Paul McCartney has been painting seriously for more than seventeen years, finding in his work on canvas both a break from the world and another creative outlet alongside his music. His paintings remained private until April 1999, when he exhibited them for the first time in Siegen, Germany. The critical acclaim that followed convinced him to publish this volume and share the work more widely.
The paintings burst with life and intense color. They reveal McCartney's positive spirit alongside visual sophistication and bold handling influenced by his friendship with Willem de Kooning. Paul and Linda would visit de Kooning whenever they were on Long Island, and watching him work in the studio probably inspired Paul to start his first canvases. McCartney carves, scratches, and sculpts the paint, creating complex layered works. Faces dominate the compositions: abstract portraits of Linda McCartney, irreverent affectionate portraits of the Queen of England, masks, Celtic motifs. His landscapes radiate a strong sense of place, while humor plays against more somber imagery.
On Painting and Music
On the balance between the two mediums, McCartney explains: "I don't think there is any great heroic act in going in slavishly every day and saying, 'I must do this.' So what I find is that I do it when I am inspired. And that's how I can combine it with music. Some days the inspiration is a musical one and other days it has just got to be painting."
The Book
Bulfinch Press published this 150-page volume in 2000. The book features 83 paintings documented by Paul in conversation with Wolfgang Suttner, who directed the world's first exhibition of McCartney's work at the Lyz Art Forum in Siegen. Beautifully designed and produced, the portfolio includes candid photographs by Linda McCartney of Paul in the studio. Essays by Brian Clarke, Julian Treuherz, Barry Miles, and Christoph Tannert place the paintings within art historical context, while McCartney's own voice carries through in the long interview where he discusses each work.
Drawing as Foundation
Wolfgang Suttner asks Paul about his early relationship to drawing. "I used to draw a lot, not necessarily from life but from imagination," Paul recalls. "All my days through school I could always draw quite well. I used to do drawings of women for classmates—I was the guy who could draw gorgeous naked women, you see, so for young boys this was a good attraction."
Paul developed a particular love for line work. "I like the line, not necessarily the content. I like quick lines, very spontaneous lines. I like the circle, a couple of eyes, a mouth, and just characters in the faces."
Process on Canvas
When asked if he draws to prepare for painting, Paul explains that most of the story happens on the canvas itself. "It has to do with what the paint does," he says. He might rough in a composition with charcoal or pencil if he wants a definite face, but he discovered that charcoal blends into the colors and muddies yellows. Turpentine helped solve this problem. "I got interested in turpentine on it, which takes most of the line away. You wipe it away, the turpentine, but it does some interesting things and it stops it blending into the colors, so, yes, I do most of the drawing on the canvas."
Working Through Composition
For a painting like "Unspoken Words," Paul started with spontaneity and no preconceived ideas. He laid down blue, drew some faces on top, then worked into them. "I turned it round a lot when I was working. I turned it lots of ways, upside down often," he explains. Turning the canvas upside down and sideways let him study the composition from different angles. "A lot of the drawing, these blue marks, were done from the upside-down position, and then in the end I decided it seemed like a woman."