Images - Aaron's Notes

Moving on …

Mary Fletcher reviewed my show at Redwing and I thought I needed to reply.

I live down here, out on the raggedy edge, in Penwith — witchy and wild, beautiful and hard and a long long way from any metropolis.

Why would I try to evoke the atmospheric landscape, why would I want to wallow in expressionist, material, slippy sloppy slidey, sweeping, oily paint. It’s all too easy and all too hard — impossible. Been there. Got lost and lonely and felt the strength draining from my hand.
Sunrise can take your breath away, the thundering surf can inspire real awe, the hard undertow of riptide and granite batholith beneath your feet can unnerve you, one false step … the wind can scour and the wide skies drown you, beauty is real and terrifying, so what can I do, say, about that? And why would I want to? There’s more to life than this.

Be honest. Be simple. Be modest. How modest can you be?

I make things. Decorative panels to decorate. That’s all.
And that’s a lot. I am confident, skilled, still and hard. I know what I’m doing. I think.
And the subject matter is arbitrary. Stuff.
And not. Surreal in that it bubbles up, crystallises, makes real dream images.
Nothing, no-one is blank … we can’t pretend to be … we are moved by forces bigger, deeper than us. I deal with it, OK. I want to be blanker so I take what I’m given.
Then work.

It can be grand in terms of culture but does anyone care that the Lamassus were the guardian spirits of Mesopotamia? That Reapers are hunting them down?

What do I think about our alienation from the natural world, “real” food, “authentic” poverty? How do I react to the fetishising of weapons, to the visceral fear and hatred of the dispossessed? How do I feel about the abuse of power and the immunity of privilege?
It’s complicated.
I am furious and raging and impotent and confused … glamour is glamour, power is power, the world as it is is all we have, and we are just what we are. I want to look it all in the face … and try to understand, not lash out and condemn — I know what I believe but who am I to judge?
The English are implacably binary: if it turns you on it’s porn, if not it’s erotica. If an image of heroism doesn’t inspire, conjure up, illicit heart pounding, wide eyed pride, what’s the point. If an image of fear and despair doesn’t unnerve you, disarm you, crush you a little, what’s it for. If an image of something powerful doesn’t give you a moment of swaggering, arrogant superiority, why bother? Good drugs make you feel good, no?
I am ambivalent. Implicated. Guilty. And sad. And angry and full of joy and fear like all of us.
And busy … making images.

Banksy does what Banksy does and does it brilliantly but I have no interest in easy scores, in polemic, lectures, stand-up … one-liners. All I ask, I suppose, is that you stop.
Stop and think. Question. Pause.

Every minute you spend with a painting, a work of art, is a minute you are not being bought, sold to, exploited, working for someone else … it’s a minute for you, your time. So precious.

And so I’m drawing like crazy. Searching for a theme, a guiding star.

I’m so unsure that I need a head of steam, can I do it, is there enough, does it make sense, is it strong and true, does anyone care? And so … getting there.

So the plan is … a sketch a day … a theme will emerge. Ideas are already accreting: Doing, Women … we’ll see.

And then … today … I didn’t get to finish anything.

Except this …

Social Disease

Andy Warhol had “social disease” — he’d go to the opening of a toilet seat.

Me too.

Still haven’t quite come down. Been busy making prints and renovating my fixer-upper website but still grooving on the amazing support and encouragement from all our friends last week.

I’ve only just noticed that everyone kept their coats on — it was that cold? And people are reading?

Thanks N … it was lovely.

Life is too short

But it isn’t … and if we don’t do this shit it will be even more impoverished.

Finally forced my way through the shitty waves and made it out to sea, put up a perfunctory gallery of pics from my Redwing show last week.

It’s not as though there aren’t more important things that I should be doing: like doing what I can to help our PPC Alana Bates and the whole fucking Labour Party win a fucking election.

Like supporting NCB and doing something to keep our home in one piece.

But life goes on.

