2009 A fathers advice

A fathers advice

xxxx

As I write this you are still young.

It's 1.12. 2009 - so I haven't given this to you yet - and I won't until the time is right.

I am stereotyping a lot below I know ... but sometimes clichéd archetypes and the like are so because they have become so real and embedded ... So here goes ...

Remember that 'Sentiment' not sentimentality is an integral quality for any sensitive being to own or to feel. It is a feeling we grow into more comfortably as we age.

The concept of sentiment and realisation is a way of absorbing the myriad of emotional experiences we encounter. A way of accepting, calibrating  or understanding these encounters with evolving perspective and empathy ... and 'realising' or sensing that ones growth, in itself, becomes an emotive thing.

As we grow we actually become more tuned to the importance or resonance of life, of our relationships and of the surprises. When young we are still largely absorbing new encounters - processing them. This takes time. As we age we become more attuned to the richness of our own selves, our impacts with others - and our ecologies. 

Sentimentality as a coating, used by the media, bad films , bad poems, bad songs, a sugar coating, can demean real sentiment and insight - and dilute that which is truly worthy of our emotion and feeling.

Sentiment and sincerity are, I believe, still noble values to own in our vain, cynical and Political society - we should strive to embrace the unfashionable openness of true sentiment and sincere feeling - much much more as individuals and collectively  - celebrate love and the support and appreciation of others -an 'optimism' for the possibilities for ourselves and others.

Yet, don't be too trusting - walk away when you see indifference, envy and jealousy in others - self entitlement too - defensive insecure traits which are out there in force - sadly embedded in many people. The only time you don’t walk away from these people is if they are in your care as students or very valued friends or close family - and then you must be often very very patient.

To hold such ideals is far from soft or innocent - a slant remark often directed at the term Romanticism by cynics. Such connection and cultural awareness to your roots enables a self confidence to be open and candid - we develop a verbal appreciation for the ecologies we encounter and inhabit. It also shows belief in the power of intuition, chance, risk and change.

The movement was rooted in the German ‘Sturm und Drang’ romantisicm movement an earthy instinctive outdoor northern european tradition -  rather than the more pretty Victorian traditions of beauty. Emily Bronte felt it. 

Do study Northern European Romanticism. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, the social sciences, and the natural sciences - the dissenting works of Blake, Goethe, Casper David Friedrich, Goya,  - poets from Novalis to Burns to Bronte- the Irish Celt Seamus Heaney, to Plath and Hughes.

Good will and adventure is always rewarded - not least the reward of you knowing one has tried - so always do try to maintain a faith in youthful Political resistance and idealism as and when you grow worn down by the system - which you will. Overcome this cynicism and recall your ideals and beliefs once again. Inspire others.

Fight to dismiss the dangers of repression and of all heavy handed authority and control.

The 'otherness' of an independent random thinking mind does not always gel with the polar opposite of the tidy logical mind - and history is littered with these conflicts ( read Tess by Hardy, Jane Eyre, 'Mutiny on the bounty' and Beau Geste etc).

Yet ultimately the world is better for this flux and friction - the yin and yang ... and such evaluation or conflict helps define who we all are, in our own minds, and what we choose to then be and do.

And I for one, would certainly want a skilled straight logical mind steering all our sons and daughters carriages and aircraft safely home on late stormy nights or that same sort of surgeons mind mending my back with a butchers blade or scalpel .

So as well as being frustrated by the straight  minded and their logical, clinical efficiency, embrace them whole heartedly in workplaces - for we need each other societally and then with mutual respect great duets can often happen.

The jetsam and flotsam of the creative lateral mind is the rebel and artist in history - that required 'opposition' the questioning voice - there are no 'black and white' approaches - mainly because there are so many possible and engaging grey angles to view life and people from - one of which may be to leave things be. To step back. You cannot solve everyone. Look after your self more sometimes too !

Do seek out change and challenge - it can bring reward for the young adventurer and adventuress - but know when to slow down - settle in, sit back and relax - even if that is a difficult thing - but self inventory, reflection and evaluation are important for you in the longer run - even if it hurts - be strong - this may often be for whole years. It's all ok. You'll be better for it.

J.G.Ballard said; '' I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul (but eventually however he grew to understand that this was not his battle - and he too settled in). Which was very ok for him by that stage.

We dig up and brush up our archeological discoveries - our roots and past, in order to understand it but also to reinvent it - to educate ourselves and others and to recycle it forwards into the present and the future

History and awareness of the past - of the 'self' and our sociology is not navel gazing or a soppy nostalgia - it is rather what all our futures are built upon and around ie - our ancestral heritage and our 'anthropology ' - ancestors are all present within us - in a kind of holistic shared genetic evolution - all of us being in the now. A soul or 'mortal coil' that we carry forward and are lucky to inhabit for our mortal time here on earth.

