It is a very human thing, I think, to think in metaphors and analogies.
That tale of our lives flashing before us as we die, or in near death situations is a way of searching through our files to find something that will work to save us perhaps… to apply the ultimate analogy.
Working abstractly these days, I find I am doing this more and more. The paper, the paint, the pencil… and the application of water, a hairdryer… these elements are analogous… each one holds their part in the story.
The story concerns me. Of course. The work is autobiographical, egotistic. I am trying to figure it out. By using the materials to represent/reflect/explain to myself how I exist in my small world, I seek something. I don’t know that I am consistently pencil…or paper… or paint… or hairdryer. My existence shifts between them all. I could be the paper, absorbing, repelling, taking the wounds the pencil inflicts. Holding everything together under stress? I could be the paint… Causing chaos, staining, making my mark, bleeding all over the place… a bloody mess. I could be that pencil… 6H… carving, making some sort of scarred structure… 6B… soothing… a balm for the ills… calming… stroking… it’ll be ok… or not. The hairdryer is a manipulator… thinking it is in control, but it is not. Something in the paint quality, or a small greasy spot on the paper jerks the blown paint off its predicted path and is sworn at… control is an illusion…all is chaos.
And all of this is, at the same time as helping me, complete bollocks along the same lines as a newspaper horoscope. I have difficulty with the art bollocks phenomenon… it’s one of those things that is complete bollocks right up to the point at which you recognise something that fits with your view. Then of course it is an absolute truth.
The process helps me think about it all, yes… and the results are pleasing… to me at least… and they do suggest to me an organic, metaphorical life… but it is really difficult to explain how this actually feels… what it means…
