The Art of Deception

 

 

“Let go of the past… If other people have wronged you, let go of resentment… In letting go of your negativity, you will give yourself a gift – you will be amazed at the amount of energy forgiveness frees up”
Julia Cameron, from ‘The Prosperous Heart’

Before I tell the story of my alleged Deception, I wanted to begin with the end in mind.

I just want to get over it and get on with it – with my work especially.

My purpose in writing this blog is to share and process the story and my feelings – to explore and face what I allowed to happen in 18 months between me and my new internet friend – and ultimately to stop letting it bother me, as it has done for the 18 months since – and to move on.

“Admit how we feel – then our emotions become fluid enough to change…”

Feelings? Yes, I’d like to transform them – I want to get over the initial shock and confusion, and the hurt and the anger and fear … and the subsequent rage and negativity and blame which then morphed into feelings of helplessness and procrastination and then even apathy, an emotion I rarely experience.

And the Resentment, of course. Huge resentment at having being conned, at being termed a ‘victim’ by the CID officer dealing with my case and at realising that if indeed I really had been the victim of a Deception, then I’d also been ‘groomed’ for over 6 months, then worked for 12 more, then dropped like a stone, a nothing of no consequence, discarded in a moment by a person I’d come to really trust.

It all seemed so brutal and so unjust, especially since this was all done so expertly that none of it can be proved as a Deception, even though I have an email trail of 149 correspondences, skype recordings of approximately 8 hours of our conversations, FedEx receipts, an inventory of works – no amount of this has helped prove any crime has actually been committed. Cameron’s been there too;

“There are few emotions as uncomfortable as resentment. We drink the poison and then wait for the other person to die… we aren’t just suffering the moment of attack, we are reliving that moment over and over – we are caught in an obsession.” 

So, how do you move on from being stuck in a dark loop of resentment and anger when someone has wronged you?

Cameron’s advice is simple. Forgive the person who wronged you.

Bless them, wish them well, even pray for them if you feel inclined. Easier said than done? Yes, I met huge Resistance in myself at first to even the idea of this, but I read on and then actually tried it over the weekend. It was, surprisingly, much easier than I thought it would be. Bless her, bless her, Bless Her…

• I actually quite admire how artfully she (allegedly) tricked me, Bless Her
• I appreciate with gratitude how she got me to believe in my work and in myself wholeheartedly for whole year and spend more time making work in the studio than talking or dreaming about finding the time/money/other excuse to do so, Bless Her
• I genuinely smile when I think how all she did really was play a game with my desires – ambition, vanity, greed (for which of course I’ve also had to forgive myself). Bless Her

“Always, one hundred percent of the time, when we are stuck in resentment, we are avoiding ourselves. There is always a productive action lurking nearby, waiting patiently for us to take it…”

So true, as it turns out! After I (genuinely) blessed her, and surprised myself that I could do it even at all, I went downstairs to check my email, and within the hour found myself writing an artist’s residency application. I sent it off that evening and today received a reply with an offer of a place in January 2016. Bless everyone!

I’m not saying I wouldn’t have done that anyway, it just felt lighter to know I’m actually getting on with things, not wasting time mulling on the Wrong.

“Negativity is always a front for Fear, and Compassion will always dismantle it…”

I’ve always been a person who makes the most of opportunities whenever they turn up, however improbable they might sound to other people. I love the sense of adventure and discovery that acting with a bit of serendipity at play always seems to bring me. I see myself as someone who thrives on saying ‘yes’ to life, rather than carefully considering all the reasons something may or may not be a good idea and in the meantime missing the moment.

I’m an artist, for god’s sake! – connecting with others through coincidence, chance and shared passions fuels my own sense of creativity and freedom – “I can do anything” I like to say to myself, “see, anything is possible, the world is a wonderful place…” It’s a massive part of my worldview.

So when I was first contacted back in October 2011 by an elderly Austrian lady who’d found my photographs online about meeting Agnes Martin, I was positively thrilled. “There goes that serendipity again” I said to myself – “connecting with people all over the world, isn’t it amazing?…” This lady said she had known Agnes Martin back in New Mexico in the 1970s and before that in New York when her work was unknown. She was currently writing a book about Agnes’ work and had found my photos (like the one above) online while doing her research. She thought they were wonderful and wondered if we could have a skype call to talk about them. I gladly agreed – “what a lovely thing to happen” – 6 degrees of separation and all that…

But what I didn’t realise at the time, was that this was the very first step of many hundreds of subsequent little steps that this friendly ‘friend of Agnes’ would take to gain my trust over the next 18 months – steps which would lead to me to see her as an arts professional who could help me with my career. I would later willingly hand over 50 pieces of my own artwork to her, and ultimately ‘lend’ her a irreplaceable handbound copy of my artists book on Agnes Martin to help her write her ‘book’, none of which she has ever returned or I believe has any intention of ever returning, despite getting the CID involved and eventually reluctantly reporting the matter as a case of international art theft. It turned out that she had been doing this type of thing with up and coming artists for years and was actually deported from the US by the FBI – she truly was a professional.

My interactions with her over the course of over 2 years would finally lead me to face up to the uncomfortable fact that, even in the professional art world, (or maybe especially in it?) not everything is what it seems and that not everyone has the best intentions.  Why should it be otherwise? That all sounds ridiculously naive even writing it down here! I’m glad to say I’m still taking opportunities and saying ‘yes’ to new experiences, but it’s taken me a whole year since my last contact with her to be able to ‘get over it’.

This blog is an attempt to revisit and learn from this experience and hopefully transform it in some way. It’s also perhaps a useful or cautionary tale for other artists…