The Road to Degree Show - 4

The Shamanic Principle

"Only psychos and shamans create their own reality"
— Terence McKenna

In my dissertation I spent several thousand words discussing how the shamanic traditions in the Putamayo took fact and fiction and constructed its own reality from it. I wrote that dissertation because that was the area I was exploring in my paintings.

Specifically: I was looking at how a landscape could be painted in such a way that it confounded the viewer's ability to locate it in reality and therefore encouraged the viewer to adopt and accept a new reality. The painting could not be too realistic, nor could it be too abstract but it had to occupy that liminal space between fluid and solid. Furthermore my exploration of this lay in the use of paint - brush mark vs. smooth, colour vs. black and white, accident vs. control, surface (of the painting) vs. content of the image etc. Namely I tried to take the tensions available in the medium of paint and use them accordingly.

I believe the shamanic space I have sought to create finds its closest pop-culture comparison in the ideas of Terrence McKenna and his description of a psychedelic world. If you are not familiar with McKenna's work then I suggest you familiarise yourself with it because it is one of the fundamental building blocks of our contemporary world whether people realise it or not.

As my pieces for the degree show have been developing I decided this weekend to push the boat out and conduct a shamanic ritual before setting to work on the paintings. The aim was to throw my mind pretty far into a psychedelic perspective, furthermore I wanted to unhinge it from the systems of control and safety that I have subconsciously constructed over the span of my life.

If this is all getting a little new-agey for you hang in there. Open your mind ;). If you are finding it a bit pretentious - give me a break! I am supposed to be a boho art student.

I settled on the shortest route to achieving this state (I am sure most of you can predict where this is going) and decided to smoke some drugs. I used a herbal high blend (legally purchased over the counter) which I obtained in one of Brighton's many fine establishments. I smoked it from Ozymandis which is my crystal skull pipe (pictured above - generously gifted to me from Steve) and subsequently settled back to enjoy a subtle shift of my perspective.

In my experience the herbal highs one may purchase can be strong but tend to be very mellow. I am not sure whether this particular blend differs or whether my intention to remove some pretty deep-rooted blocks in my consciousness affected my experience, but the stuff knocked my entire mind sideways. No chilled out reflections on life for me, no, instead I get Dr Who style lacuna spots followed by rapid mind progressions and disembodiments.

I have always stated that one of my common experiences in my short and brief history of drug use has been that my perception of time changes to only include the present, the past and future becoming unavailable to me. This makes speaking in sentences very difficult as I can remember neither what I have just said nor what I was intending to say and this time was no different except in so much as it was intensified. I therefore humbly apologise to any one I spoke to that night as I imagine I talked a load of utter gibberish. In fact I distinctly remember deciding with the sober part of my brain (who remains present during these experiences but takes a kind of back seat-Woody Allen style commentary role) to talk as little as possible as I could not gaurantee any quality control over the words that came out of my mouth.

Anyway, I could go on for ever (as many have before me) about the details of my experience but I imagine for my readers that it would induce disgust for those with no experience of drug taking and boredom for those well versed in it. So suffice to say it had the desired effect and I consequently engaged in a very productive couple of days painting.

As an end note to this particular chapter I would say that I do not believe drugs to be necessary to an experience of the psychedelic and having done the ritual I do not intend to use them again in the production of my paintings for the degree show. They have served their purpose and I can return to my everyday perceptions (which are psychedelic enough as it is) having recieved a few system upgrades. At the end of the day my greatest hope is not that my paintings convey a drug taking experience but that they operate independently of that fact and bring to the viewer their own reality. Looking at my paintings as they currently stand the prognosis seems favorable - fingers crossed.

The Road to Degree Show - 3

Just back from a private view party at the New Gallery - one of the many rather defunct spaces that doesn't really know how to maximise its real estate opportunities so it does stuff like being an art gallery.

