"THROUGH THE EYES OF A GHOST"
An Introduction
What started as a mishap’ed and experimental small selection of paintings for my own personal venture (to veer off and cathartically end the painting themes I had been working on since university) began to gain their own independence.
Each painting was merely a means for me to experiment and get back to the abstract style of painting that enticed me into further education of the fine arts in the first place. I had changed tact shortly after the first year of University, and began language-rich, large scale oil paintings displaying traditional painting techniques with a modern twist of being photo realistic and taken, studied and wrested from high resolution SLR photographs .
This, I thought at the time, was an interesting take on the usages of technology into the realms of traditional painting that relied quite heavily on real objects of interest being directly before whomever was painting them. I had varying levels of success after graduation that lasted for over a decade supplemented with part/full time work, usually as a labourer or as an office/retail worker, then the work (mainly commercial and privately commissioned), dried up. Now thirteen years after the credit crunch, with the pressures of family responsibilities and jobbing working hours to pay rent and bills, found very swiftly I was unable to continue with the amount of time, patience and diligence needed to apply to such paintings demanding reams of passaged personal and sacrosanct solo hours/days/weeks/months to execute said paintings to my satisfaction. As a semi/profoundly deaf person with a lifetime of the problems therein, it all came to a head. I ran out of jam.
I also fell completely out of love with painting in such a manner. I had kick started two projects I was interested in, but had bitten off too much to chew. The processes of painting a series of large oil paintings painstakingly taken from multiple sources of photographic content ranging from fishing magazines to medical study books backed also with endless academic sources of which I was fascinated by was taking far too long to complete. Years flew by, I had just a few instead of the grand and projected twenty something images I wanted based on the writings and sketches I had formatted. And all to prove a pouty point. It didn't feel like a waste of years, it felt like a waste of decades.
I felt as if I had proved I could paint to such a technical standard when required now, but realised with an absolute immediacy that it wasn’t really for me. It was now boring. Tedious. Became an absolute chore. Like putting out the bins when it was raining or going across to the shop to buy milk with scraps of silver and bronze coins. I wanted to unleash the shackles that sometimes only an abstract artist could fully enjoy, total expulsion and control. I wanted to get back to that frenetic and at once careful, thoughtful and aggressive style of abstract painting. The fresh canvases I made from this realisation, on old stretchers, was more of a personal psychological dumping ground for me. A venture borne of frustration. Something for me to work on, quiet, private and a passaged means to rekindle what I loved about fine art in the first place.
It also told me, I was now middle aged and I had nowhere near enough time or patience to silently pursue the heavily themed sociological, theological and philosophical themes I was wrestling with and ultimately getting tired of. The not so far off encroachments of old age does certain things to a person, it realigns things of importance and adds a sense of urgency to the proceedings. This was something I was grateful for, and allowed me to free myself up. So I saw my circumstances as being rewarding instead. I often times think that one has to undergo hardships and the grind of life/work/responsibilities to fully appreciate the free times made available. There IS something in that.
In the end, it was down to the application of paint and the colours. Painting at technical draughtsmanship levels (or the attempts of) can give a multilayered feeling of the mediums and styles thereof through experience of using them. It's all useful.
Compositions. Non-figurative compositions. Certain aspects of darknesses and light, with added depths that seems pleasing to the eye….even though there is no apparent narrative. This was what I was really interested in ultimately. Textures, layers varying from thin washes and wipes, frantic scratchy mark-making’s with worn out and stubbed out small brushes leading up to ultra-thick selective brushed paint strokes with clean, keenly edged, brand new and wide brushes. Depth. Slow burning. This was not just all out flaying of arms and teeth gnashing extrapolations. There were and are pauses for digressions. Peaceful moments. Sitting, looking, staring, and ruminating with headphones on listening to music levelled at full volumed capacity as I am almost severely deaf (I love the Chrome-Youtube streaming service listening to HQ vinyl drops). Just working out the next moves.
It took a small comment from an associate when looking at one of my ‘in progress’ paintings to get the ball rolling. ‘Like looking into a room’ he said. He, being in TV and a programme maker, had… naturally a cinematic eye for everything. I stated however, shorty after: ‘Through the eyes of a ghost’.
Thence, a theme as strong as anything I could ever of imagined sort of cropped up and took hold. A theme I could happily spend the rest of my life pursuing. The thought of seeing ghosts for real is delirium in itself and as a deeply religious/spiritualist but openly minded agnostic also (I just happen to think everyone will make sense of it all in the end, and any such mover/maker/shaker deigned as a god is too big for us humans to fully understand at this point) the sense of seeing things through the eyes of a ghost has an openness that does, irrespective of current trends, sharpen a direct humanist view point into such invisible and abstract resonances. For myself it completely pulls away from the current politics and happenings of the day and into a much broader and bigger picture that transcends ultimately all timelines and human happenings.