Try to remember and action some of this but never hark back for me, nor for the past, for it is has gone for a reason and the reason is your current 'now' - so seek to embrace that and smile back at me as at an old wise companion. ( or dog xxx :)

Don’t let my ageing or passing be a sad thing to you.

Live your life to its safe limits - but carefully, in no rush. Don't give yourself away to those who are not loving. Don't seek attention nor approval from others, nor onlookers. Be confident in who you are and proud of that.

Plan a little, but live in the present as much as you can. Don't chase material things you don’t need.

Gently embrace your past as part of you as you age ... keep it close to hand too for moments of reflection and self awareness, for research, and for pleasure but never have regrets.

Without your mistakes you cannot become as self aware and compassionate as you will now become.

If we are creative in our lives then we contribute - be it with a letter, a poem or a painting, a charitable act or incredibly by producing and raising a daughter (or son).

I am proud of this act - forgive and forget those spaces between us sometimes - they just brought us closer together. I am so very proud of you all. So just as the Poem, Song and the Painting lives on - so too the child grows to carry DNA onwards and forwards into future times (genuine time travel).

Me, annoyingly :) faults and all, in there with you, kind of thing .....that molecular DNA we own doesn't actually ever stop travelling forwards. (or sideways through time :)

We soften as we age - soften to the acceptance of our part. This greater empathy and acceptance allows strong and considerate awareness and perception and hopefully greater care and teaching on our part - and a greater degree of altruism too.

We also rise to the challenge as we age of a collective importance , and the importance of empowering others with our own experiences and infusing others with their own self confidence .... to go on and discover their own traits, loves and makings .... and to also fight the ignorance of racism, sexism, insularity, tyranny, false authority, chauvinism, and the unfortunate malaise of 'controlling' others. Never allow yourself to be controlled by controlling Men or Women. Seek to settle it personally first but then walk away if it fails.

In love - a mutual wearing of pants is the best way. A fluidity of Alpha & Beta where and when appropriate. Give out masculine and feminine qualities. Apologise more than you do now to those who matter - those you respect at work or care deeply about. Aim for real integrity - loyalty - don't 'people please' - don't try to appease unworthy people. Far better to say nothing - avoid conflict and walk your own away. You will be respected for this - by your self. Be your self and be sincere.

There is plenty of time to do many things, so dont get anxious or stressed about time scales or feel restricted  - or about ageing. Relax about the illusion of stress - it is self inflicted - insist on rest - but always see a specialist in cognitive therapy if you ever must - it is important, but be discreet, you may be judged by some.

Step back into natural habitats when you need peace - try to always visit and live there for good periods - to absorb it and be part of Nature - be with trees and bird song, pets - sea, hills and sky and do this when you have grown wise and tired of the commercial and capitalist wall that Man has built between you and our fragile ecology. Read a good book about Biophilia (Wilson) and go Jump over the wall again ( do it in your favourite shoes, pants and dress if you like - but Jump the wall ) like you always did into the fields.

Remember I am always here with you - even if I am past (it) :) 

love xxxx

09/10/2015 Interview :Page Views 170,345

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Emigre - Upon the Greenfields - Snod Hill : A saga

Post Published 09/10/2015 - 

Radio & Podcast Interview- and email transcript for exhibition in aid of Unicef

100% of sales proceeds went to UNICEF 

Interview

The following texts are the transcipt extracts of an interview on drawing for the 'in aid of' unicef displacement exhibition. All 100% exhibition sales raised funds for displaced unaccompanied refugee children in Europe.

Q: 

You stated earlier that when you draw ''There is usually a confluence of emotive contexts that entangle and evolve as you work through the drawing''  ... What do you mean by that exactly ? 

MM: Well, at other times, when walking, driving or teaching and not drawing daily - then I am still thinking about that space. Obviously some places and previous encounters we experience in our early lives are very intensive and fix an impression - it may be beauty or loss - they hold you both with the same grip very often - and they can become preserved in the mind. A sort of Cryogenic memory I call it - that I can somehow defrost and re-enter that space. It is a canning of events (canonising even) like a special 'reserve'. I can go to it and take the lid off and observe. I get involved and stir it and try to engage with that sense of place or persons in the present. It is intuitive but it is difficult work. Though rooted in constant themes, these types of drawings are never that pre-planned, so the result is usually a surprise. Like all new things they are an amalgam - the sum of many parts. I dont have an audience in mind when I work. They are a form of exploration. I can't release them as songs on albums - or put them into complex dance routines so ..... they are drawn out.

