21 Questions with Paul Cadden

*Editor’s note – Clicking on any of the images will allow you to view a much larger version. The details are amazing.

 

Please explain what just happened.

I just spilled a glass of wine.

 

What is your earliest memory?

My earliest memory would be from when I was age 4 or 5 at Sacred Heart Primary School; I can remember the class singing “We all live in a yellow submarine.”

 

 

If you weren’t an artist , what other profession would you choose?

A veterinarian.

 

 

Describe a typical work day.

Get up (if I can be arsed) around 9 a.m., check my email, read newspapers, drink lots of tea and eat too many biscuits.  Then its time to start drawing.

 

 

Is there a time you wish you’d lied?

More of a time I wish I hadn’t. On my first job interview, I was informed beforehand that my potential employers where obsessed with Celtic FC and motorbikes. When I was asked at my interview what my hobbies were, I said supporting Celtic (true) and that I was a motorbike enthusiast (lie). I’d never been near one. So far so good.  I was given the job and everything was going well until my boss turned up with a large motorcycle and asked me if I wanted to try it out. The whole workforce watched me scream along the road in the wrong gear, through a set of traffic lights, crashing the bike head first into a wall.

 

 

What would you say to yourself if you could go back in time and have a conversation with yourself at age thirteen?

When you have enough money, buy some shares in Apple.

 

If you could have only one album to get you through a breakup, what would it be?

Anything by Jean Honeymoon, but since she’s my girlfriend it would be too hard because she’s dumped me… so it would have to be something depressing like Joy Division.

 

What are three websites—other than your email—that you check on a daily basis?

BBC News, The Guardian newspapers, and my own website.

 

From what or whom do you derive your greatest inspiration?

The ordinary.

 

 

Name three books that have impacted your life.

In Country Sleep by Dylan Thomas, The Book of Pleasure by Austin Osman Spare, and Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis.

 

 

If you could relive one moment over and over again, what would it be?

Sailing my boat.

 

If you could collaborate with any other artist, regardless of genre, who would it be?

It would have to be Picasso wouldn’t it? Also: Bacon, Riveria, Kazimir Malevich, Kathe Kollwitz… but there are too many to mention.  Just to watch them work would have been a pleasure.

 

 

What makes you feel most guilty?

Daytime television.

 

How do you incorporate the work of other artists into your own?

Probably by studying other artists’ techniques when visiting galleries.

 

 

Please explain the motivation/inspiration behind your drawings.

All my work I hope will inspire the viewer to intensify the normal.   For me drawing/painting continues to be the most relevant  way that an artist can choose to communicate.

 

What is the best advice you’ve ever given to someone else?

Run.

 

 

List your favorite in the following categories:  Comedian, Musician, Author, Actor.

Bill Hicks, Jean Honeymoon, George Orwell, Daniel Day Lewis.

 

If you had complete creative license and an unlimited budget, what would your next project be?

A political mural along the lines of Diego Rivieras’ Man at the Crossroads, except it would be about Scottish independence in an independent Scottish parliament.

 

 

What do you want to know?

The whereabouts of Lord Lucan.

 

What would you like your last words to be?

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

 

Please explain what will happen.

We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon.