The Life of An Artist: An Interview with Martin Yeoman

Martin Yeoman is a British painter, draughtsman, etcher and sculptor who has works in many collections, including those of The Royal Collection, British Museum and The National Trust. His works are also in many notable private collections, including the personal collection of HRH The Prince of Wales. 

Image: Ginger Warehouse, Kochin, India View Here

Tessa Carr’s conversation with Martin, starting with his journey prior to the Royal Academy Schools, follows his career: looking to the past, but also to the future. Many thanks must go to Martin for his insightful responses. 

T.C. You had a slightly alternative route to the RA Schools, could you tell us a little bit about that? Do you think your artwork and career would have been different if you had gone into art school straight from school?

M.Y. There is here an important point I want to make, about youth and wanting to be an artist, what stands in your way, what choices you ultimately make, where you break your own beliefs and where ultimately you fail. I don’t know if having what is called a natural facility in drawing or being gifted is seen as either having an unfair advantage or just being thought of as clever. 

Not going to art school straight from school allowed me to stumble forward and find out what it was that I wanted. In 1968, whilst at school, I was introduced to Pop Art at the Hayward Gallery and the modern works in the Tate (now Tate Britain). It was during this time that I remember visiting David Hockney’s first big show at the Whitechapel. Of course, all these works had their influence on me, and for a while, I wanted to be like them and fervently visited the major galleries, and the independent galleries down Cork Street.

But I also admired a lot of other work in the Tate from earlier periods. It was quite common in art schools then (and possibly now) to start young minds afresh instead of adding to your understanding of drawing, as it was in my case by the time I reached the RA Schools. A clear example of this would be during my search for a place to study after India when the Head of Fine Art at Reading University told me that, ‘we no longer draw here and that if you were to come here, we would encourage you to change and be like us’. 

The fact of taking a job after school that related to art also played its part. Working in Selfridges advertising department as a runner and paste-up artist, I often had to visit Clerkenwell, which was the centre of the printing industry back then and not the smart place that it has become today, that was an experience, but I quickly realised I was in the wrong career. So too did Mr James, the Manager who really needed a copywriter rather than an artist and I was eventually let go and moved on to the display and design department. This new job at least gave me more room to draw and be creative pictorially. It was here I was introduced to the art of Alphonse Mucha and all things Art Nouveau (and where I think I first started looking at Toulouse Lautrec). I was asked to make drawings using the Art Nouveau style. I felt very proud at the age of seventeen to have had those drawings (enlarged photographically), forming the prominent display in every one of Selfridges shop windows down Oxford Street.

That feeling did not last, and later on I can remember sitting at my drawing board one afternoon at the very top of that building, saying out loud to myself, ‘I wish I could meet someone who could really draw’ (years later that wish took the form of Peter Greenham RA, who was the then Keeper of the RA Schools).

Read the full interview here: https://www.courtauldian.com/single-post/2019/07/12/The-Life-of-An-Artist-An-Interview-with-Martin-Yeoman