Month: April 2017

I have been working on and off on my image for the theme sleeping rough for a month or so. It had got to the stage I had to make radical decisions – more people or a radical repaint. In the last few days I have taken the plunge and now this is how the painting looks.

Its interesting if you have time to look back at the earlier painting. The old painting is underneath. Now I have to decide how much to intervene . The steps that are a symbol for how far the man has fallen or how difficult getting back to normal life would be. The lights on in the flats intensify the separation of him from a normal life that we all take for granted. While the rain just pours down on his sodden body and the cold creeps into his bones.

Two people hurry home brightly dressed with hoods up and can easily miss the man begging or just ignore him. I will take some of the excess paint off and put more lights in the windows. The questions I have to ask Is to I lighten the building a bit – do I straighten the architecture and do I strengthen the steps?

I have asked a great deal of myself in the art I am painting for my degree show which must be hung on 22 May. I have been inspired by what Picasso said as he exhibited Guernica. He declared ‘art was not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war against brutality and darkness’. I would add that it is an instrument against Indifference also. Inspired by seeing Guernica and the art Of Francis Bacon and Leon Golub, I dared to paint what concerns me in our world; Wars! seemingly being fought without regard for the innocents who get in the way and without seriously trying to settle our differences peacefully on our tiny planet; Abandonment of the most vulnerable in our society to difficult lives and untold suffering; And not taking care of our environment – soon it could be too late.

Somehow we individuals have to cope with all this and still live our lives. I don’t have the answers but maybe Chuang Tzu does;

He who rules men lives in confusion;
He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow.
Yao therefore desired
Neither to influence others
Nor to be influenced by them.
The way to get clear of confusion
And free of sorrow
Is to live with Tao
In the land of the great Void.

If a man is crossing a river
And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,
Even though he be a bad-tempered man
He will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat,
He will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,
And yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty.
He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat
Crossing the river of the world,
No one will oppose you,
No one will seek to harm you.

The straight tree is the first to be cut down,
The spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry.
If you wish to improve your wisdom
And shame the ignorant,
To cultivate your character
And outshine others;
A light will shine around you
As if you had swallowed the sun and the moon:
You will not avoid calamity.

A wise man has said:
“He who is content with himself
Has done a worthless work.
Achievement is the beginning of failure.
Fame is beginning of disgrace.”

Who can free himself from achievement
And from fame, descend and be lost
Amid the masses of men?
He will flow like Tao, unseen,
He will go about like Life itself
With no name and no home.
Simple is he, without distinction.
To all appearances he is a fool.
His steps leave no trace. He has no power.
He achieves nothi00ng, has no reputation.
Since he judges no one
No one judges him.
Such is the perfect man:
His boat is empty. -Chuang Tzu

I have painted a Triptych of an empty boat. It is still a work in progress and I am seeking a final image in inspiration from Luc Tuymans and Dali from the subconscious. So far my Triptych looks like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The numbers of young men and women sleeping rough on the streets of our major cities have been increasing rapidly. Someone on a TV documentary on the problem said that we are just one paycheque away from the streets. I a world where social services look to help those in need – can this really be true? Many of those sleeping rough do seem to have mental health issues – It just seems possible to fall out of the system and once out it looks very hard to get back in. I spoke with some of the homeless and it makes depressing listening. I was told by Jane that benefits for a single person are £150 a fortnight but a hostel place costs £22 a night. To get benefits yo have to attend meetings but if you don’t have a computer or an address you don’t get the letters.

Jimmy told me he had taken to the streets after his wife had died. On the streets he can get the cash for some food and the bevvies to blot everything out for a while.. I have watched beggars on the street. Some ask for cash others sit silently and the world seems to walk past.

 

 

 

The Governments of many countries have become alarmed at its scale of human trafficking and are looking to curb it with new legislation. Many propose the so-called Scandinavian Law that simply makes it illegal for someone to pay another human being for Sex. It has already been introduced in Sweden, France and Northern Ireland. A report by the UK’s Home Affairs Select Committee is expected to recommend that the law should be brought in for the rest of the UK  and it could happen very soon.

Will it make any difference to the lives of young women affected?

In 2015, I painted a landscape where I showed a crossroads depicting how difficult life can sometimes be. Just arriving at the crossroads is shown to be fraught with difficulty. Once there sometimes we face terrible dilemmas as to the best way to turn. The safest route is not always the clearest.

For my Degree Show I returned to this difficult topic and I felt I needed to address it directly with the introduction of human figures. My large Crossroads image is 110x110cm painted in oils on board.

I also focus on the women themselves with a portrait, trying to depict their vulnerability. The painting in oil on canvas is A1 size. It is still a work in progress at the time of this blog.

 

 

 

 

 

The battle for Aleppo filled our TV screens in 2016/17. There have been so many atrocities in the terrible Syrian War but none so poignant as the death of a child on the beach at Lesbos when his tiny body was picked up out of the sea by a police officer and placed gently on the beach. I wondered where he had come from and what terror he and his family had suffered,

My painting of his lifeless body floating on the surf was very difficult. Even the skies are crying. The picture suffered huge damage as I made it – literally falling apart. I allowed all this damage to become part of the art

Surely this would change things. The superpowers squabbling would realise that something terrible had happened and would try to solve the disaster in Syria around a table instead of with bombs. Things as dreadful as the death of this child seem to be part of war and seem accepted – collateral damage.

I imagined though that the Gods would not ignore this and that a terrible price would be paid by humanity for our toleration or indifference to this tragedy even opening the first four seals and releasing the four horsemen of the apocalypse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was one on the highlights of my final year at Bangor University Fine Art Degree in November 2016. I had long wondered about these paintings. I had studied them as part of my essay on the sublime. The expressionists were not shy about attaching the label sublime to their art which would make me nervous but you have to picture the time – the cold war. The two superpowers lived on the edge of nuclear war and the battle of cultures for the hearts and minds of the world was intense.

Into this mix steps the CIA with hundreds of millions of dollars

Whatever the truth of all of this, these paintings have presence. Its not just about the size its the sheer exuberance, the inventiveness of it all.

It must have seemed like a dream for the Irascibles their paintings were taken all around the ‘free’ world and always lauded.

I was Impressed by the Pollacks who would not, the Rothko’s yes although I did not quite feel the quasi-religious experience. I did, however, fall forever in love with the work of Clifford Still. Now here was a man to be admired. He kept all his art and left it to the nation where it is preserved by the Clifford Still Gallery in Denver. Denver was one of my favourite US cities when I worked in Investment Banking but I was there to meet Investors with no spare time for Gallery visits – what a pity.

I just loved his blue work which invites you in to wonder at its depth and what could the red and yellow be saying – quite profound.