There are seven paintings in all in the first batch of paintings. Each, all a result of mine experimenting and more to the point picking up where I left off since the first year or so at University.
Each bearing similarities, but different also. But on that one observance of one painting looking like a room, or indeed as if a ghost was peering INTO the room I was able to work out and configure these stand alone abstract paintings to suit the paintings as a whole. It took watching a documentary of a Tracey Emin’s life retrospective to hammer the nail home for me. As, she succinctly stated that an artist should have some kind of narrative alongside their works in script form to help explain, or at the very least enhance one’s experience of looking at a piece of art. That convinced me further. After a period of scraping, more washes, turning around paintings so they could accommodate their new ‘theme’ I was able to tie the paintings together so there was some cohesion and a storyline linking them all together.
It would start with a ghost peering across a lake focusing on a speck of light in the mountain to gather its sense of direction towards its family home. From there the ghost would, for whatever reason, stare at a detail of a Victorian wall hanger in the hallway once entering the family home, then looking into a room, then into the grounds of the family home watching the fish swim in the pond, then getting up and close against the surface of an old and warm shed trying to peer into the insides, then watching the father of the house mow the front lawn and finally…seeping and peering into a puddled and dried footprint in the family’s garden within the uttermost perimeter, that leads back to the path of the forest…..the start of the ghost’s visit and giving the ghost the necessary bearings to go back to the invisible world from whence it came.
For me, these washes of romanticism and spiritualism is a welcome break from the shock horror of contemporary medias that is fed us through technology, wave after wave of fear-driven and divisive political complexities, relentless and full on 24/7.
Who is the ghost? Completely unambiguous. Is the ghost elderly or young? What is the full narrative? It echoes long lost yearnings and bitter sweet etchings of times gone, or yet to come. Is it whimsical or tragic? As, I try to add depth and flavour into a painting…getting one’s money’s worth one could say…what I am really trying to do also is inject soul and essence, to allow an image to grow, imbue and gravitate on it’s own accord.
The narrative of these paintings cited as been seen through the eyes of ghost has a strong and haunting effect on me somehow, and are in line with personal obsessions I have been harbouring since I was a child. Such obsessions would be in the nature of what happens to the ‘soul’ or ‘essence’ upon death. Something everybody internally or externally think about. And just through the questioning nature of the literature within the narrative, the paintings change dramatically to what could be just random abstract studies of colour, texture and composition into a grand theme for me, showing also the power of an idea or a story. But as previous paintings I have done in the past could be at once seen as (and are) observances of the human condition via the sociological/philosophical/theological governances of the here and now…these paintings and the theme pulls away into unknown waters. Very much covered in art in all its formations. And it’s from some of these art forms my quietly obsessive view on the subject is also inspired by and not nearly as thickly daubed in high art language as I may have previously dabbled with.
Certain things strike a chord with people. It could be the sudden ascension and ‘lilt’ of the horns of Wagner’s ‘Siegfried’s Funeral’ or Tchaikosvky's Swan Lake’s finale. It could be the end scene of AI (Artificial Intelligence) as the robot whom wants to be a real boy finally comes home, and lays down to die as a natural human. It could be the Roy Batty scene from Bladerunner, as he sits smiling and regaling to his executioner some of the amazing things he has seen as a Nexus 4 artificial human with a four year life span as he winds down and succumbs to his expiry date. Or, haunted by imaginary or actual visitations passed off as grieved hallucinations: Heathcliffe finally gets to be reunited with his beloved Kathy in Wuthering Heights. These are some of the more notable points of ascension’s in governance to the ideas of a ghost/spirit, as opposed to the horror movie/story aspect of howling tortured dervishes, demonic and vengeful which have been taking centre stage of late. Nothing wrong with that, I love a good scary movie. But, I am principally attracted to the idea of the perspectives of the ghost as if said ghost was just an average common human with no particularly twisty exciting angle to its back story. Unambiguous, hence the paintings and the possibilities thereof. It draws ones attention to that particular person’s point in time time and place. Just as a dedicated artist/artistes may sing/play music or strive to create art through film or other mediums irrespective of trappings and hurdles about ordinary and everyday things: It’s all soul based, as whimsical as that may sound. But has a succinct and subtle power even more profound in the long run to something grandiose and bombastically operatic formatted for maximum reactions.
It allows us to forget and dispel our own immediate surroundings and smell the essences and antiquities of their own past or the themes presented before us. Nothing wrong with drifting off and gathering snatches of nostalgia or reminisces, past tense or future tense. Recognisable or ordained through the artistic endeavours of others. Painful or good. It’s still, what I would call ‘progress’. Personal betterment. To sit quiet and look at and into something. That could be a painting or a pleasing looking composition one has spotted and is drawn into, looking at and into some gnarly rooted/tree arrangements in a local park or something. Turn off the smart phone alerts, listen to an album uninterrupted with the headphones on. Gaze at an old building and imagine the stories within it. It’s all there, and will still be there no matter what we do with it.