PC-K
What’s the basis of your work?

CC
Typically, as here, my paintings over the past two decades are in two parts. I have consistently used chance in my working process for the initial ’starts’ of each painting, the non-figurative part. I make groups of these ‘starts’, large and small and at any time I have 50 or 69 that I make photographs from and keep together as a kind of  notebook  where I look for images in the chance blots and stains. The second part of the painting s are made with a brush and oil paint on linen  - slow materials developed to paint skin and atmospheric illusions. My concerns are our tendency and ability to picture.

PC-K
How do you make a ‘start’?

CC
I staple cotton duck to the floor - a double square - wet it and pour acrylic paint onto it. The paint is quite thick, so the mixing occurs on the cotton duck. I spread the paint quickly using my hand to to just cover the surface of one half of the double square.The I fold the other half over and blind print it by wiping a piece of cardboard across the back. I open the canvas and without doing anything else, leave it to dry. 

PC-K
You then use a photographic image which matches the start in some way. How does that come about?

CC
That might be an image from my collection which is collated within categories which have become evident over time - injuries, fires, floods, or one that I need to find and make myself.

PC-K
That use of chance has literary parallels such as Raymond Roussel and the Oulipo group of french writers. Is that relevant to you?

CC
My interest in the French literature of chance goes back a long way.  In 1977 I published ‘Hommage a Queneau’ , which takes as its starting point his ‘Exercises in Style’ ( the same anecdote told in 99 different ways) and applies it to a cup.

PC-K
How did you come to choose the image of a fire  in Tottenham?

CC
I've worked more and more from press photographs  in recent years. Aside from the political events, which I have wanted to touch on, the fact that newspapers use now use colour  means that we are forever being presented with pictures of fire.

PC-K
There’s quite a lot of violence in your work?

CC
Yes, and its impossible not to  think of those things as not being interpreted and metaphoric. The shark bite painting puts me in mind of late medieval paintings of flayings which are simultaneously horrendous an gorgeous in how they are painted.

PC-K
Do any particular artists influence you?

CC
Early on I was influenced by Rheinhardt and Irwin  and by artists in Cage’s circle - Rauschenberg, Johns - for their approach , and by many others who use chance: Morrellet, early Kelly. And Ive always liked the work of Rothko, Louis, early Poons and early Olitski - but I can’t make their kind of working decisions.

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