Dissonance and Consonance in music is crucially important to its depth and emotion - Bartok or Shostakovichs strings or Hendrix. Dissonant 'tonal' notes are much more accepted than abstract dissonance in visual language. The Painter has to get used to this critique very early on in a good Art school - get used to being questioned and analysed on what their images mean and represent ? Artists are expected to offer up intellectual conceptual answers -  and yet with Music it seems less so - Miles Davis improvisational compositions like 'In a Silent Way' or Billy Holiday's vocal 'Scatting' ? It is Pure sound and sound alone - from the heart - Soul - Blues etc - this improvisation and dissonance deeply belongs in musicality - and quite right too. Just as it does in the visual language of Goya, Van Gogh, Khalo, Munch, Rothko, Klee etc.

Making pictures is quite a primitive act if you think about it - a cave like primary experience, simple and direct - hand stick paper etc - and yet it conjures up many complex connections that thread into all sorts of past and future contexts. An Artist envisages these multiple contexts - historical – imagined, factual, poetic, subversive etc – and attempts to capture them. Artists look in and look out - addressing many tough subjects directly and head on - eye to eye. Subjects that other less humanitarian Professions cannot. It is no light task externalising authentic feelings - brave to be - seeking this stuff out - to trap ethereal nuances via any instrument - the vocal chord or a crude lead pencil or a rag - it can seem a crude process. Yet in our 'removed' technologically flawed age - it is very natural and fluid thing - a beautiful thing. 

William Blake or the medieval composer Hildegard Von Bingen's astounding results are a prime example of how the human mind channels the sublime into images and sound - into non textual language. So, yes it is a back to front process in many ways - and yet when this connection works then it is a true act of creative distillation. Once any composition, music, poem, drawing etc is materialised then we have brought actual physical evidence of this subliminal convergence into existence - good or bad - so it is 'spooky' (Einstein) yet also natural ('spooky action at a distance' is of course Einsteins famous theory ).  

evocation notes: 10. 4. 2015

Connectivity between the past, the present and somewhere else. 

This is common for many creative people. For me there are often ghosts 'at table' when I engage and compose these images and texts. Loved ones don’t go away, so the dead are often present and so it can be a complex emotive process to be involved in – evocation, it’s not light material (laughs) however it isn't melancholic - it once was, but not so now - it is much more accepted and understood – more emotionally mature.

a slow process 

"adagio non tanto"  slow, but not so much - or not too much

Interview; The following texts are the transcipt extracts of an interview on drawing for the 'in aid of' unicef displacement exhibition. All 100% exhibition sales raised funds for displaced unaccompanied refugee children in Europe.

Post 23:  Published on 09/10/2015 

  

“It’s wot’s behind me that I am… And wot a lot there is''  

Question: Do you try to create imagined worlds in your work ?

Articulating any creative practice in words is never easy and yet we have to discuss it because it is such a deep and fascinating practice. I find it easier to talk about other peoples work and discuss my students work than my own output. Yet I am fascinated by the creative process which is why I love teaching this subject so much - so yes, I will happily talk about visual language and my inspirations for drawing but I will do it with my Academic hat on as that will help me be more objective. I think Cocteau was right when he said "Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture." 

To try to answer that question. 'Do I try to create imagined worlds? I'd say no, not as such. For me, imagined worlds has certain connotations of being escapist, or 'made up' and that’s not what drawing is about for me. I think it is about engaging rather than escaping – but yes I suppose I do propose alternative realities - they are analogies and by their very nature they become quite real as material things once they exist in the world - once they are formed as it were - the drawing is the first visible materialisation of the thought - so they are not 'imaginary' but 'real' for me beyond invention. Analogy enables a slight distance from the personal nerve of things and allows more scope for irreverence and celebration - for conflated thought. Analogy and metaphor enable a  deflection from the nerve, away from the literal or over sentimental - some theatre to frame what Pinter called Shakespeare’s 'wound'.

Good writers use analogy well and avoid being too close or too self-referential with too sticky a subject - it can be like glue and cling too much. I try to avoid sentimentality but I won't shy away from authentic sentiment which is different. The emigre drawings and migrant themed work in aid of unicef referenced universal families and their loss, the post-traumatic stress - how families are separated by loss and estrangement - be they migrant, emigrant, emigre or indigenous ( and this sense of displacement - this estrangement of people in society, children, families - is very close - it is known by many of us quietly).

I was fortunate to work alongside the United Nations and Unicef and I realised then how it gave my own visual practice a socially shared context to inhabit. In other words we are not alone in the emotions we experience and although it is our own knowledge and is unique - it is also shared - and it is known or felt (by others) - even if not talked about openly by us or them - so the work you make is not introspective - not just another navigation of the self - the work can also be communicative and be understood by others, quietly, internally. 

Drawing of course expresses thoughts and feelings too like any voice or instrument - a conduit -  a scientific and visual instrument - a way of mapping feeling and expressing strengths and vulnerabilities. A good quote from Larkin said something akin to this; 

''You must realise I’ve never had ‘ideas’ about poetry. To me it’s always been a personal, almost physical release or solution to a complex pressure of needs—wanting to create, to justify, to praise, to explain, to externalise, depending on the circumstances.”  P.Larkin

The drawings I make are often quite irreverent or non-compliant toward institutions that restrict people’s freedoms - one of those institutions for me personally goes beyond physical borders and is the general law or restriction of Linear Time ( laughs). So I like to explore this sense of past and present and merge it on one plain.  