Fair enough - I do not begrudge anything that offers its walls for the encouragement of young, new art. It was a shame that the majority of the work on display was a pile of poo. Again I have nothing essentially against young artists experimenting and pushing their work out there - more power to them! But so much of what was seen on the walls of the gallery/bar/club/venue/cafe was sketchbook at best and at worst just plain bland.

Unfortunately so many of these small student gallery exhibitions go this way - you would be forgiven for asking why bother going at all? Well the secret lies in attending the exhibition specifically during the private view. In doing so it becomes not about the art on the walls (or floor or other geometric space appropriated for installation) but the private viewees.

Typically an art student private view will attract more art students. Self expression will move from the literal art canvas to the figurative canvas of the body as young people arrive at the gallery in whatever outfit or appearance is most ultimately them. We will ignore the fact that many of these looks are reproduced over and over amongst the crowd and instead applaud the individuality of the 80's glam, the casual boho, the moody poet. My personal favourite is the ecclectic trash look which basically involves taking every element of appearance from skin to shoe and trying to make it as trashy as possible.

As for my own choice of outfit - well I go for the 'tropical Ken' look or rather the kooky-older-guy-who-feels-out-of-his-element look. Am I an individual?!?

Parties are great at revealing our inner minds to ourselves. My mind is currently asking whether I have anything relevant to say in a world that, despite being not much younger, feels like lightyears away. And with degree show just around the corner what better time than now to answer that question.

So despite my cynicism and critical eye turned towards tonights private view party I say to all those who I left there chatting away with their cocktails to find your voice and care not a bit whether it is individual enough - find it and use it to shout, sing, protest, debate, praise and laugh. And may it be heard by all.

The Road to Degree Show - 2

As promised here are some images from my labours - the first giving you a sense of the scale and the second being a detail of some of the recent work done on it.

Which of course means that I have started filling my panoramic vista of white canvas with colour. In fact any colour I could get my hands on.

I figured the best way to deal with white expanses was to make them no longer white and since I was playing psychedelic music quite loudly at the time I grabbed every vibrant pulsating colour I could and threw it onto the canvas. White gone. Job done.

Or not.

Because now, instead of an expanse of intimidating white I have this seething mass of confusion in colour - great if I am playing acid jazz but not so good for my degree show. I am sure I could come up with some overly intellectual reason for it and impress anyone who looked at it with complex philosophies and concepts but it wouldn't get away from the fact that it looks like someone vomitted a rainbow onto my painting.

Therefore I find myself wrestling with this spectrum to turn into something less of a disneyland murder scene. I know there are some of you out there that may be thinking - a dinseyland murder scene? Sounds interesting. - well you can stop. I refer to it in the way that the murder scene would look after you had got rid of the bodies, environment and objects and were just left with some pore washer woman scrubbing away at watery colours.

The detail above is my attempt to reign in the chaos of colour into something coherent. I will post more as they develop.

Tomorrow I have a tutorial with my course tutor and it will be interesting to see what she thinks.

As a final note I will ask, does anyone remember those glasses you could get in the 80's that made all the lights have a spectrum sparkle around them?

The Road to Degree Show - 1

So this is it.

On May the 19th the Goldsmiths Art Practice 3rd years have to clear out their studio spaces to make way for the building of the gallery that will house their degree show.

What this means in reality is that we have 16 days left to complete whatever breathtaking works of art we will be displaying. Not a time for coasting I think you will agree. At this point you might imagine that we hall have a pretty good idea of what we will be displaying, and proabaly have progressed significantly along the process of creating these works.

This is certainly true for some, and for those students we reserve the title of 'Smug Bastard' - for the rest of us it is time for panic.

You see, over the last 3 years the art course has poked and probed our process, concepts and execution with a constant stream of critique. It is the practice of an ethos that has reduced my friends (myself included) into gibbering wrecks of incoherent art-trollop and as such we arrive at this final term, this final push, not as confident artificers of beauty but as morons with brushes.

It is in this state that I find myself gaping at the 3 x 2.2m canvas I have built and stretched and asking myself, "What the hell was I thinking?!?"

