Beverly: Don’t put that in. Cut!
Yusof: But that’s how I got it, and then I refined it and that’s how I got this child-like style. So there’s no skill, there’s no thinking about how this has to be here because that’s there, and composition and all of that is out the window. All those very formal rules, you know …
Beverly: Yeah, it’s just shoot from the hip, basically …
Yusof: Yeah, like some people are taught in some art schools, like: “Okay, this is your composition, it should be like this, you should always start here, and then move up here, line here, start with the eyes, and then the nose, you know all these things, and proportion .. .” And if that’s pumped into you, drilled into you, and then later on in life you become an abstract painter, how do you loose all that baggage? Where I went, luckily at Chelsea, they didn’t teach you anything (laughs), they just let you get on with it and find it out …
(The following summation by the artist has been censored, for his own sake.)
Panorama: Yusof Majid will be on show at Valentine Willie Fine Art, 1st floor, 17 Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur, from 3 to 20 April. Tel: 03 2284 2348. Website: www.artasia.com.my
First Published: 02.04.2002 on Kakiseni