Reality & the Irrational

This green-eyed indigo child in the early stages of making, a further addition to my growing brood of spiritual collaborators, an ally envisioning a magical dimension I'm mostly too blind and afraid to see on my own. 

There is a spiritual dimension, where the soul is untethered from the illusory material world, a spiritual world which offers true freedom and enlightenment. 

These paintings break free from the world of reality, and the illusions that exist within reality. They embrace the Unknown. The formless world is beyond language, it is a state of innate, natural spirituality. It is the only true state of being. Meditation brings one closer to a formless world. These paintings as such are a form of meditation, suffused with words which are ultimately useless in capture the spirit of their intention. 

The blood of two brothers runs deep. One brother was denied a future, and the other got to live his future. But what does the artist do with this opportunity? What does art mean? Can it take reality and reconstruct it in an imaginary world? Can it heal fractured histories? Can the use of a creative mind resurrect lost futures? These questions are pointless. It's the act alone which holds value: the creation of paintings. 

What sense of guilt or responsibility drives this desire to bring meaning to James's existence? More than success or money and acclaim there must be a powerful creative impulse to somehow entwine my life with my brother's once more. 

For years we were together in the same horror film. Then for years we became separated by the horror, repelled to our respective distant lands. And now, through and beyond the horror, we come together as brothers once more: instigated by me and generated through my art. My art is for and about myself and my brother. This is an impulse beyond the sale of a painting, beyond a gallery and its representation. This is art with meaning and value for me first. Beyond that, others to, hopefully. Because art has to be shared to truly exist. Not liked, just shared. 

The references in my paintings are loose. Never explicitly referring to that of James and his lost future. This is an intangible world I'm creating. There are no laws and rules to adhere to. In my mind and spirit I make a connection, even where one doesn't appear readily apparent to me. I know my heart and mind are making a connection, a bond, a union, and that it is always there, if not visually, then somehow spiritually - embedded in the canvas. The canvas is enveloped with intention. To explore, to navigate, to journey. Not literal intentions to generate a literal future. But create an environment in which to commune.

I paint for myself. I paint for James. I don't paint for clients. I don't paint for galleries. I don't paint for magazines and website. I don't paint for critics and newspaper columns. I don't paint for friends or colleagues. I don't paint for anyone other than myself and my brother. This is our world, a world where everyone is truly welcome - truly welcome. But it may not be for you. You may not understand my art. You may not get my meaning and intention. I understand. Some days I just don't get it myself. I really don't. But some days, I do. And there lies my passion. 

Art has to mean something. It has to resonate deep down in one's fibre. It has to exist beyond the consideration of any external factors: beyond styles and likes, beyond opinions and tastes. It can only truly exist fully when it doesn't exist. That if it is never seen or liked, bares no factor on its creation and value. It is created in spite of any lack of acknowledgement. And it's value exists outside of the external world. It has its own inbuilt value. 

Reality is beguiling, but it is the irrational world I mostly to turn to now for creative stimuli, as it seems by far the richer field. The more irrational, the more meaning I find. But paradoxically also a world where meaning doesn't really matter. Where nothing really matters other than the expression of oneself creatively, and as authentically, as possible. Which of course, changes from day to day. What feels authentic day, may feel hollow tomorrow. Such is the creative journey. It is never ending. 

Rethinking my position on symbols

The 'spiritual' dimension which has come to seep slowly into my life as I get older, very much previously concealed I might add, is slowly but surely becoming  a formidable presence in my art. 

With the sudden onset of this realisation it now seems clear that the world is by no means made up merely of the empirical things which surround me. So why would I limit myself to representing the things which surround me, when there are inklings of further undiscovered realms to be explored? 

There are fields and forces at play which underpin my existence which I cannot fully grasp. Intuition can then play a big part in accessing these realms. 

But things which are seemingly unfathomable today (Flat Earth/ Round Earth), become less so tomorrow. 

Telepathy has long been regarded as far fetched, for the likes of Dr X and other science fiction characters. Reading books thirty years ago I believed William Burroughs was merely being fantastic in his Yage expedition for telepathic drugs. But while telepathy as we have always envisaged it - mind to mind - is unlikely for the future, it is still possible to transfer thoughts between humans via binary decoding and software. 

Telepathy is not 'spiritual' of course, but an example of the unknown revealing itself. 

Telepathy is now the subject of intense research at universities around the world where scientists have already been able to read individual words, images, and thoughts of our brain by combining the latest scanning technology with pattern recognition software. 