I have painted biggish canvases before, maybe 1.5 x 2 at the most, and they are a lot of white space to fill. However next to my current blank canvas they look like postage stamps and my brushes all suddenly seemed to be right size to paint miniatures.

Leaned up against the wall (it doesn't fit in my studio) it towers above my head. I have to reach upwards to paint the top third of it - when I primed it and spent so long with my arms raised high above my head that I had pains throughout my body for 3 days after. Sun salutations did not prepare me for this. At each step of making this behemoth I have found myself struggling with the physical size of it but instead of thinking, "Hold on Rick, maybe you are being over-ambitious here - it wouldn't be the first time.." I have ploughed ahead regardless. Now I find myself with 16 days left to paint this beast and its little brother (which comes in a minisized 1.9 x 2.2 m).

Actually not quite 16 days as I am in Manchester over this coming weekend and I have childcare duties the weekend after. Maybe more like 12 days.

12 days. 12 DAYS!! Aaaaargh!

The truly tragic part of this is that I actually enjoy being in this state. I get off on the rush of the last minute - I love the adrenalaine shot you get from it. It doesn't phaze me that I could be sitting calmly chatting to someone and then in the next instant scream and start to chew my own elbow. Mostly I've got the elbow chewing under control.

So, hi ho, its off to work I go. Thankfully I have plan B - which is basically to throw a load of pretty colours on it in some incomprehensible arcane marks and hope the viewing public will be so lost when trying to read it that they will assume it is brilliant beyond their ken.

Stay tuned to see if I manage to create a miracle or a pile of poo. Either way its going be pulled out of my arse.

Q-Art and Binaries

Yesterday saw the second Q-Art convenor of the season. For those unfamiliar with Q-Art or the convenor format you can check out Q-Art's website : http://www.q-artlondon.com

At art school there is the use of a teaching forum which they call a 'convenor', a derivation of the group crit. The basic format is to take a large group of students, say 30-40, and have 5-7 of them present their work to the rest of the group after which the group gets to 'critique' or respond critically to the works shown. Q-Art was created to allow this sharing of critical ideas to occur cross institutions, throwing the convenor open not just to the students of the particular college, but to all students, tutors, curators, critics, philosophers etc. In other words, anyone who wanted to come along.

It was my first time presenting at Q-Art yesterday and in my opinion the entire convenor was excellent, with plenty of engaging discussions. The piece I presented was a landscape that is nearly finished, currently untitled, and that explores further the themes that have been occupying me recently, namely the creation of a shamanic space on a canvas through the balancing of diametrically opposed elements (binaries). The people attending were sharp, informed and had plenty of engaging comments to make about the work.

There was some feedback that stood out as being areas I may need to resolve. It was debated whether or not you could see the character of the artist rather than just the hand in the work. It also became clear to me that I need a clearer definition of terms like mysticism and enchantment when I talk about my paintings. It is also evident that my approach to this line of questioning is western in nature and it would be interesting to see how responses to my work differ from culture to culture. To that end I will post weekly a piece that I would like to discuss on this blog, sometimes it will be my work and sometimes the work of other artists discussed in the light of the themes I am tackling.

My thanks go out to Sarah Rowles for organising the Q-Art event and to Central St. Martins for hosting. If you would like to offer your own comments please do so.

Poplar Avenue

My latest work can be seen in development on Flickr - check the links to the side of my blog.

I have had a lot of fun with this piece. I primarily combined my love of Van Gogh style swirls with the removal of paint from the canvas leaving parts of it blank. I was trying to achieve an effect that upsets the reality of the image allowing the viewer to engage more deeply with it becuase it defies solidity.

Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think of it.

Hey all,

After a facelift and a period of emotional instability (welcome to life as an artist Rick) I am back with renewed vigor to both my art and my blog. Updated in Flickr are some paintings done over the last couple of months and a new set showing a painting I am working on now as it goes through each stage of development. Kinda like an online sketch book.

I will be posting more on that project to talk about influences, exploration of ideas and the like shortly. For now please feel free to comment on my work so far.

RR