Please introduce yourself. What initially inspired you to pursue etching? How did this then develop into your current practise; painting in acrylics and oils?

My name is Caio and I am a painter. My focus is mainly on cities. To me, these are constant and shifting projections of humanity. Between my life in the UK and childhood time in Brazil, my journey into painting seeks to capture that first undiluted lens. I remember the aquatint etchings of Morandi, still, intimate and atmospheric that evoked strange structures; and Goya’s imaginative Capriccios and Proverbios. And perhaps looming over all of this was an early encounter with a print of MC Escher’s woodcut ‘Relativity’. These formed an early road-map which helped open my mind to creating and painting unique worlds.

How has travelling the world been influential to your artwork? Which city has been your favourite to capture so far, and why?

Over the last decade or so, I have explored many cities in the United States. New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Detroit. Las Vegas was overwhelming and hyper-real, emerging from and receding back into the desert like a mirage. I remember LA in vivid technicolour. Gazing out to the Pacific Ocean at sunset felt like a springboard to another plane of reality.

But first and perhaps foremost, New York, looking skywards from street level as evening fell and the buildings lit up, then from the air by helicopter, and somehow trying to make sense of the whole. This triggered my New York series where I reworked the grid into sweeping, curvilinear formations, echoing the organic flow of natural form and assimilating this totality to the epic scale of galaxies or star formations.

Your work embodies a vibrant colour palette. Why is colour an important part of your work? Which colour is most prominent in your work?

Colour is a never-ending journey, whether in contrast or uniformity. It can transport the senses and evoke higher meaning. I often find myself returning to mixes involving manganese blue, viridian and turquoise. This range resonates on an intuitive level, perhaps from the sky or sea, or an identification with depth. Lately, I have been drawn to raw umber and indigo; there is always more scope to discover and experiment.

Describe your creative process from start to finish of one of your paintings. Is the end result more, or less important than the process?

I start with an idea or loosely sketched composition, clear but not yet fully mapped out. This may centre on a place or places or be drawn from the imagination, normally somewhere in-between. I work the idea up to the canvas scale, which is when I can tell if it has promise. The concepts continue to evolve alongside the painting so that the painting process gives its own momentum to the meaning.

There is not really a choice to stop painting, more a point when the strands of the process coalesce, reaching a final point at which the inner reality of the piece stands for itself.

How do you explore your ideas of the future of society in your work? What is our fascination with portraying multiple dimensions?

Evoking parallel dimensions makes us step back from our own reality. When combining this with the layered, complex network of structures, bridges and arteries of a city, akin to an expanding neural network, the possibilities are endless. Some of my earlier paintings could feel dystopian, and sometimes I still address these aspects.

But often these days, I am drawn to seeing the world as it could be. Beyond the myopic preoccupations of today. And to a time when cities reflect, and interconnect with, nature, and become beacons of peace, understanding and light.

What do you believe gives your work its own signature style?

My memories and experiences of places are a mixture of complexity, curiosity and possibility, where turning a corner reveals a new world above or below, where climbing jungle roads or hang-gliding over Rio de Janeiro, for example, opens on vistas of mountain, beach and perching conurbation, a precursor to the helicopter ride in New York. It is this perennial eye that continues to define the way I paint.

What do you love most about being an artist? What do you find challenging?

The freedom to create revitalises a sense of wonder in the world. That said, the unpredictability and seeming unreality of creative life, that must also find a way to exist in the real world, can at times be emotionally and psychologically draining.

If you could spend a day in a studio with any artist; dead or alive, who would it be, and why?

I remember being struck by Peter Doig’s paintings, for their haunting, soulful quality. If I was time-travelling, it would be Van Gogh for his unwavering rapture of expression in all its unfettered glory. I have no idea what we would talk about and I know what it’s like when someone drops into your studio when you’re in the midst of something, but hopefully it would go off okay.

How do you see your work evolving in the future?

On the one hand, I would like to see my compositions becoming more fluid, free and expansive. But I also suspect that geometry will always find its way back in as there is something innately pleasing and perhaps anchoring about that too. More than that, I can’t really tell, and that’s what makes it exciting.

Why do you think art is important in society?

Art can potentially open visual doors to a place beyond the constant stream of thought, reactivity, cynical messaging, materialism and homogeneity. Perhaps simply seeing things differently can shift reality in a positive way. For those interested enough to look through, it is there to remind that we are not alone but integral to the wonder.

Caio Locke

ARTIST INTERVIEW: CAIO LOCKE