Joseph Awuah-Darko interview

You described this exhibition as ‘a spiritual endeavour’ - could you explain that a bit more?

For me, it was deeply cathartic and deeply confrontational in looking within myself, and asking myself personal pertinent questions about the way in which I exist beyond my Microsoft Excel Diaries. There was something really transient and almost transfigurative about depicting the ubiquity of my life through colour. It permeates the exhibition, it's a really special thing to be able to do and I'm just so fortunate that I trusted myself to go through that process. I grew up Catholic, but I don't consider myself a devout Catholic, I consider myself someone who is living within the spirit and within my truth and I think my paintings speak to that. They are my violent attempt at honesty – the reason I say violent is because there is a nakedness to the way in which I render my existence through colour theory, especially after my time at The Albers Foundation – so that's what I refer to when I say ‘a spiritual endeavour’ because I'm journeying through myself but really though something bigger than myself, you know? A sense of being.

You haven’t been afraid to shy away from sharing the darker side of the creative practice, what prompted you to share the inner workings of your own practice so openly? 

When it comes to my transparency around my artistic practice, I think for me that is the only way I know how to exist. It doesn't mean that I'm not careful or considered in how I share my process, but I think it's very important for people to know that the act of art-making – as incredibly difficult an endeavor as it is – is worth it, and that sometimes the only way is through; I care about showing people that side of art-making. I'm also aware that the act of art-making, especially painting, is remarkably unglamorous, and you're constantly navigating and jousting with self-doubt, you're constantly having to negotiate the plans of your own conviction, setting your heart and your intentions and actually following through. It's never simple, and I think that normalising discussions around that darkness, that fear and self-doubt, that self-questioning and self-longing is important, crucial and it’s valid.

You track your moods with Excel but then convert this into painting, what does painting bring to understanding or presenting your emotions? 

Painting brings poetry to my very schematic approach to tracking my mental health. I think painting brings a mysticism and a sense of transcendence, I would say a sense of fluidity into that very rigid process of capturing my moods in Excel. It’s funny because the way in which I came to capture colour in Microsoft Excel is because I was using the software to plan my budget for the year when it came to art materials. I'm left-handed and right-brained, so cerebrally I was more intrigued by colour blocking with Excel than actually planning with it. Painting softens my approach. Josef Albers said ‘art is an experience and not an object’, so I think that for me the process and the act of painting matters more to me than the end result. The act of painting and transferring my lived experience onto canvas is the height of my artistic process and not the actual painting as a result. 

How have textiles influenced your painting?

Even though I was born in London, I'm originally from the Ashanti region in Ghana, a place famed for 17th-century Kente weaving on a handloom. Looking at the biomorphic forms of my painting, there is a sense that I'm weaving with paint, there is a sense in how the stripes in my paintings mirror the way Kente is created stripe by stripe, it's sort of this subconscious dialogue between my upbringing wearing Kente cloth and seeing and being able to weave it myself to painting with a medium that deviates from that. It's so fascinating but there is an unplanned dialogue which exists. With the works I've shown in Peres Projects, the group show I participated in and created in Berlin, and my work that sits in the permanent collection of the Stanley Museum of Art, those are tapestries, so my work with tapestries, with Kente, with Raffia, does find an inevitable way of creeping into my painterly practice - which I also find quite fascinating but it is entirely intuitive as opposed to planned.

You’re a great advocate for artists not only through your patronage as a collector but also through your Instagram @Okuntakinte sharing inspiration and encouragement with your “Dear Artists” Post-its. What was the origins of that idea?  

This is such a lovely question because in my Post-its and my book coming out with Thames and Hudson, Dear Artists, the whole point of these is that I was writing them to myself as words of affirmation as aphorisms to myself, reminding and reassuring myself that even in times, long periods, when I wasn't practicing actively, I was still an artist.

If you had to give someone teetering on the edge of calling themselves an artist one piece of advice what would it be? 

To anyone with that struggle I would say know that, as an artist, truly in every sense, your time outside of the studio is just as valid as your time in the studio. My one advice would be to breathe and know that if you truly do feel and know within yourself that you’re an artist; you are, therefore you are. It exists within you. Whether you want it to or not, every artist knows the ‘seven-year itch’ of what it means to long to alchemise their gifts, whether you're actively pursuing it as a practice in your life, or not because of life happening. But know that: You are, therefore you are. And to be an artist is more than just making shows.  

Do you think there is a link between mental health and creativity? 

David Lynch said something so profound in a lecture: that suffering and pain and chaos, to some extent, do inspire great work, but it is only once artists have come from that that in hindsight they can create great work. Artists seldom create really good work in actual turmoil and chaos.

There is something that articulates this quite beautifully, one of my paintings ‘June 15th’. Which is arguably, according to my gallerist and many people, the most beautiful work in the exhibition. The reason is because I created that work when I wasn’t in as much distress. The funny thing is that that work is amazing because I created it in an environment that was nurturing and when I was at my best in the process of immigrating. That just goes to show the fact I've created a work which is supposedly the best, as far as it's what attracts people, in my state of greatest calm and equanimity. That’s unsurprising to me and it just goes to show that creators actually do need peace, stability, and mental well-being to create good work, but it doesn't mean they can't get inspiration from hardship and from suffering and from pain and turmoil - which we do, and which I have in my life.

What has working for, and with, galleries taught you about navigating the art world as an artist?  

Oh wow… This is a good one. I will reference a different David — David Bowie. Bowie once said never play for ‘the man’ - or never play for the gallery, never work for somebody else, work for yourself. I think what he meant was to create work that speaks to you first. What making art for exhibitions has taught me is that you must see gallerists as collaborators, and nurturing commercial magicians not as “the man” or “the boss” or Big Brother because that will change how you approach working with gallerists and galleries. So with Ed, for example, there are so many times where he's giving me input and I've taken it in my stride, but I've been very clear about having my sense of autonomy to apply it or not. He's also been very generous in giving me creative autonomy and trusting my vision for the exhibition, which basically followed my curatorial direction as far as the red wall and the sense of how the works were installed, he really upheld what I wanted. I think that trust is important, but also knowing that you work with the gallery as an artist, never for a gallerist.

There’s so much you have already turned your hand to - what’s next?

With the kind of life, I've led I’m always apprehensive about saying what's next. All I know is that now I’m at a point in my life where I am a Ghanaian homosexual immigrant who has chosen to live authentically. That is my current status, and however I choose to continue to live through my art and through my life is yet to be determined or defined.

How is your day going? is running at Ed Cross Fine Art Until 24th October.