''Every man or woman is not only him or herself ; for he or she is also the unique particular, always significant and remarkable point where the phenomena of the world intersect once and for all - and never again.''  

Hermann Hesse 1958

Some of us make our most interesting work when we are on the edge of something awkward - when the heart is up and there is something 'the matter' - an atmosphere going on inside the chest not just the head  - otherwise it can become too calculated, too logical, self-conscious and faux - or what ever you wish to call it. Too deliberate. It becomes designed. I think it's far better to be working laterally, off centre - working by heart, ....half knowing and half in the dark. I don't think you can teach it  - some people are spontaneous and trust their own intuition while others cant. Obviously as a teacher I encourage it in people. It is clearly not an appropriate efficent approach for a Surgeon or Civil Servant but for any Artist or performer who wants to interpret feeling or investigate the edges of things like a good scientist - then yes. 

The mind must also edit the 'whole' in order for us to survive the barrage that our senses endure. The common comparison of the human mind to a computer is misleading. It is far from just a processing device - nor is the heart just a pump. We know very little of the mind, especially the complexity of the brains binding factor and the hippo campus. It is of course mapped out to a point by MRI scans and the microscope but that is a technical biological insight. Neurologists do not know if the mind 'records' everything. We still have no hard proof of where memory is stored in the hippo campus. 

Jorge Luis Borges said ‘Poetry springs from something deeper; beyond intelligence’ – and he’s not wrong. Analysis can kill the very nature of intuition - of what comes naturally or intuitively. The best drawings I have seen by others or that I may have made myself are often spontaneous with no initial harsh design intention - there is thought and context but no serious pre meditation or planning at the outset. This approach is usually a confluence of contexts that 'entangle' and evolve as one works the drawing toward an ending. I wont really seek to mend or adjust it afterwards for example. It just gets saved or it does not. 

''I think on some level, you do your best things when you're a little off-balance, a little scared. You've got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.'' W.Dafoe

“It’s wot’s behind me that I am… And wot a lot there is''  

“It’s wot’s behind me that I am… And wot a lot there is''  

Indigenous & Migrations - neanderthal and human drawings

Emigre - Bronte cosmos - ardennes 44 - 77

Atavistic : When this was drawn you could still eat Golden Wonder, struggle in the back of a Simca and harbour a grudge. Woodpecker with animal life (for Isobel Riley)

Mill Town Elegy 
(extract from Greenfield Fayre) 

For us there then,

The flagged alley held
Warm embrace. 

Timeless in our youth. 

And such it seemed that 

The whole firmament 

Slid by oblivious 

To our future state. 

A heaven to taste as 

Palettes mature.

Künstlerroman - our roots - our biographies - mythologies 

“It’s wot’s behind me that I am… And wot a lot there is'' George Herriman - personal experience plus genetic memory ?

I grew up amidst semi rural / urban natural history - pictured above - we had Red Admirals the size of bats and Cuckoo Spit everywhere in June – and also lots of Skinheads – a 20th century Bronte malevolence ... and so it goes – and so we soak it up - the life and death, in sickness and in health, the ‘Birds and the Bees’, the Pond life. Early years are a different biological stage where the mind absorbs information and sensations at a far higher rate than in maturity. It is a real space that we all know – and one we all inhabit and revisit. It was a volatile but creative period in the North socially and politically – so that vital sense of place stays with you and if you are creative then it becomes a sort of seedbed, a heartland that your future stance and belief system grows from, Politically and Creatively (like the German concept of Künstlerroman).  

T.S Eliot was clearly inspired by the Poet Novalis when he wrote ''We shall not cease from exploration - And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started - And know the place for the first time'' (T.S Eliot from Four Quartets)  

Anthropologically the narrative belief system that we are just visiting in Earthly form - from another 'home' is an ancient worldwide custom, Native American, Gypsy, Greek, Norse, Roman - all 'seeking' and going home', be it toward an honourable afterlife or indeed home in life' if you are lucky - a form of Nirvana or Elysium. There is some of that going on in my work –mirroring psychological states - a re-aligning of things, an investigation. It is a journey, maybe full circle ? Not unlike the Salmon.

I don’t think re evaluating or re-imagining the past in the present is a retardation of growth - stuck in the past or 'passéiste' as Jean Paul Sartre wrote of his friend Jean Genet. No, I think It is quite the opposite in this context. If you are addressing matter then it is creating new knowledge - so it cannot be 'passéiste' when it is current active primary research. ''The future is in the instant'' - as it were and vice versa is a great Shakespeare quote that I cant recall. *(from Macbeth) 

It is reported that 'if memory is recorded in the genetic material and stably inherited through cell division (mitosis or meiosis), it becomes glued as genetic memory. So genetic memory is a memory present at birth that exists in the absence of sensory experience, and is incorporated into the genome over long spans of time'. 