It often feels like I'm blindly wandering through this life I'm beginning to recognise as a 'spiritual' one. But I suppose I don't need to have 'data' to support my intuition. My art tells me to cease painting what I see, and paint a world that I can intuit. This means, to a degree at least, of letting go of the limitations of rational thinking. 

I once believed paintings had to make 'sense'' such that the entirety of their existence could equally be explained in words as they could in paint.  I now feel the less sense my paintings make in a rational world, exponentially the closer I get to my own Spiritual and Creative Truth. 

But I accept for me this is a curious journey, and I don't understand the route. But as mentioned, perhaps 'understanding' this journey is less important than 'feeling' this journey. 

Personally, I feel there is more to you and I than meets the eye... I don't know the name for it, but for want of a better expression, I call it 'spiritual'. It begins by looking within, not outside of myself. When you suddenly have this realisation that you are a formless entity, the parameters change somewhat. For when form loses its preeminent status you have to wonder on the nature of what is left!

Artist as Quality Controller

I had a realisation of a very positive kind the other day, which sounds on the face of it fairly negative. But it's not in fact negative at all. 

This may or may not be relevant to your artistic practice. 

The realisation is that my latests three paintings aren't finished and that they're mediocre. 

Big deal, you say. 

Well, I thought they were finished and I even thought they were great! How we fool ourselves. 

That's the big deal! 

I'd duped myself into thinking they were not only finished, but we're great too!

For some reason, I suddenly came into the studio one morning and saw the brutal reality of their actual mediocrity. 

But it's from this that I can now begin to see their potential to be better. And this is of course of great value. If these paintings don't change based on this insight, the ones to follow surely will. 

My current concern is that I don't know how to make these current works better. Or what that even means, 'to make them better'.

The yardstick I often use for determining whether a painting is successful or not, is this: 

Could this painting hold its own while hanging on the wall of the National Gallery?

(I know this sounds grandiose, so forgive me for that.)

If the answer is no, then I instantly know I have a problem. And currently, my answer is an indefatigable no. These paintings couldn't hang on the cloakroom wall of a major gallery. 

So something has to change. But what, and how? And are these just vacuous words? Or can they be made concrete with actual change?

With these large-ish paintings it's easy to allow sloppy passages to appear. And because they're big paintings the passages of sloppiness can be big too! A definite drawback of working larger. 

How do you step out of creating mediocre paintings to creating great paintings? 

I know all artists have great paintings in them. But how do we create a change in ourselves to bring about this greatness in our work? What exactly needs to change?

It's all personal of course. But I suspect it begins with 'seeing' the mediocrity in one's work, when it arises. Nothing can change and grow until this awareness comes about. But you need to look for it, as it conceals itself from us. Or we slovenly allow things to slide. 

So today my three paintings are mediocre. Certainly one of them is, without question. I see it. I know it. But tomorrow is a new day. And tomorrow they don't have to be mediocre. If a paintings not varnished, it can be reworked. 

I think an artist also needs to know for themselves what it means for a painting to be great. Greatness has a different criteria for different artists. 

I personally 'feel' a great painting, you don't necessarily need the words to describe why it is great. It's not always clear why a painting seems great to us. We just know it. And we also know it when it isn't great, too. But my National Gallery test is my best yardstick. 

I think that knowing when you've created something mediocre is a deeply empowering thing. It allows scope for change and growth. Without this recognition growth can't begin. 

How do you each determine when your paintings are great, or if they're great (or maybe that's a word you feel uncomfortable with), and when they are mediocre? Is it something that can be put into words, or simply a feeling?

Or do such questions seem irrelevant and for the concern of those arrogant enough to believe in there personal capacity for greatness?

No business with a product for sale allows the product into the public arena without first passing quality control. Artists (entrepreneurs that we are) run our own quality control departments. And that means recognising when we create something that is mediocre, and when we create something that is great. 

I wonder if the greatest gift any artist can have is to own the capacity to see the shoddiness in their own work when it surfaces!

Bon voyage 

Voids in a Painting

Recently I’ve been trying to make sense of my new painting, but it’s resisting making sense. It wants to do it when it’s ready, and won’t allow me to force a sense into it. And yet who else can do it? The painting doesn’t have a separate existence. Yet it resists my attempts to make it make sense. And I have been trying to make it make sense for several days.

Transitions don’t come easy. This is when artists with more sense than I, put their paintings aside and begin new ones. That’s not how I work. The thought of a painting in the background unresolved seems almost abhorrent!

