Andrew Hardy

What inspires you?

The artist says of his paintings, "I do not feel a need to depict people or things or to be in any way referential whether literal, stylised, imagined or metaphorical. Equally my work has no message or identifiable meaning. It comes from the mind more than from observed reality and refers only to itself, to nothing but its own making.

Describe your creative process.

Andrew Hardy paints in an abstract language, using abstraction to work through broader questions of materiality, repetition, gesture and chance. His process is a form of performance. It is about the act of painting and he sees each painting as a record of the journey he has been on with it. The question of content is not in the foreground. The emphasis is on form, materials and processes.

Who are some artists that have influenced your work?

Robert Ryman, Frank Stella, Kazimir Malevich, Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Pierre Soulages and the Korean Dansaekhwa painters, Ha Chonghyun and Lee Ufan.

What is the best piece of advice you have been given?

The emphasis is on 'painting as object' with no narrative and I seek to make work that is able to draw viewers in to question and enjoy its materiality and facture. Viewers seem to have a constant need to find meaning and create associations. My work does not have any ‘meaning’ although I do want it to be ‘meaningful’… which is a different thing.”