That is the current understanding, however this suspicion we have of its depths will evolve greatly over time, I suspect, and we will be surprised at just how deeply we are influenced by our unique genetic drives & histories.

We have all felt this atavistic animal instinct  - one recognises instantly that there is a depth to what you are doing, seeing and feeling - what you are experiencing. It is that atavistic resonance that lets you know there is a connection to a place or a person - there is something unknown but likewise very familiar. A sense of de ja vu - love at first sight.

Rachel & Deckard reunited on the hill 

I say to students that reading, research, earths history and ones own history -  is for me, like applying a stick to a bicycle wheel as it spins, you interact with it - and you get a humming sound back, and that vibration is akin to gravitational waves coming back at you. A voice to react to -  stimulation to ignite deeper matters. 

For me, at this mid stage I think I am very lucky, it is a perceptive trip, very sensorial and immersive, it is an interactive, special, 'going down with the sun' type of space for me. Mythological and real all at the same time – an active place - a subject of both present and future. Not frozen or stuck. The engine is running. 

This way of working is intuitive and about personal expression as opposed to commissioned design and It often involves rewinding or pausing my own time machine and being on the edge of something - another plain or threshold - and that place has a lot of resonance for me - as if the machinery is humming away waiting patiently for me to finish the drawing. Without that kind of magic I would give it up tomorrow. I can observe and go in and get a drawing - a souvenir. This freedom to defy *Dollos Law and travel across or inside phenomenological time periods is liberating. 

*According to Dollows Law ''an organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors.”

However, there are a many documented cases of 'Atavism' beyond the obvious like Dewclaws or vestigial tails etc. These atavisms have evidenced that evolutionarily traits that have disappeared phenotypically do not necessarily disappear from an organism's DNA. The gene sequence remains but is dormant. The unused gene may remain deep in the genome for many generations. As long as the gene remains intact then stimulation from triggers in the genetic control suppressing the gene can lead to it being reignited and newly expressed. Therefore this re-ignition of a dormant gene can be applied beyond darwinian morphology to thought and behaviour - I am talking about our phenomenological brain sequences that sit within the particles of our genetic dna (ancestral memory, racial memory -  experience - feelings that can influence an individuals thoughts or actions. The correct sequence of triggers enable this deep conflated connectivity.

There are times I do prefer the drawing to take a back seat - because it can take over - but you must accept it and exercise it. If you give it a run out once a day - stretch its legs - then it will settle down by the hearth and let you get on with the other things. If I didnt teach then I dont believe I could have sustained my own work in a vacuum. Teaching enables a constant recipricol communal evaluation - discussion frames things and gives it purpose beyond the selfish act  - yes it's very sustaining and 'Humanities' students are a pleasure to work with - so it's not work really - its a warm receptive space. Precious.

 Laburnum Symphony ; Conducted by Greenfield Man ; Mills & Marigolds 

On drawing _ as I get older I mix my love for life with reflective themes. This merging of the two reveals how the celebratory also becomes the language of loss and vice versa - so it can be a multiplicitous poly visual narrative with more than one occurring theme and with varying degrees of synergy - from the sanguine to the joyful etc. George Herriman did that effortlessly with Krazy Kat and of course Guston did too. It is a very high bar. 

These are of course my own perceptions – but interesting coincidences occur for me whilst making work and go beyond my own rational day to day understanding. Despite intrepid neurological science we simply don't know as yet how the brain truly manifests consciousness. It is something that current science has yet to fathom. Diagnostic research on known phenomenas such as remote viewing or ESP etc has been intensive for years. Much of these observable phenomena are claimed by traditional science to be neurological 'pattern recognition' - or at worst as quackery - and yet perhaps it is not Twilight Zone oddity but something untapped and very capable and natural to our perceptive ability and thus atypically very 'humanist' - and ontological 'of the human' - of the 'human condition' ? 

The Scottish Lady who can detect Parkinsons disease even on undiagnosed patients via her sense of smell, is a very real and recent example of extraordinary perception. The late Dr Oliver Sachs work and his books are evidence of other beautiful rarities. There is also an excellent research duo, both Psychologists, working at Leeds Becket University on how the mind and brain perceive the material and immaterial. Extra sensory perception has been used by the establishment in many instances with success - it is not widely accepted nor reported for it is something science nor academia have empirically equated. 