And if you couldn’t come, you can get a feel for what it was like.

I had visions of a bit of any easy time once this was over.
7 hours a day, 7 days a week for 7 months has a sort of biblical ring to it and I was looking forward to a secular sabbath. Ho hum.

Now I need to make the prints and try to get some decent archive pics of the paintings … and then set to again.

Enjoy.

What’s it all about …

Words, words, words.

Not comfortable with them. Don’t trust them.
That’s why I paint.
If you want to win an argument, if you want to change someone’s mind, if you want to change the world, you need words. I’m sure of that. And I stumble and forget and get confused but when I paint … it flows.

Art, music, a painting never changed anything. Never changed anyone’s mind.
The greatest paintings, individually, they’re 4 minute pop songs. With all the triviality of that and, sometimes all the deep connections and lingering emotional charge and potential of that. We hope.
But they can grab you for those 4 minutes. For those 4 minutes you’re not alone. We can commune. Us. Share. Dance together in our imagination.

And at my opening on Friday people kept asking questions … derr … of course you did … I would.

And so …

Take my piece: The Adoration of the Golden Calf.

I started with the “civil” war in Syria.
Guilt and shame tearing at me.
And I look to Nicholas Poussin’s painting.

Because it’s embedded in my cultural world.
Because it’s in “the canon” — so it’s embedded in others’ worlds too.
Because it’s shared in our stories, the stories that still, almost, bind us together.
Because, when I started on it, we were “commemorating” the end of the First World War.
And because it was Aaron what done it. Fucked up. But he still got to lead us to the promised land. How does that work? It was a little bit personal.

OK, so we need an altar, a plinth. And I take Edwin Lutyens’ cenotaph on Whitehall. An empty tomb (a kenotaphion).

And then I need Wilfred Owen’s poem, written during the first world war, quoting Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and right to die for one’s country), yeah, right, whatever. English lessons at an English school. So it goes on the plinth.

And then we need a golden calf. And so I take Arturo Di Modica’s tacky and revolting Charging Bull from Wall Street as an appropriate stand in. What drives this sort of international politics after all? Money … wars.

And we need a place for it all to be and so I steal the mountainous landscape from Poussin’s own painting.

And in the sky, tracer fire over Damascus.

And I put it all together and make a drawing. Lots of drawings.

And do you need to know this shit? No.
But does it help? Maybe. Maybe it always did. It did then, in the 17th century.
And maybe we shouldn’t forget the way our culture grew and consumed and subsumed new ones and can now welcome new stories and bind us all together in a shared dreaming.

Making it real

Getting it right …

Hmmm … it’s just not good enough. Doesn’t come close.

Going to have to put some serious thought into how to properly photograph my paintings.
Their dynamic range, gamut, whatever it’s called, is too wide to grasp with my DSLR. We do have a big white gazebo‑y, tent‑y thing that might do as a giant lightbox in lieu of monster strobes. But that’s going to have to wait for the rain to stop so … who knows … it is entirely possible that there might be a dry day next year … some time.

I’ve tried to put up some pics on Facebook and Instagram as well but I’m not sure how well they work and as these things take anywhere between 2 and 6 weeks to paint, they’re not exactly going to be frequent posts.

It’s weird: social media totally baffles me. It’s not that I’m anti-social, don’t want to share … don’t get me wrong — after all: it’s what I do all day.

Maybe I’m just more comfortable monologuing like a psychopath in a third rate super hero movie. Or communing, wordlessly like a shaman.
Or that once I’m done, I’m done in. Nothing much left to say.

Strangely, in the past couple of weeks I have heard two singers talking about how important it is to take your instructions from the outside.
One of whom was a shaman from the Amazon talking about the importance of performing the ritual absolutely correctly or the gods would be displeased and punish him.
And the other was a great Sufi singer who said that, when you get it right, you do not sing, you are sung. I loved that: by the song, by god, the universe, whatever.

