Hurvin Anderson Barbershop exhibition opens in Wakefield

“My paintings are often a combination of painting and drawing so I will start something and then develop it from there,” he explains.

“Sometimes you think there is more to the subject and you start to investigate it further – that is how the barbershop series began. It wasn’t planned at all, and there is no real pattern to it, I have just gone backwards and forwards with the idea.”

Recalling his initial visit to the barbershop, Anderson describes the particular elements within it that fascinated him.

“What intrigued me was that it had two banks of mirrors facing each other so you got this interesting kaleidoscopic view,” he says.

“You step into the space and it is still – there are people there, things happening and conversations going on but it is nevertheless very still, then you turn 90 degrees and it seemed like there was a space within a space.”

His starting point was to take photographs of what he saw. “Then back in the studio I made a collage and began almost investigating the memory of what I had seen. So, it is about the space but also about the memories of it. It’s also the idea that you can go back to look at something again and it’s changed or you notice something new. Especially working from life, other things encroach with subtle changes, so it is always in motion.” That sense of nuanced difference is very much present in the works on display and gives the viewer an insight into Anderson’s layered process and approach.

Born in Birmingham in 1965 to Jamaican parents, Anderson is widely recognised as one of our greatest living artists.

In 2017 he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and it is testament to his significance that while the Salon Paintings exhibition was being installed at the Hepworth last month, he was elected to the Royal Academy.

His large-scale, vibrant paintings feature the genres of landscape, sill life and portraiture, exploring community, identity and social spaces. His work touches upon his Caribbean heritage, as well as making reference to wider art history.

He has said that he feels the Barbershop paintings have an association with the Impressionist movement in particular.

Where painters such as Manet, Degas and Renoir focussed often on the café as a social space – Anderson has depicted the barbershop in a similar, albeit more abstract, vein. It is a place where people gather, interact and co-exist; with the underlying social context of the barbershop as a space for the Black community. The whole experience of creating the series has been valuable in terms of expanding his practice, he says.

“I think technically I have learnt a lot. I know that I need to gather all the elements together before I can make something. It’s about creating an environment and then from that environment, something grows. It is a bit like when filmmakers and authors create a backdrop against which their characters live.

"There is a kind of back story in my work running in the background. I make everything, even stuff I will never use – I select photographs, make models and still lives to create a sense of this place, then sort of edit it down.” It is a thoughtful, painstaking and time-consuming process of construction and deconstruction. “I get accused of taking too long to make my paintings,” he says, smiling. “But it’s less about painting slowly and more about wanting to have a sense of the whole scene. That is when the painting comes and how I work things out.”

The abstraction varies in the paintings in the show – sometimes there are simply squares and blocks of colour, at other times a figure is discernible, frequently the chairs are empty, at the end of the day with hair clippings on the floor. Each image tells a story and invites the viewer to revisit it.

To reveal Anderson’s creative process, a section of the exhibition evokes his studio, displaying the sketches and drawings from his planning stages, 3D models he has made of the barbershop, and objects and archival material he has sourced to reconstruct the scene.

Alongside the Salon Paintings exhibition Anderson has curated a display of Modern British Painting featuring the work of artists who have informed and influenced his own practice throughout his career.

They include pieces by Michael Andrews, Duncan Grant, Francis Bacon, Prunella Clough – Anderson’s tutor at Wimbledon School of Art – Claudette Johnson, Denzil Forrester and Patrick Caulfield among others. “It has been a chance to see again works I know and admire,” he says. “Mostly it is work by figures that I always look to. I have never done anything like this before and it has been really enjoyable.”

Anderson has created for the exhibition two final large-scale works in the Barbershop series – Shear Cut and Skiffle. “It felt like the right time to stop,” he says. “The series has been going for a while and I think maybe I have done as much as I can do with it. There is a path of learning when you are making these things and I guess I have learnt as much as I need to.”

What is special about these last paintings, aside from the fact that they bring to an end a decade and a half of painterly exploration and experimentation, is the reintroduction of figures into the space. Both barber and sitter are present while the empty chairs of previous paintings are gone, welcoming the viewer into the space. It feels like an eloquent, generous way in which to draw an inspiring series to a close.

Hurvin Anderson: Salon Paintings/Hurvin Anderson Curates is at the Hepworth Wakefield until November 5. hepworthwakefield.org