We are spellbound when we read Shakespeare, Ursula Le Guin, Joyce, Plath, Hughes, Carter or Pinter or look at a William Blake, Goya or Francis Bacon painting because they generated a sublime mythic connectivity and captured the poetics of life in an almost cryogenic freeze frame - the extraction and distillation of the Sublime and the Mythic - and through this Lens we see not only the Human and the Earthly Condition - but also the possibilities of our wider Ontology, the unknown or 'Super nature'. It is an ephemeral timescale that we have on Earth – we don't get long to work it out, all the universal Shakespearean content, trials and reward, the metaphysics of the human condition.

For me it feels negligent not to look hard at all of that matter face on, eye to eye. I can only do that through the Lens of my own experience. It is not for me to presume or visualise other people’s experiences. Ultimately much human creative investigation and expression is, I suspect, allusive of our material mortality and an inquisitive emphasis on how we live - a focus on 'being' here. 

George Bataille said something along the lines of 'There is no better way to know 'mortality' or death than to link it with a powerful image'. Creating an alter-icon - a Tulpa or Golem who is present 'at table'. An active accepted protagonist. Framing an awareness of life and death - acknowledgment and acceptance in life - befriending it rather than denying it  - denial is  an act which creates 'negation' or 'acting' out - via displacement activity - when really trauma needs to be processed and accepted over time.

I think the concept of our human mortality, our mortal caducity is something many of us learnt early as Children. That lesson and awareness matters in my work. I make things to explore or preserve that kind of matter, to perhaps once placate or re-balance some sort of loss or 'lack' (Lacan) - and to evidence that it mattered then and that things alter but still matter now (Not unlike the archetypal initials carved into a tree. Recorded crudely and then left out to be weathered by time and the elements). So .... ''Yes ! '' Lacan or Derrida would say ''Yes dear Mack yes, that is it ! - that is indeed what is the matter - indeed the vibrant matter with you''. 

I say what is 'Matter' exactly ? Well we are all made up of stars, Carbon, H20, amino acids etc. It goes beyond interesting! (Laughs). 

So yes, it is ultimately about engaging with this matter positively and not shying away into escapism and displacement activity. In Particle Physics the theory of 'quantum entanglement' is complex  - but I grasp the notion of two or more points in separate spheres being in contact with one another remotely or instantaneously - the lack of a 'threshold' - where a conventional notion of 'time' and distance falls away. A point where the ever present and the very faraway converge and manifest a thought or an action. Very like how osmosis occurs. It occurs in the conscious human mind all the time and happens when we think deeply or dream and when we engage in this type of creativity. Coleridge famously wrote the epic poem saga Kubla Khan more or less in his sleep after dreaming the whole tale (granted via Laudanum /Opium). There are obviously many many more sober examples. Songs Paintings Novellas Poetry etc. So a Humanist would celebrate all of this - as well as the mystic or shaman. 

Painting from Survivors Emigre series 'The Sagas Of Families - MIGRATIONS - families often now scattered 

"Wir pflügen und wir streuen"  




Question: 

You stated earlier that when you draw ''There is usually a confluence of emotive contexts that entangle and evolve as I work through the drawing''  ... What do you mean by that exactly ? 

MM: Well, at other times, when walking, driving or teaching and not drawing daily - then I am still thinking about that space. Obviously some places and previous encounters we experience in our early lives are very intensive and fix an impression - it may be beauty or loss - they hold you both with the same grip very often - and they can become preserved in the mind. A sort of Cryogenic memory I call it - that I can somehow defrost and re-enter that space. It is a canning of events (canonising even) like a special 'reserve'. I can go to it and take the lid off and observe. I get involved and stir it and try to engage with that sense of place or persons in the present. It is intuitive but it is difficult work. Though rooted in constant themes, these types of drawings are never that pre-planned, so the result is usually a surprise. Like all new things they are an amalgam - the sum of many parts. I dont have an audience in mind when I work. They are a form of exploration. I can't release them as songs on albums - or put them into complex dance routines so ..... they are drawn out.


Ongoing 'Migrations' drawing Palimpsest series ; migration across doggerland, across europe , migrations from Star Carr to Snod Hill - from the south then to the north -

Greece Landings / 'Rescue' - amalgam coastal drawing with Marley Tip and Leashaw Reservoir (drawn in aid of Unicef for the displaced childrren exhibition) where we raised modest sums for support - this is an ongiong annual event where works raise awareeness and funds for a variety of children and families.  






Question; Are you measuring something when you draw ?

No, I think measurement is too logical an act to describe it - weighing maybe and joining up - constellations and things like that ?  To 'measure’ is a quantitive thought really, made after or before the physical act so .... no, I'd rather say its seeking or feeling something out - ingredients coming together. Louise Bourgeois, Turner, Twombly, Eva Hesse, Beuys, Tapies - Miro, Klee etc their approach , their output, it is all analogous to music. 

When teaching, using the analogy of music is helpful. Archeology is often very appropriate too - of digging, revealing layers of things - (There's a famous Heaney poem 'Digging'). 

