Gerard Bookle's four-year-old golden retriever Lucky leaps enthusiastically out of the bright North Point flat - and miraculously doesn't upset any of the canvases strewn about the artist's home studio. The whole place shouts 'work in progress'. Splatters of acrylic paints and lacquers dot the original 1950s floor tiles. Bookle darts back and forth from painting to collage as he prepares for his first solo exhibition at Sin Sin Fine Art.
The London native, better known for creating murals and commercial art for corporate clients such as Swire, is working through the holidays to execute 'a perfect show' and is trying to avoid a serious case of nerves by keeping himself occupied.
In an art market where figurative and representation work dominate, and where Asian artists doing Asian work flood galleries, Bookle's paintings are a refreshing breeze. Pop and op art influences can be seen, and colour combinations are rich and sensual. The overall impression is of life and spontaneity, distilled to what seems like a few brush strokes.
Bookle works with large canvases, avoiding oils to concentrate on getting intense colours from mixing acrylic paints. One half-finished piece is made up of individual rose petals, adhered to a canvas to achieve a unique textural quality. Despite experimenting with glass and other textures, Bookle is primarily a two-dimensional artist. Within the boundaries of a stretched canvas, he creates depth and interest by contrasting shiny and matte finishes with saturated colours of fuchsia, cobalt and orange.
'I found art school very intellectual,' says Bookle, referring to his training at London's Ravensbourne School of Art, and then at Brighton College of Arts, where he received a BA in Fine Arts. 'Although I can appreciate it, I came out confused. I didn't even want to be an artist after graduation.'
After following other pursuits for a few years, he found a happy medium in decorative arts and set up Gerard Bookle Studio in 1993.
'I started to get offers of work, doing commercial art,' he says. 'You know, it was the early 1990s - everyone wanted paint finishes and murals. Then the economy crashed. It forced me to re-examine what I was doing. These past few years have been tough. I don't have staff any more. Before, I was an administrator. I spent all my time overseeing my staff, making sure they were doing things correctly. It used to be 10 per cent of my work was fine art. Now, I want to reverse that.'
