Gary Hume avoids rigid meanings. His process involves an ongoing attempt to lose the subject, though some of his previous paintings have taken real, emotionally charged imagery as their starting point. His 2017 show ‘Mum’, for example, included a closely cropped painting depicting the buttons on his mother’s cardigan while she was suffering from dementia. His ‘Destroyed School’ series was informed by images of war-torn educational spaces. Hume’s at times traumatic source materials take on a peaceful state within his paintings, sometimes conveying a sense of innocence or stillness. They drift freely between abstraction and figuration; meaning and feeling.
'I do want them to be tender. Looking is generally a calm activity. You don’t have to flee in front of a painting,' he tells me, when we meet at his east London studio ahead of his solo exhibition, ‘Mirrors and Other Creatures’, opening at Sprüth Magers in London (until 19 October 2024). Hume was not interested in finding a fixed narrative for this body of work. Instead, he tells me, he was looking for the moment at which none of his decisions and intentions were apparent. 'When I’m making them, it’s very active. When they become accepting of stillness, it’s such a relief. All the things that have driven me mad, or that were interesting me, are now invisible.'
