Frank Auerbach

He was one of a group of figurative painters who are not, on closer examination, a group at all, but what the artist Ron Kittar had once dubbed a herd of loners, all different in style and in procedures.

Among the others were Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud, Leon Kossoff and Francis Bacon.

What they had in common was a determination to paint the world around them, despite waves of fashion for abstract art, performance art and installation art.

Most, including Hugelot, liked to paint from life, that is, in front of a living model or real object.

He said, "The greatest enemy to good art is the sight of the pram," the stroller in today's parlance, is the sight of the stroller in the hallway.

What about Frank Auerbach, the painter? Was he a mono- moniacal?

Frank Auerbach has never got the recognition in this country that he deserves, although there's a retrospective of him coming here in the next two years to very significant museums around the country here.

He was a refugee from Nazi Germany.

He died maybe five years or so ago.

people I was looking at back then were

had quite a sway but as in how it works in our every few years or so, in my experience, there'd be another influence.

And you wouldn't realize that there was an influence until afterwards and you look back.

No doubt.

You have Frank Auerbach also?

Oh, yeah, big fan.

Underrated in the United States, right?

In a way, you were asking about Steve Jobs a few minutes ago.

Steve, I think, most great entrepreneurs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, were obsessives.

Frank Auerbach carried his obsession to new heights.

He painted every day of the year, save for one, which was Christmas Day, when he treated himself to a day off and went to Brighton to go to the Brighton Pier on Christmas Day.

Um, oh, God, now I know how artists feel when we ask the question.

Uh, look, you know what? I think, first person that comes to mind, I'd, I'd love to have spent a day in the studio with Frank Auerbach in, um, at Mornington Crescent, Primrose Hill.

And just to walk to the studio with him in the morning to see what he sees, and then just to watch him, um, as committed a- as he was to his art and his, his creativity.

I, I just think it would be amazing to, to watch him apply paint to the, to the canvas.