‘Curled up inside myself’ – Sketching on the train
I sit curled up inside myself.
The train moves through time.
I want it to stop.
Time to stop.
All to stop.
Inside my curl I wait for silence.
15th AUGUST 2015
Thoughts & Sketches
Art and the Void – From ‘Behind the Line’ Exhibition
Art fills the gap between the voids. Between nothing; emptiness. It’s grasping to hold an idea in time and space. Suspending it before it goes from void to void. A flash. A moment. It is a moment between placing the pencil on the paper and taking it off again; captured. The line captures the space between the voids. The thought between the emptiness; between moments; between time. We pin time down in graphite and paint.
13th AUGUST 2015
Sketches – May 12th 2015
I love playing with sketches…. I like to pull them apart and push them to the edge to see what happens… There is a constant thirst for visual exploration which cannot be quenched… Even in the strangest of places I find myself pulling images around on my phone to see what I can find…..
12th MAY 2015
Sketch – 27th April 2015
A sketch done on the train back from the ‘Fusion’ exhibition in London…
‘ We stand, we talk, the words float by,
they mean no-thing.
Our ears are closed, our minds are shut, our hearts are sealed…
The words float by,
they mean nothing….’
29th APRIL 2015
Sketches…. The sea
I am obsessed with the Ocean.
I want to watch it,
breathe it,
be it.
We move through the blackened swells;
A line moving through time.
Our mark cuts through and then disappears into the timelessness of it all.
Our mark evident for only a moment,
then it is swallowed into eternity.
I sit and watch the horizon.
I wonder what is beyond.
The longing to disappear into the eternal horizon is so painful,
and the ache so deep,
sometimes
I drown in it…
26th APRIL 2015
‘Still Small Voice’ British Biblical Art in a Secular Age (1950-2014) – The Wilson, Cheltenham
For me there is no separation between spirituality and art; it is one and the same thing. To express the essence of what it is to exist is, indeed, connecting to the divine.
I was really excited about visiting ‘Still Small Voice’ Biblical Art in a Secular Age (1850-2014) at The Wilson, Cheltenham. Biblical art has always hooked me in and captivated me. No matter which artist or style of working, they all fascinate me. Biblical Art always expresses so much more than a mere story or image…
The exhibition is full of inspiring pieces, all of which spoke in a variety of different and beautiful ways. But one, for me, grabbed me by the guts and shook me hard.
‘Body of Christ’ (Red background) , 2008 – Craigie Aitchison (1926-2009)
The reduction of the image of Christ to almost a mark on the canvas, to me, shouted louder and more fiercely than any huge show of grandeur and story-telling. It made me stop, stock-still and caught me breathless. The vibrancy of the red background colour, with the stark, strong and definite marks depicting the image of Jesus was mesmerising in its simplicity and mandala-like as it drew me inside. I stood for some time absorbing its energy, and with its lack of narrative I was able to explore my own thoughts through it…
Jesus’s life was a mark in time which continues to vibrate through history and into the future. If, like this piece by Aitchison, we go behind the images, the idolatry, the rules and the teachings. If we go right back to the essence and heartbeat of the silence, from where Jesus came. If we listen quietly to the ‘no’-thing. If we open up our soul and ignore the mind, we might also be able to feel the heartbeat of the silence within us, and through this connect to the divine. If we create art from the empty, infinite void, rather than from knowledge-based, category-based, ‘fit in a box’ ideals, we too might be able to create something of such simplicity, such beauty, and with such a small but overwhelmingly powerful voice. If we over-complicate, over-adorn, over-think the art that we create it sometimes loses its impact.
Sometimes less really is more….
29th MARCH 2015
2am Sketching
2am – Woke up, couldn’t sleep; restless with a voice inside that couldn’t be pacified… Light on, grabbed bag next to bed. Found a sketchbook, pen and charcoal stick. Sat on the bedroom floor, in the dark, in the peace; gave audience to the voice. (Sketches above) Got back into bed. Peace. Sleep…….