There is this void in the painting which is begging for something to be put there. Maybe something which will raise the painting out of the ranks of tameness. It’s hard painting beauty without it appearing tame. After all, how can beauty be fully understood with out a little ugliness to give meaning?

Sometimes I feel my paintings cry out for a little rawness. As Tennyson said, Nature is red in tooth and claw. This absence actually gnaws at me sometimes. Because I know there is a brutality out there festering beneath polite society, and somehow I feel it too needs a voice. A subtle voice for my needs, but recognition all the same.

There is such a strong psychological element to my work that I feel it sometimes needs a more raw expression; but with this element comes a fear of losing the beauty of simple things; as though any hint of ugliness will cause a recoil.

But there comes a time when the viewer’s opinions no longer figure. For the mature artist, perhaps the viewer will never figure.

I think there is a fear with approaching the darker aspects of the psyche, a fear of what will arise. Of course the fear is without rhyme or reason, but it’s there all the same. Much of my work is an avoidance of this darker aspect. When the blood of insanity runs through one’s history as deeply as it does in ours, one soon learns to keep all thoughts as healthy as possible. And yet as an artist one also wants to engage honestly with ones creativity, to not dilute or tame it…

So I look at a canvas with a big gaping void in it. Perhaps I should do what Turner did, and turn up and stick a red blob on my canvas and all will make sense!

I suspect there are a thousand ways of approaching the problem of a stuck painting. There are as many ways of dealing with this as there are artists perhaps. Almost certainly, putting a painting to one side would work a charm. But I stop for nothing.

Pushing through will also bring a truth. Because this new painting is a template of sorts for future paintings it needs to be resolved here, otherwise it will simply recur in the next painting. So it’s a language which I need to understand. So I prefer to pursue this painting until it is resolved.

Perhaps my real problem is the fear of ending up with a tame picture. Even one that sells is of no use to me. I’ve done so many tame pictures, which I of course loved at the time. And still do.

But there is something bigger out there. And to get to it you actually have to find your raw emotional truth, your authentic personal expression. How you then convey this with an exquisitely controlled paint brush such as mine, I couldn’t begin to tell you.

So much emotion can come from the brush stroke itself. A vitality. I’ve never seen a raw vitality come from a 0000 sized brush. But that’s my choice of tool. Dali of course had a very precise, tight control over his technique, and also found his emotional truth. So perhaps tools are neither here nor there. It’s what you do with them that counts.

Nude Distortions

My perception of the female form is not a fixed notion of femaleness, but a shifting representation of femaleness.

The human form shifts in shape, as it revolves around a psychological distortion which I’ve carried since a young boy.

Aged 14 a police officer knocked on our door. He informed us that our beloved ****** had been found dead beneath the Crouchend clock tower – dressed as a woman. The constructed image is emblazoned on my psyche for all eternity.

From that day onwards my understanding of male/female identity began to dissipate, began to melt and merge in slightly incomprehensible ways.

The female for in all its shapes and sizes and colours is perfectly beautiful and perfectly sexual to me.

I feel the male form is a greater beauty when in shifting form, leaning towards the female form as in Caravaggio’s statue, The David.

There is always an aesthetic, higher beauty which interests me, perhaps a universal beauty if this is not to grand. But this is often playing off against a lower carnal self which for some reasoned is ever under suppression: because, mistakenly, we don’t associate this lustful response with serious art.

We always think of art nudes as appealing to a higher aesthetic – that we are referring to a grand universal beauty – no lustful responses involved.

But nearly all female nudes in art history have been painted by men. The female form is a turn on. It would be nonsensical to ignore this instinctual fact. But this is not the whole story.

It’s not always obviously the case. We don’t obviously see this in Freud for example. But we feel we see it in Allen Jones. We don’t obviously see it in Picasso, but we feel we see it in Schiele. Yet in the artists who don’t obviously play out this lust on the canvas, they seem to have played it out in life. Their list of lovers being innumerable.

I find it amazing that discussions of such a strong human, sexual response to portraying the human form in art, is often suppressed at length by artists, as though such concerns are not suitable for high art; a human response which should belong solely to soft porn industry.

Jeff Koons seemingly attempts to bridge a gap between high art and hardcore pornography. Love or loathe the work he did with Cicciolina, it represented a natural human act, though highly unnatural in its depiction.

When I paint the female form there is an aspect of desire, realised through the act of painting. But when and where?

