Jim Moir, alias Vic Reeves, on swapping comedy for the art studio

It clearly means a lot – “I’ve got a good feeling about this one.” He says that when he used to tour with comedy partner Bob Mortimer, the reception they received in the North was always special. “Whenever we were performing in Leeds, or Manchester or York, the audiences were just great and there was always a good feeling to it.” He has enjoyed being on the road with his artworks. “All the shows I have done this year have been great and they have all been very different,” he says. “The shows I have done have been connected with the places in some way. So for example, I did a series of paintings about shoes so I decided to do an exhibition in Northampton as it is the capital of shoemaking and obviously when I was thinking about the paintings of Brimham Rocks I thought it’s got to be in Yorkshire.” The Brimham Rocks series grew out of a project Moir did with his son Louis who is a filmmaker. “We went there together a couple of years ago – he was making a film about comedy and art and creativity and he filmed me doing some paintings of the rocks. I liked it there so much I did some more.”

Moir says that art was never in the background for him – even when he was performing as Vic Reeves alongside Bob Mortimer, he always had a hand in designing the sets of the various TV shows that they were involved in. “Art has always been very much in the foreground for me,” he says. “As far back as I can remember, there has never been anything as important in my life. As a child I loved drawing and painting. If you can make a mark on a piece of paper and you like the look of it you keep going. You do what you like doing. Some of my friends liked playing football but I preferred drawing. And I grew up in an artistic community, both my parents were creative. In the 1970s most of our weekends as a family were spent at craft fairs.”

The variety of styles and media that Moir employs in his work is impressive. Walking around the gallery you might almost think it was a group exhibition showcasing the work of several artists. Except for the recurring touches of humour and surrealism. There is a beautiful pen and ink line drawing, Last Supper in Platforms, an homage to the famous Da Vinci painting but in which each of those present at the Biblical meal is wearing chunky 1970s-style platformed boots, visible beneath the table. There is a lovely section featuring semi-abstract portraits of couples including Sandy and Danny, Frida and Diego, Anthony and Cleopatra.

Then there is the quirky yet slightly sinister series of images entitled Dinghy Fights – paintings of shadowy men engaged in precarious physical altercations on small boats. “Those came from watching a British movie from the early 1960s which had lots of punch-ups in it. I took some photographs of it and then started thinking about where the most unlikely place would be to have a punch-up and I thought probably on a dinghy. That was a thread I pursued for a while. Who knows where ideas come from – you look at something and it creates a spark. I try not to overthink it; I just go with it.”

And the joyous rock pictures, including one with a cheeky smiling face, inspired by the unusual geological formations at Brimham Rocks, fashioned into fanciful shapes by hundreds of millions of years of weather erosion – “They reminded me of Henry Moore sculptures,” says Moir. There are small-scale watercolour portraits of musicians – including David Bowie, Elton John and Mick Jagger – and some beautiful pictures of birds. These include several vibrant semi-abstract oil paintings of moorhens in various settings and a striking large-scale bullfinch, as well as more figurative watercolour portraits of owls. Birdwatching has been a life-long interest and remains a significant inspiration for his work. “I loved birdwatching as a kid and it inspired my art,” he says. “I’ve gone back to that in a big way.”

He recently released a book of bird paintings and his next project combines both these passions. “I am doing a show for Sky Arts about birdwatching and painting with my wife Nancy. We have already done some filming in Kent and we are going to be filming in Bridlington looking at gannets. For each show we will be looking at birds, I’ll be painting some birds and also doing a landscape with a friend. It’s a great thing to be doing.” In one of the episodes, he will be painting with Colin Self, a key artist in the British pop art movement and a contemporary of David Hockney. Other significant figures in the art world, such as Grayson Perry and Peter Blake, have long been supporters of Moir’s work.

The overall impression that the exhibition leaves is of very accomplished work that is the product of an incredibly rich and varied creative drive. There is also a strong sense of playfulness, experimentation and pushing of boundaries which ties in with Moir’s style of comedy. Many have pointed up the link between the surrealism inherent in his performance and his visual art and his paintings have drawn comparisons with the Dadaist movement of the late 1910s and 1920s. He downplays this. “I suppose there is a connection there if you want to find it but it is very loose. My style switches all the time; I don’t adhere to any particular genre.”

In a note on the gallery wall there is a lovely quote from Moir that beautifully captures where he is now in his life and with his art: “When I started doing comedy it was kind of a side-line to my artwork,” he says. “I’ve never not painted. Now I’ve got to a stage where I thought – I’ve done the comedy, I’ve done the TV, I’ll just do bits on TV and film if I want to do it. But all day long I’m going to paint pictures. That’s what I like doing.”

Yorkshire Rocks & Dinghy Fights: An Exhibition by Jim Moir aka Vic Reeves is at RedHouse Originals Gallery, Harrogate, Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm, extended until October 15. Free entry. All the works are for sale. redhouseoriginals.com