JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY
For many of us during lockdown, our emotional focus has been on a reactionary overdrive; the daily news seems stuck on repeat, watching failures of our past revisited in our present times. It feels like humanity is experiencing a depression all in unison and on a global scale!.
Only through systemic change can an ingrained cycle of instant gratification be broken, and this is what we have to do now. The time has come for us to contemplate new ways to think, new ways to act and new ways to behave, towards each other and to protect the environment which sustains life upon the Earth.
Knowledge and understanding bring us insight in to ourselves as well as the impact we have upon our surroundings, be that the environment or personal interactions with others. Nature can flourish without us, but we can not flourish without nature, so we do need to realise and accept that we will be entering in to a new kind of normal which will take some getting used to.
Enforced change has a tendency to disrupt our usual capacity to adapt and I know many more people due to lockdown have experienced anxiety and depression for the first time, and that is a scary thing to have to deal with - especially if you are living alone. Depression and anxiety among artists has never been more widely known about, this is certainly nothing new to the art world (and many artists). Some of the greatest painters of the 20th Century have a connection through their mental health state. An unspoken dialog exists in their minds, of chasing a conversation.
Which shows through in the work they produced and in the lives they had to lead, to gain the experience required to master their craft, while striving to embrace their differences to the main stream - that appears tailored towards putting us all in a box from the cradle to the grave. Focused on others expectations and a prescribed way to do things, instead of being taken by surprise and going on a journey of discovery.
Before lockdown came along I already lived a life of seclusion, becoming isolated from my peers. Many years later I came to understand that my behaviour then was due to the suppression of past traumatic events. Which I knew left me damaged as a child, and those thoughts and feelings didn’t leave me. Even when entering adulthood. So it is very true that what happens in childhood can effect the rest of your life. In my case it left me feeling vulnerable and weak. But now I have come to the realisation that these events taking place have made me become the artist that I am today.
All those years of isolation resulted in a culmination of acquiring knowledge, understanding of the history between art and science, philosophy, ancient cultures and explorers of the natural kingdom. This brought me in to contact with the natural world for more than just pleasure. It was more about finding a place where I fit in to this world, which lead me to think how easily none of this life could have existed, through the insurmountable odds as they are! but here we are, making the best of opportunities that come along.
During long periods of my isolation, I started to realise that there were interconnecting events between all these opposing interests that I became fascinated by:
- Walking in church grounds making connection with lost life.
- Looking up to the sky to capture natural pattern above our head.
- Floating in the sea to allow the current to take me away.
- Observing the beauty captured in a frozen puddle or footprints.
- Admiring the beauty and delicacy within a flower head.
- Getting lost in a forest of trees in an unknown land.
- In awe at the creative quality of mankind on our streets.
- Seeing all the individual things that make up a wall in our homes.
Looking for the first time at the effects of Weather Impaction and Human Interaction upon the surface of our urban furniture.
Noticing an underlying cycle of events in nature which bestowed life; but also destroy life upon Earth. Not only did I find these ideas startling but I also started to develop understanding of why things appear as they do and how our eyes interact with light to create our sight. Joining the dots from past understanding to find my own version of the world we live in - as I see and interpret it.
I have had to combat many of my fears, destroyed some of my demons before they got me! and went from a feeling of worthlessness to reconnecting with my aspirations, to discover a journey through nature that underpins what it means to feel alive.
My ultimate aim is to turn negative experiences of my own, in to affective positive change for others. To reflect upon the times that we are living in and to appreciate the small things in life that combine to reveal the bigger landscape and how we fit in to it.
Personal experiences in art galleries and museums also instruct my
though processes to simplify the complexity of infrastructure in life. Observing the works at close quarters by painters like Mark Rothko, Picasso, Gerhard Richter, Howard Hodgkin, Francis Bacon, Richard Diebenkorn, Antonio Tapies, Robert Rauschenberg or even Clyfford Still (painters of the modern style). Become entangled in the things I see through my camera lens’s from the every day things around us.
This is a foundation block to looking at my Contemporary Fine Art Landscape Photography. Ideas and thoughts run deep throughout!.
Image captions: The set of photographs belong to my ‘Urban Abstractions’ series of works, which capture weather impaction and human interaction upon the surface of man made objects exposed to the elements. These photographs capture many layers of paint which have been applied over many years. This is the surface of one (of nine) pillars, belonging to the Cranfield’s Flour Mill, (on Ipswich dry dock) built 1906 and Ceased operations in 1999, each coloured layer signifies a period of time in the life of this object, The pillar is 114 years old and has its own story to tell.
The surface patina shows a real battle against the elements, with cracks and corrosion formed by the exposure to water and heat from the sun over a long period of time.
(Appeared in: Led Creative’s News Letter / June 2020).