CosmiKnot

In making a doctoral proposal there is a certain amount of casting forwards. There is a required intuition that what you chose to research will be compatible with the practical process of researching. This is not a problem for an artist who works outside of linear time but in the realm of academic research the framework is still outwardly representational. The representational world is one of cause and effect i.e. I decide to research this and I make work with the theme of my research. Art has its origins in magical thinking and doesn’t really work as an illustration of ideas. Even as an illustrator I realised that illustration works better when you don’t just illustrate the meaning of the words on the page. Perhaps this is why I am aware of the pitfalls of art becoming illustration. An artwork can have an outwardly illustrative form but this is not where the meaning resides even if the artist themselves declares that it is.  This is my first performance of Blackberries - Blood ...

In June last year I installed my Doctorate painting exhibition at UEL. I don’t like to say it was about David Bowie’s song Life on Mars, though not because it wasn’t (it was) but because I’m not sure it was “about” anything. It was more an attempt to capture some kind of essence that I felt Bowie represents. One of the things I love about Bowie from that song onwards is how he captures the meaninglessness of modern life but fills his songs with meaning. The meaning, however, is not something easy to put your finger on. It is more like a feeling of yearning and hope in the face of… well yes meaninglessness. You might think I’m being pretentious but this depth of feeling is what keeps us as humans dreaming that we can ultimately connect through creative experience. That is partially what Bowie means to me. He can be viewed as the personification of Camus’ urge to live life as fully and creatively as possible in response to the Sisyphusian struggles we all face. But let me be clear...

This is a piece I wrote in the Summer for The Modernist Magazine (Available online as the magazine has now sold out) Just to clarify my own personal experiments involve potentially futile attempts to reintroduce anecdote to Art. I see this as similar to Henri Michaux systematically ingesting mescaline in order to record the affect on his creative output. Both experiments are about questioning the sense of linear causality which has consumed our experience of creative practice. From the Renaissance onwards the acceleration of art’s alleged necessity for self-sufficiency increased until in the 20 th Century the image became autonomous and finally we had Guy de Bord’s vision of “separation perfected”. Through intuitive genius Einstein and Picasso devised ways to join things back together – E=mc2 and Les Demoiselle D’Avignon. It is significant that Picasso’s painting drew so much dark energy from cultures where separation is not present (the art object is part of life’s rit...

It’s Monday and they’re here The bluebells I mean Their timid arrival trumpeted By one final clarion call From some sheepish looking daffs Like stragglers from yesterday’s marathon The Crataegus monogyna blossom spatters Nettle leaves and ivy making Polka-dot pattern below eyeliner Stagnant millpond water wafts I’m not going to beat myself up Over rhyme and reason Just walk and observe Flinching briefly at the sight of a gnarled Pendulous snail hanging from a twig Twisted black plastic bag Doggy do doggy don’t A document of owners urge to forget Birdsong drifts through the trees Mingling with human utterances Pastel polo shirts glimpsed between branches Titleist specs upon the fairway visible If Camus had been a golfer would he have felt? More connected?