Sean Scully: one artwork that changed me

There is one that I’ve talked about a lot. Why not talk about it again? It’s the painting Van Gogh’s Chair

When I first wanted to be an artist, I was a bit of a geezer. I was 19 and working as a plasterer’s labourer in the ballroom of the Palace Hotel in Victoria. On my lunch break, I used to buy a pie, stick it in my mouth and drive down to the Tate in Millbank on my scooter. The way I drove, it was like two minutes. In those days, you could just pull up, park and go in. You would enter down the staircase and on a wall, right in the centre was Van Gogh’s Chair. I used to like the chair because it was so naive, like me. I was completely unsophisticated. Everything in the painting is outlined. I think it’s the beginning of Pop Art. I liked the way that he painted the floor. And all this is in my work: the structure of the chair, the weaving is in my work. I also had a very dominating mother who taught me to knit.

I would only go to look at this painting, and after I’d looked at the painting for ten minutes, I would have to go back, because lunch was 30 minutes on a building site. I went back many times. The reason I loved it so much was because I could understand it. It was naive enough for me to enter it. Other paintings, like Monet I couldn’t enter because the mastery was too elevated. It did a lot for me. What also did a lot for me was the fact that the Tate was free and I could go in covered in bits of plaster.