Sometimes the urge to create, to draw, to speak is so overwhelming it swells through me like a tsunami; unstoppable, overwhelming, to the point of drowning if it isn’t heard…. I am ‘between studios’ at the moment (new one ready in a couple of weeks) and I am pacing around like a caged wild animal…. I wander into the space all my kit is being kept in and end up coming out, hands plastered in paint….Just have to touch it….
Paint, charcoal, pencils are as essential as oxygen – even the smell of them makes me happy…..
23rd MARCH 2015
Most perfect day…
Most perfect day. Sketching movement – capturing essence. Line, over line, over line. Vibration building in density and form. Why capture the physical nature of form? We can experience this via our senses. Capturing the essential nature, the thing behind the thing. The inter-dimensional resonance – imprint. Beautiful dance of energy and essence pushing out into physical matter. Shaping from the internal to external. Can we push thought into form? Where does thought come from? Is it the chemical firing of neurons? Is it from intelligence/consciousness behind form? What is it?
Watching the beautiful dance of movement of a small boy piling log upon log, building a den. Thought, intent, movement, joy, joined together in a line of time to create. Where or is, that essence of creation recorded, captured? Is it? Does it need to be? Does it define what follows – mark that which has passed? The smells, the light, the air, the leaves, the sun, the joy, the touch – the everything. Layer upon layer, moment upon moment. Not one, but a string, tying – binding – holding the essence of all that was there, together. How to capture; how to capture. Where is it? What is it? Has it gone, never to be grasped again? Intangable effervescence. You can’t see it, bottle it, photograph it, touch it, but only sense it at some deep, far away level. And I – some fool – want to capture the intangible in form. Net it and have it back – that movement through time. That which isn’t there, into solidity. Let there be art – and there was. Can only God create form? Where does it manifest from? No, not messiah complex. Just questions, questions, questions… What is it I want to achieve? I need direction – a point to this whole ****ing thing…
26th DECEMBER 2014
Creativity and Pain…
Every moment is perfection – it hangs in time and space – perfectly. We miss it, each and every time. Distracted by mind and the physical nature of being.
Pain – it all begins with pain. Mental, physical, psychological, emotional. Pain. Pain is what distracts us from the perfection of the present – the gift – the moment. A life without pain is Heaven, Nirvana, perfection. But a life without pain is a life without inspiration. Or can inspiration come from perfection? If we strive for a pain-free existence in a quest to find the perfection of peace, in the striving comes the pain. Curious. Striving to be pain-free results in discontent and the discomfort of the striving. But if we abandon the striving we become free – freedom decreases the pain, resulting in us becoming closer to the thing we were striving towards. Like creating art. The more you strive, the more painful it is, the more painful it is, the harder the struggle – the further away you move from the purity of the abandonment of creation. Allow mind to let go – do not aim at creating – then let what rushes in to fill the void be what creates. This is the purity of creating; it is peaceful, it is perfect imperfection. It is what it chooses to be and should be left as such. Bliss.
18th OCTOBER 2014
To be an artist….
To be an artist, to be who you are, you have to undo, separate and desist from who you were. Not necessarily in a moving- away, hermit kind of way (although that may be a dream come true in expressing the ever expanding explorations of the insatiable mind), but in a separation kind of way.
You were born a perfect sphere of untouched clay; perfection – potential. Others’ hands moulded, poked, prodded, pushed forward, held back, muddied and dirtied the infinite number of shapes you could have become. They produced the sculpture you see in the mirror. The dents and claw-marks which define and make you, are also the ones that keep you separated from the person you truly are. Each time you smooth and stretch into another shape, exploring and expressing your own thoughts on your own existence, the hands, claws, ties and chains shoot in to rebuild – rebuild.
To be an artist you have to embrace the shape you were made, then step away from all that made you that way. Maybe not physically, but mentally, intellectually, spiritually. The claws hold you the way they shaped you, the way that brings them comfort. You need to reshape, replace, re-emerge re-create that which is you. It is the only space in which growth, exploration, expansion, and expression can exist. Reshape, re-roll spherical perfection. Manifest form as an artist/human being/individual; an unhindered, unrestrained soul. Remove the cages, bars, restraints and expand. Expand. Explore. Expand. It is the only way.
28th SEPTEMBER 2014