When Light Brings Things Into Existence. Interview with Artist Toby Mulligan
The British artist's constructed painting, between reality and exaggeration
In Toby Mulligan’s painting, reality is never an immediate given, but something that must be constructed, verified, and almost tested before it can be narrated. His figures inhabit suspended spaces, sensual and exasperated, which seem to arise from a fragile balance between observation and imagination, between physical presence and restrained emotion. It’s not a matter of representing reality, but of traversing it to the point where form ceases to be descriptive and becomes experience.
A British artist, Mulligan works from miniatures and hand-built sets: small, concrete worlds, created specifically for true observation. A process reminiscent of the work of a sculptor, it allows him to understand the profound structure of figures before even painting them.
Ambidextrous painting thus becomes a tool for circumventing rational control, liberating a more direct, instinctive gesture, capable of combining precision and abandon.
Light, in his works, is never a secondary element: it is what brings things into existence, what creates rhythm, depth, and narration. Accentuated shadows, intense colours, and atmospheres charged with emotional tension transform each scene into a suspended fragment of life, where time seems to slow down and relationships, or their absence, become the true centre of the image.
Breaking between classical influences and contemporary sensibilities, between interior architecture and emotional landscapes, Toby Mulligan’s work explores the disorientation of human bonds and that subtle space where we feel together and, at the same time, irremediably alone.
In this conversation, the artist discusses his process, the role of exaggeration, light, and intuition, and how painting becomes a tool for understanding, rather than simplifying, who we are.
In your work, you start with miniatures and sets you build yourself. What does this process offer you that direct observation wouldn’t?
Well, I am painting from direct observation when I make these sets, and that’s exactly why I do them, because I need that concrete something to convince me, even though it’s a concrete reality that I have constructed.
You paint ambidextrously: how does this technique influence the spontaneity, control, and energy of your gesture?
This method is a deliberate way to bypass the constraining eye, the critical negative voice that always finds fault. Perhaps the effort of doing something that demands my full attention just to paint with both hands simultaneously frees up a creative flow. Like knocking out the guard at the entrance of the castle.
Your way of constructing subjects “like a sculptor” (bones, muscles, structure) seems to take you beyond representation. When do you understand that a figure has reached that point where “emotion surpasses reality”?
I do this so that I feel convinced (and I take a lot of convincing) that I really understand the form inside out. So one line can really speak for muscles, bones, weight, and feeling all at once without appearing heavy. And I think when I feel the line or colour is doing this, then the emotion is doing that work.
Light in your paintings is an almost narrative element: how do you choose the luminous atmosphere, and what role does it play in constructing the meaning of the scene?
Light is so fundamental that it is almost as though it brings things into existence. I can look at a landscape and take it or leave it, but when the sun comes out and creates shadows, I can’t contain myself. So I think that is its role for me. It creates meaning, a story that I have to tell.
Your paintings always convey a strong emotional energy, as if capturing a suspended moment. What kind of emotions or human states do you most seek to explore?
I think the feelings that I’m really drawn to expressing are those of connection (or the lack of it) in relationships. Being with or without and wondering why. What it is that’s changing. Of feeling alone with people, or very much with someone, though it may be a memory of them.
What is the relationship between observed reality and the constructed world? How much room do you leave for the unexpected or intuition compared to the initial plan?
I think so much of the constructed world is our observed reality that they’re in constant dialogue. We’re imagining and creating worlds to make it easier to imagine others and never truly inhabit the ones we’re actually living in. And I am very much flitting between the unexpected and the initial plan, as the initial plan is continually being affected by and adjusting to the evolving feelings and physical changes in the work as it’s progressing.
Your works combine classical influences and expressive immediacy. Which artistic references do you feel are still more vivid in your process today?
I’ve always been very drawn to architecture. Both contemporary and classical. And this certainly affects the sets that I make. Arches from Romanesque churches and strong Mediterranean colours, for example. Additionally, miniature, painted copies of paintings by Vermeer or Hopper are displayed on the walls.
Your figures seem to live in “sensual and exaggerated worlds”. What purpose does exaggeration serve in your work? What does it allow you to express that realism cannot?
I think exaggeration is vital. It’s what makes the work mine, and it really only works when I’m barely aware that I’m doing it. It feels so right and actually necessary to paint with that bright mauve or deepen that shadow so much that I have to do it.
Interview by Fabio Pariante: X • Instagram • Website
Great interview! Delightful art! Thanks!