Richard Kenton Webb on painting, colour, and the role of the artist in society

<h4 dir="ltr"><strong>You've spoken before about painting as a slow and physical act in contrast to today's digital culture. How do you see this tension playing out in your work and in contemporary painting more broadly?</strong></h4> <p dir="ltr">"My personal painting practice is entirely analogue, but as a teacher I embrace the digital world as a means to communicate and know that my students gain myriad benefits from digital communication tools. My concern as an academic is maintaining a rightful balance between embodied learning and digital, synthetic learning. We need both. I’m a passionate advocate for analogue, embodied creativity because it fosters human expression, playfulness, and inventiveness in ways that digital cannot replicate."</p> <p dir="ltr">"Painting doesn’t need electricity, it’s organic and natural. Painting is slow and countercultural. Most of all, it allows us to express our full humanity – the alchemy between materials, ideas, and making."</p> <p dir="ltr">At <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/ba-hons-painting-drawing-printmaking" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BA (Hons) Painting, Drawing &amp; Printmaking</a>, Richard champions <strong>a hands-on, material-led approach</strong>. Students make their own paints, prepare surfaces, and explore the synergy between painting, drawing, and printmaking.<br /></p>

<h4 dir="ltr"><strong>Since moving to Plymouth, green has become a dominant colour in your work. Could you elaborate on why this shift happened and what green represents to you?</strong></h4> <p dir="ltr">"I work intuitively, guided by feeling and emotion. I balance that with reason, but I trust my intuition above all. What I found in dealing with green was that it naturally became a subject matter in itself. A language."</p> <p dir="ltr">"Just as red has an underlying dialogue about creativity, orange about listening, and yellow about thought and the subconscious, green, for me, revolves around language. As a teacher, I work with language constantly, so it makes sense that my paintings would reflect this."</p> <p dir="ltr">"While on the Albers Foundation Residency in the US, I began making a series of drawings exploring what painting means to me, my Manifesto of Painting, created without using words. It was a lifetime of thinking about teaching, about what painting is, condensed into visual form."<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">Richard’s research into <strong>colour as a structured language</strong> is central to <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/undefined/ma-fine-art" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MA Fine Art</a>, where students are encouraged to explore <strong>conceptual and material approaches</strong> to fine art practice.</p>

<p dir="ltr">"When I was in art school in the late 1970s, the big question was: Are you on the design pathway or the fine art pathway? Back then, fine art still encompassed illustration, sculpture, painting—this whole breadth of disciplines, with a very different philosophy from design. Design is brief-led, created for a commercial client. Fine art is about discovering what you want to say, developing your own vision. Over time, fine art became siloed. By 2005, fine art in the UK had absorbed an ideology that was highly conceptual, everything needed to be translated back and explained in words, essays, texts and discourse. Often being completely dismissive of painting as a contemporary practice."</p> <p dir="ltr">“At the Slade and RCA we talked and talked about our work content with our tutors but were not forced to write and explain in words, essays, texts, the meaning of our work. The idea that for a painter the final outcome is words is an absurdity. It's like squeezing toothpaste back into a tube. Painters make their visual work in a mute language which does not need its meaning and content explained in words. I ask why? We need to decolonise the curriculum from word based outcomes. The transferable power of painting is that it sits outside of written or spoken language, existing in a space that anyone can access, regardless of language, background, identity or belief.”</p> <p dir="ltr">"The greatest thing I teach students is how to be a composer, of paintings, of ideas, of aesthetics. Whether it’s a film, a sculpture, a photograph, or a piece of ceramics, when I look at art I see the composition. That’s the transferable skill that we can teach – learning what works, what is beautiful, what has balance."<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr">At <strong>Arts University Plymouth, MA Fine Art</strong> is built on this philosophy. It is a <strong>practice-led, interdisciplinary</strong> course designed for artists working in:</p><ul><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Painting, drawing, and printmaking</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Sculpture and installation</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Photography, moving image, and performance</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Social practice and conceptual art</p></li></ul> <p dir="ltr">Rather than restricting artists to a single discipline, MA Fine Art encourages <strong>cross-pollination of ideas and materials</strong>, supporting students to <strong>develop an independent, research-led practice</strong>.</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Find out more about MA Fine Art: </strong><a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/undefined/ma-fine-art" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Visit the course page</a>.<br /></p>

<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/undefined/ma-fine-art" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Find out more</strong></a></p><ul><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Develop an independent fine art practice</strong></p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Work across <strong>painting, print, drawing, sculpture &amp; installation</strong></p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Access world-class studios &amp; workshops</strong></p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Interdisciplinary, research-led approach</strong></p></li></ul>

<p dir="ltr">For those considering <strong>fine art study</strong>, working with Richard Kenton Webb is an opportunity to learn from an artist who has <strong>lived and breathed painting for over three decades</strong>.<br /></p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Visit Richard’s latest exhibitions</strong>:</p><ul><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><a href="https://mirrorplymouth.com/whats-on/a-manifesto-of-painting" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>A Manifesto of Painting</em></a>, <strong>MIRROR, Arts University Plymouth</strong> (12 April – 31 May 2025)</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><em>Search &amp; Practice</em>, <strong>Artmill Gallery</strong> (29 March – 26 April 2025)</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><em>Life Drawing</em>, <strong>The Talk Shop Gallery</strong> (13 – 31 May 2025)</p></li></ul>

<p dir="ltr">These exhibitions showcase different aspects of Richard’s practice, from colour and abstraction at MIRROR to observational drawing at The Talk Shop Gallery. His <strong>commitment to drawing as a way of thinking</strong> is central to <strong>BA (Hons) Painting, Drawing &amp; Printmaking</strong> at Arts University Plymouth.<br /></p>

<ul><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/ba-hons-painting-drawing-printmaking" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>BA (Hons) Painting, Drawing &amp; Printmaking</strong></a></p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/undefined/ma-fine-art" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>MA Fine Art</strong></a></p></li></ul>