When I work with my models there is not even a frisson of excitement. It is purely about composition and posing and getting all the technical aspects of the camera and lighting correct.

The painter who paints from life has a chance to languish over the form. The hyperrealist working from photos never does. It happens far to quickly and is way too technical.

Does this desirous state occur in the painting process? Never. It is purely about creating the painting and little more.

It happens in the Idea. Before the appearance of the human in flesh, or her appearance on canvas. There lustful ideas if the human form. But once the process starts it never appears again.

Symbolism in stil lifes? No! (older post brought forward)

I'm not too interested in forcing symbolism into the objects I paint, some may say that leaves them as mere attractive objects, and I say, so be it. If there is any symbolism in my objects, it is more by chance, that intention - as it comes after the fact. 

For example, it suddenly dawned on me why I might have chosen something like chestnuts; they reminded me of a time of playful innocence in my early life. But I initially chose them for aesthetic reasons. They came to symbolise something after the painting was complete. So it was a kind of subconscious symbolism at work, not intended.

Symbols in still life paintings are evident, skulls are mortality, wine alongside bread is likely the blood of Christ, butterflies the soul or transformation. But this code seems too much about the artist, and I prefer my work to be less about the artist, I don't want cryptic works where viewer has to be detective, to seek out the meaning of the codes within created by the artist. 

Its not always easy to tell what the artists meant in his construction of symbols, not at least merely by looking. We can hazard a guess, but symbols have multiple meanings, they can mean one thing for one artist, something altogether different for another. 

So how can we know if we're on the right trail? We can tenuously try to grasp the meaning, but we may miss the mark. Some symbols have a universal meaning, others do not, and context of the object is all important. 

If you sought universal understanding in your paintings, it would mean adhering to universal iconography. But that might risk creating stale repetitive art. Whereas creating a more unique art might mean creating non-universal iconography. In which case it might risk being inaccessible. 

Of course the artist may add it stimulates the viewer into entering a dialogue with the work, that a viewer should be made to work, regardless of the outcome. But I want to offer instant gratification, not complex indecipherable  meanings, regardless if it cerebrally stimulates the viewer. If I wanted to cerebrally stimulate the viewer i might do better to write for a pamphlet.

Alternatively we can do some research on the artist to find out the intentions. But how many of us do that we when look at a paintings? More often than not, I think we want to receive a paintings attributes there and then.

There is only one motivation I am really interested in, and that is Beauty, and it is on this basis alone that I choose the objects I choose, not for esoteric meanings, and certainly not for stale universal meanings.

Finding meanings in paintings can be stimulating, even fun, but not all artists seek to create work embedded with encryptions.

Paradise' in Catto Gallery (older post)

Seeing one of my paintings hang on a gallery wall for the first time, with all it's controlled down lighting, walls covered in fine works, the painting flourishing in this new environment, is a wholly different experience from having it sit on my easel, amongst all the studio clutter, art paraphernalia and numerous cups of stale coffee. 

I seem to experience the work differently in a gallery. Certainly context infers value and meaning. Of course, a gallery is a painting's natural home, but an even more natural home is an owner's walls. 

One thing which is a little bemusing at times is that a work can seem large in one environment, and yet minuscule in another. Large in my studio, yet small in the gallery. So today I concluded it is time to move up in scale. When a work looks oversized in my studio, I can probably estimate it will be perfectly fine in a reasonable sized gallery. Why think small when you can think big? The same applies to my painting. That's not to say small isn't exquisite. Undoubtedly it is. My five year old Elm bonsai tree is testament to this, also is the wondrous tiny hummingbirds that appear in my work. But soon a work demands a more expansive space. The natural inclusions demand a greater living environment. A bowl? A basket? In fact a WORLD. So it is the difference between painting 'Objects in Space', and painting 'Worlds Filled with Objects'. 

Now this work is hung it is time to complete the third of these circular panel pieces and then look to larger horizons. I always thought it was the objects I wanted to paint but I think this is transforming; more likely is seems I want to create worlds filled with beauty. This might sound a tad cheesy, but I have no other way of expressing it. A world filled with beauty. 

My brother J never knew a world of beauty growing up. And right by his side, for many years, it felt as though I never knew a world of beauty either. If I could envisage painting such a surrogate world to replace his tainted world, what would this world look like...? This, of course, is the possibly deluded vocation of an artist seeking to heal the woes of his world. To put wrongs to right. But some wrongs can never be righted. J's world can't be undone, for example. Though some events in life can still be honoured and a sense of resolve sought.