Gary Wragg

Following a recent retrospective charting his career, we ask what drives this abstract painter.

- Sally Hales

What made you want to be a painter, and when did you know that was what you wanted to be? 

My interest in painting began to kindle when I was a teenager, around 13 or 14. In 1962, I went to High Wycombe School of Art. I was there for four years during which time drawing and painting was for me a total immersion – looking, looking and looking. I would draw constantly, always carrying a sketchbook. I drew anything around me, people, trees, cafes, street life, churches, buildings and so on. I was greatly inspired by one teacher in particular, Terry Scales, who was the first person to buy one of my paintings. He recently sent me an endearing letter during my exhibition recalling those days.

You attended Camberwell and Slade schools of art. What lasting effects did these institutions have on your work? 

I was at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1966-69. It was amazing. Mario Dubsky and Keith Vaughan were hugely inspiring, and the work I produced then has circled back to inspire new work. I go back to go forwards. My development is cyclic. You can never really go back, but it is part of a whole that regenerates, offering new possibilities. My postgraduate years at the Slade School of Fine Art were an emptying out period of formal investigation into space, surface, size, scale, atmospheric colour and transformation of geometry. The grid has recycled in various ways throughout the following decades.