Many creative people feel akin to that - it is very true of myself and the way I have always felt and worked - but the only problem with it is that it suggests that you are purely digging retrospectively and seeking historical revelation rather than creating new things and arriving at new borders and new territory - and that’s very important to me because what I try to do is not 'retrospective' - it’s not the re-working of old soil. The soil you lay in has to be fertile and newly turned and cultivated for growth to flourish - so this sense of old and new, I find it very very interesting and often conflicting. 

"Every sensitive person carries in himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls" Robert Walser

I feel strongly that you have to learn the basics as a student –like learning the violin or piano - the notes and composition and then do it all backwards etc. But then you have to unlearn it too and challenge the technique - it’s a fast ride - to learn form and function skills but then subvert and deconstruct them in your final year – add your own inflections and accents - and challenge your previous aesthetic notions of technical craft and polish. Dissonance on the page and in the thinking is key. Otherwise it can be just a form of compliant conservative picture making seeking a commercial outlet. It is better to not worry how the work is perceived as a student. I was never comfortable with compliance, or with verisimilitude - with imitating or with acting out - because it is exactly that - an act and not sincere. This is why a child's drawing is so free of artifice or 'showing off', for they are not seeking accuracy, realism or figurative merit - no commercial incentives etc - they are purely engaging with the act of their natural expression and usually it is about something immediate they love - or a recent memory with strong affinities - bonfire night - mum - dad - the loss of a rabbit etc. 

Developing a good antennae is so important - gaining that reception through the haze of clutter out there. Its much worse now and can be very confusing for todays students to seek out the quality amongst the bland - the mediocre - unless directed to it. 

Clearly the late 19th Century and our explosive 20th Century is moving away increasingly fast in the rear view mirror - and such invention lives there - so younger millenials have to explore it deeply if they are truly aiming to re-invent the wheel. I often say in seminars with our students that recycling older memory with new growth and new ideas is what happens naturally when we make something in the present, it is freshly laid - even though it may be driven by our past phenomenological experiences of colours, language and place. It is a sort of back engineering that was perhaps future proofed !? ...If that makes sense ?

Crucially I think the real question however is this ; Just how far back does memory really go ? I mean in terms of atoms and DNA. There is muscle memory and what of the sub- atomic ? The heart and brain - DNA memory ? Can our particle physics, our atoms, like any animal, recognise or feel one of its own ? I suspect so. There are incredible stories to seek out that demonstrate this. 


I have seen and felt this atavistic animal instinct personally - we all have - one recognises instantly that there is a depth to what you are doing, seeing and feeling - what you are experiencing. It is that atavistic resonance that lets you know there is a connection to a place or a person - there is something unknown but likewise very familiar. 

BD22 8E Greenfield Terrace - Altitude studies 
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Ongoing 'Migrations' drawing Palimpsest series ; migration across doggerland, across europe , migrations from Star Carr to Snod Hill - from the south then to the north - from Florence to kimberworths smog - the sagas of families - often now scattered ("Wir pflügen und wir streuen" ) Drawn Songs: Torch songs / Protest songs all

Drawings below from Ballads and Plays series - torch songs 'Glove and Feather'

Hunter Gatherer - Emigrants - Emigre series



The Photograph below is a panel from 'Limen' series - 20 photographs of The West Riding and a blog which was shown at UWE gallery Bristol - in my 2007/8 exhibition exploring 'Concepts of Home'.






Travellers (Wycollar)

Nomenclature

The naming of parts
They are Pointing
Look

Romanechite
Of Romaneche

The shadow in the mantle
The lightning overhead
Tomita hasn’t come yet
And Elvis isn’t dead

Before your life
A Thylacine crossed here
Through that ford in the river

Tar melts beside cobble
Vinegar is applied to the head

And through the plaster wall
Love comes a
Drumming drumming 

All in time for bed

Lanugo Fur : New Born  

Gentle heart 

Knocks at ribs cage 

To run – and too soon

Yesterday has

Become tomorrow 

Hold them

Robust for

Times Calculus 

Runs away

Old Heart

Hammered from a

Single sheet of bronze 

Yesterday has become tomorrow

Yet when you and I are ­together

It will always be

Today

Charms for good people  - Opa Loka - Protective drawings - totems - inspired by Haiwatha ; 
small show of 10 pieces in aid of Unicef 2015/16

Drawing above - ' The Absurd - Sniper in the Ardennes Forest 1944'  Mortality 

(The Golem of The Third Reich)

Question: Why the 'in aid' of UNICEF connection ?

Its frustrating that Politicians, the UN - all large modern organisations cannot mobilise together and do more to help these children - legal minors. There seems a ‘lack’ collectively - there is always resistance - a tribalism, and that is the burden we all carry as a race. It lets us all down. 

