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Raison d'etre

or

What makes the artist tick

"PLUS FAIT DOUCEUR QUE VIOLENCE"        

Common inscription on Baroque keyboard instruments

"If I painted people chainsawing each other to death, I'd be a millionaire."

Robert D Walker

We are conditioned to accept violence and unhappiness in their many forms, and the conditioning has penetrated so deeply that we can't imagine a world without them.  Yet, at the same time, we're expected to anathematise the healthy human form as something evil, that even mature adults need to be protected from.  As H G Wells knew, these contradictory precepts have held humanity back more than any others.  Read  "In the Days of the Comet."

Many artists declaim humanity's cruelty to itself.    Well, if any artist has a personal axe of his own to grind, I'm not going to tell them they're wrong.  We all have our own raisons d'etre.  But too many artists are already telling everyone what a crock the world is for me to make any difference there!  

This particular artist is more interested in the cure, rather than agonising over the illness itself.  I see acceptance of the human body as fundamental to achieving a better world.  Deal with that one prejudice and many others will fall into place automatically. Clothes don't just label what you are; they have become, to many, another means of establishing uniformity and conformity in thought, or worse, the key to establishing social pre-eminence for themselves.  Thus, only without clothes can one truly be free.  So I prefer to paint humans in their natural form, unhindered by regulations on costume or the consequent associations automatically made with certain types of dress. No stress, no shame or trauma; just folks doing creative and constructive things, even if that's just sitting down and thinking.

My other influences - well, there's the countryside.  Not the awe-inspiring Wagnerian landscapes that so impressed the Victorians; just Mother Earth at her most amenable, providing a place in which the mind can develop.  The countryside portrayed by many composers in their music, which is another part of my background.  Music is more versatile than words can ever be, not least because it transcends the boundaries of verbal language.  Very often, an image is suggested to me simply by a few bars of music.  You'll find out what I mean when you see the titles of some of my paintings, although if you don't know the piece - don't worry.  The painting alone should tell you what the composer has told me.

Some of you will also detect a strong element of spiritualism in my work - that's spiritualism in its pure form rather than the "seance-under-chintzy-lamp"  variety of popular association.  Don't worry, I'm not going to evangelise here, but as it's a very deep-seated personal influence that shows through in my work rather obviously, it would be remiss of me not to place it in its context here.  I had no miracle conversion; spiritualism is simply a search for answers that's evolved in me over most of my life, although it was not until my adulthood that I realised that spiritualism seemed to be the logical answer to those questions that more widely accepted religions either evade, or answer with dogmatic sound-bite rather than logic - often to the extent of killing those who sought answers for themselves, purely to preserve their own temporal power.   Sadly, in many countries this stranglehold over the human mind still persists.  My own quest continues to evolve, and no doubt it will go on doing so for as long as I have awareness.  But in the meantime, my thanks go to those who have shown me that I am at least looking in the right direction.  Most of them will know who they are.

So go now, gentle reader, and pass through this site.  I don't claim to be another H.G Wells trying to tell you what the world will be.  What I am suggesting is how it could be with a little effort and thought.  You may see my work as visionary, or thanks to our conditioning, you may consider it absurd, or just obscene.  But think again - is this vision really so implausible?  Have you broken out in boils, or been gripped by a demonic urge to go out and harm someone?  

I doubt that.