The Beechwood Airship Interviews. Dan Richards

nice to make a complete story “from Saatchi Gallery to Gagosian in New York” – a very singular ladder, but it’s not actually like that.

      ‘I made this very big painting called Fulcrum and that I nicknamed “The Bitch”. I couldn’t get it working. I spent more than eighteen months trying to get the figures together and the paint the way I wanted. It was a gruelling act of faith to keep at it because I should have probably trashed it but I’m a bit stubborn like that, I keep going but, yes, I suppose I don’t know what it’s like to have years in the wilderness, that’s for sure. I’ve been extremely lucky like that. I came out of art school and had a commission to make work for the Saatchi Gallery; that was the lottery ticket that I got.’

      But you also had the pressure of being a high-profile and recognised artist from the very beginning. Lots of pressure. A very steep learning curve.

      ‘But when you’re young, I mean; I had no fear. As soon as Charles said, “Okay, do whatever you want with the space,” I just knew “I want this 21-foot triptych, I’m going to make it in three panels and it’s going to be like this.” My God! You know? Who else is going to buy that kind of scale of work? The dream that you’ve got of making such pieces; most people don’t have the finance to follow that through because they’ve got to do the nitty-gritty stuff of selling drawings or whatever, and I was extremely lucky in that sense: I wanted to make those big works and I could do it. And I did.

      I was very quiet about it, though. I mean, I left art school with a lot of friends and a lot of people were getting really broke and having to get part-time jobs. Hardly anybody knew that I was going to show at the Saatchi Gallery, I didn’t tell anyone. I just worked in my studio for two years. Every day. Trying to get the work the way I wanted it, and then I was quite shocked by the level of press that was generated by the Saatchi Gallery. I left to go and work in America a few weeks later.’

      Was that exposure one of the reasons for that?

      ‘I was very relieved to do that, yeah, because it’s never sat too well with me, being known. I don’t know how actors can live like that because their persona and their body is known, whereas I work very quietly in my studio. I was lucky that it happened when I was very young so that I could understand the mechanism of it and realise that, when you go back in the studio, it means jack shit. It doesn’t make you a better painter. The investment by other people – to show at different galleries, have exhibitions with amazing artists – that does help because it raises your game. I’ve just done a show with Picasso, Bacon and de Kooning in America and you’re there, accepted as part of this canon of art. That makes you … you lift yourself.’

      I can see Jenny beginning to itch to get back to work, so I thank her for her time and am about to switch the tape off when I recall something else I wanted to cover related to her Rizzoli book, which featured shots of scrapbooks, lists and notes for her work. Is that an ongoing process? I ask.

      In response, Jenny walks over to the back room, footsteps echoing around the space, and shows me an A4 sheet pinned to the wall: ‘Heads’, ‘Burns’, ‘Bodies’, ‘Babies’, ‘Blown Up Mouth’ …

      ‘I’ve had a third of those for about ten years. They’ll come up again or I’ll look through a scrapbook and find some other ones.

      “Botched Suicide” – I like the tragedy of that.’

      She gestures to a row of what look like crime scene shots of, well, botched suicides; although most of them look pretty successful to me. It’s hard to imagine people getting up and walking away with no intestines or only half their head. Dead people who got that way in violent hurry.

      ‘“Black Teeth” – I’ve had “Black Teeth” on there for years. “Albino” – I’ve got lots of albino photographs, I’ve just never got round to making the painting. “Patch Head” – patches of shadow on top of a head. I photograph lots of people all of the time and I’ve been doing these photographs recently of women in baths of water with shadows on the water. You know when you fly and you look down over the sea and you see the shadows of clouds on the sea? It’s got that sort of sense.

      I have images that I collect and images that I create – where I get the model and I set it up and do a photographic session. I have that stream of my work and I have images that I just find. This is quite a barren studio for me at the moment. If you come here in two years it’ll probably be absolutely loaded with images.’

      We’re stood by a back window now. Photographs of people in baths hang from a dado rail. I walk back to look again at the pictures of violent death but am intercepted by shots of burns victims and babies without legs.

      ‘I keep them in here because I don’t really want my children to see, so I keep them away. I’ve got a lot of images of babies like this. Depleted uranium. It’s having a huge effect on people who’ve been in Iraq. It’s on the outside of weapon shells and it affects the gene pool for generations; people who’ve been in Iraq, servicemen, have gone back to America and their wife or girlfriend who’s never even been to the area – it’s affected their child.’

      I point to the violent deaths further on.

      And these?

      (Peering closer) These people have really gone for it, haven’t they?

      ‘She (pointing to a girl with half a head), that was from a love affair. I started to research what cultures had more suicides than others and discovered that suicides rise in countries where there are more high-rise properties built. Japan didn’t have a huge suicide rate until they built high-rise buildings and then a lot of death by high-rise occurred.

      (Pointing to another)

      That is someone whose stomach was driven over in Brazil.

      (Man in a pool of scrambled egg entrails)