The raising of even some small funds helps placate some of my own feelings of helplessness when I see the news. The urge to Protect and defend is a very strong instinct in some of us, we are all repulsed by bullies and violence and some of us want to confront that head on - I certainly do - and so by addressing it through raising small funds is ok but it seems at times a tame approach for me. I am very clearly conflicted about all this and own some cognitive dissonance towards Art or Action? Pacifism or Defence ? all versus 'the horror', the terror. Which is why it is very important to me to be making some work in aid of humanitarian support organisations like Unicef or Warchild. It is a drop in the ocean really though and small efforts - not enough ?

Deep down I want to go and fight it more physically , more directly - and seriously, like Laurie Lee - he delivered - fighting the tyranny and stupidity that Men do in the name of their belief systems and power. I should really go and work as an aid worker and give Professional support - teach there - fight and confront it on site. Yet I have a family now so I cant realistically do that now. 

Harold Pinter talks about tackling the human wound head on - 'peopling it' with brave exploration to understand it, rather than to try to cure it via theoretical exegesis and over analysis. I think that I have been gladly corrupted by my own early conditioning and events, moulded somewhat by a working class childhood where you have to fight back against an aggressor - the bully - you have to protect the young and the vulnerable from malevolence - so purely making images and messages via Art seems very inadequate to me at times - especially when we feel inside that we should be present on site and working more directly in aid of these Children and people under stress. I know someone who went to the Calais jungle to give support and work with the children and families there  - an Artist (Pete Nevin). So yes, that there is the real thing.

I think I would only have any self respect for myself if I achieved that sort of commitment and goal - as purely raising some small funds (pennies in the scheme of things) is not enough. The real educators and aid workers who are on the front line - what more can one say about them ? Incredible commitment, risk and engagement - such respect and admiration for them. The Red Cross, Medecins Sans Frontieres, The Humanitarian Military sent out there - all these kind of Professional teams and individuals in the camps and in these war zones.



Guardian link  1;

The children of the Calais refugee camp face daily horrors.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/22/children-of-calais-refugee-camp-theresa-may-britain

Guardian link  2;  ''Three months since the Dubs amendment was passed, only 20 children have come into Britain. The failure to look after unaccompanied minors is just one more refugee policy failure'' 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/02/the-guardian-view-on-the-refugee-crisis-action-not-words?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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Archive post 2014/5

Feeling subconscious - Non focal awareness

Digging through the top soil

The absurd - Below the Wind : Ardennes Belgium 1944 Topographically missing in action 
Family narrative Painting MM

  

When Herman Hesse wrote that 'Every man or woman is not only him or herself for he or she is also the unique 

particular, always significant and remarkable point where the phenomena of the world intersect once and for all 

and never again'

Hesse is not saying we shouldn't embrace our shared social sisterhood or brotherhood etc nor is he claiming 

that we should ignore our collective strengths as a closer knit society or humanity. He is stating that personal 

experience - though often shared - is always unique and particular to the individual - we are all different due to

 a myriad of circumstances, responses - the quirks and nuances of an individuals genetic make up within the 'self'. 

Using this unique auto biographical experiential voice and knowledge is vitally important for any Artist, Musician, 

Author etc if they wish to make work that has genuine authenticity and honesty - and crucially if we wish to share it 

as a visual 'opinion' / subtle experience - OR indeed to 'raise the volume' and make societal work that supports, 

subverts or criticises society. 

This 'voice' should also be applied to any smart creative school or Institute that seeks 

to cultivate and harbour creativity. 

Seeking to emote new knowledge takes risk and deeper levels of self awareness beyond the superficial, aesthetic skills - 

it requires digging deeper - down through the strata of surface turf that can stifle intuitive germination - stifling original ideas 

and concepts. Digging a little deeper through the top soil is necessary if we wish to 'Practice or Teach' Creativity. 

This is Authorial Practise.

The Academization of the Arts School is concerning - by that I mean the esoteric turf of intellectual and analytical theory 

within the Creative Arts and Humanities - performance tables - a striving for funding, institutional careerism and 

academic approval as opposed to simple teaching. 

Don Marquis the great American poet and writer said something along the lines of - to publish a line of poetry is akin 

to throwing a feather down into the grand canyon - there will be no grand resounding echo.

Now I may have added the last bit -  but Marquis' truth can also be applied to the act of producing a drawing, 

doodle or painting -  or playing the fiddle  - or indeed to any non commercially commissioned creative practise. 

It is akin to whispering to ones reflection in the mirror - not an act after approval and with no aspiration attached 

to it other than the doing. Making at its best and most honest is most often just performed as a statement of existence

 - an individual or collective act of being.

Like the megalithic hand stencil in the cave of dreams. ''I am here'' .... and if the work survives ''I was here'' 

( the hominid hand on the cave - or the 'graffiti'  on the alley wall )