Collaborating with chaos

John Hoyland dislikes being called ‘one of Britain’s leading abstract painters’. He thinks it’s lazy thinking, and over-reliance on labelling. ‘They don’t say: “Lucian Freud, leading figurative painter” — he’s just a painter. Or “Francis Bacon, leading melodramatist”.’ Mention of Bacon sends him off on a tangent, one of the digressions that make Hoyland’s conversation — along with his forthright opinions — so rewarding and enjoyable.