And I’ve always been very uncomfortable about traditional crafts being shown as “Art”. Masks and statues and fetishes. Their making so often absolutely precludes self-expression of any sort — the god cannot come and inhabit the form if it is not exactly right. It is almost the opposite of what we usually mean by “Art”.

The weird thing that happens when I’m painting, so close I can’t see the image, often upside down, so I can’t see what I’m doing, is that the line seems to draw the brush, not the other way round.
It’s not when you step back and see that it’s right, it feels right as it moves, as it heads off wherever it wants to go. And the fear goes and the doubt and you trust … believe. Or not.
And I love to paint them so much because vectors and Bézier curves on the computer, rock and flex and rotate so elegantly but they have no intention, no destination, no purpose, no reason, no meaning.

The feeling of being sung is beautiful indeed.

Show Time

Back in the saddle after quite some time …

Showing my new work, Flatforms, at the Redwing Gallery in Penzance.

Had a wonderful Opening on Friday … lovely to see so many people.

Ray Gun and Sphinx — It all began with Raygun and Sphinx

Must particularly thank Harry and Irene, Simon and Gillian, Steve and, of course, Nicole for so much help and support. Could not have done it at all without you all.

Show’s on till Thursday.

If you can make it, do pop in.

And it’s all for sale.

A new experience for me to see it all up together.

And to answer questions and hear what people think.

So my studio’s empty … house isn’t big enough … and I’m almost as good as I hoped … and I just said that out loud.

A gallery full of “bobby dazzlers” as my Dad used to call them.

Sheesh … that’s a lot of work.

And still so much to do.

So … watch this space

No More Heroes

Anymore …

Whatever happened to all of our heroes … ?

All our Shakespearoes?

Buggered if I know.

We required them to be too pure perhaps, we grew up a bit too much perhaps … but then, perhaps, wisdom is not all it’s cracked up to be?

My tribe tell me that it matters who the the next “leader” is, Prime Minister is — this sclerotic absurd farce of an election for a tory leader … Rory’s our sort of toff shit.

I’m sorry. Seriously. Like I should give a shit?

I know I risk sounding like an old fart who doesn’t appreciate contemporary pop music or something, and I don’t much it’s true, but … seriously …

These people built our world.

Problematic … well, derr … but they had vision … and they got shit done.

Compromised and very not PC and not terribly pro Europe either for that matter but practical and focussed and hard-working and brave and unimaginably strong … heroes basically

… sorry.

An arsehole and shitholes

A syncretic little troll-like fetish standing in for a real human being — apparently articulating fears and frustrations but actually a tacky bit of posable plastic shit pedalled as a panacea, masquerading as myth — all impotent roar and fury signifying, doing, nothing … to change anything.
It’s there to prop up and perpetuate the staus quo — a silent but deadly war on the rest of us, robbing us, poisoning our dreams and our world … actually killing us.

Fuck off back to whatever shithole you came from — I don’t mean the US, more the imaginary aryan nation of daddy’s German American Bund — you aren’t welcome here.
After all, I hail from, officially, the mental health shithole of this country — let’s hear it for Stockport and shitholes everywhere!

The sad and frightening thing is that this crappy Trulk might just as well be the raging Id of our own national psyche too.

Beltane Fire

Just the second BBQ of the year but on a very special evening as Spring turns to Summer. Clearing away a shed load of the detritus from the old year.

Spring lamb Kebabs to die for … a glorious feast culturally appropriated from the wide fertile crescent and cooked on an American BBQ in a Cornish field … whatever … it was nommy.

With the stars above our heads, in a beautiful clear sky, and the earth beneath our feet, faces burning in the heat of the flames and the wind in our hair … and, very much, life bursting, bustling, snuffling all around us.

We even carefully, hurriedly, anxiously, carried the burning embers inside to rekindle our home fire … and it caught.

Moving on.

RGB

Red

Green

Blue

In more ways than one.