I always wanted the life of an artist and through default, I seem to have got one. The life of an artist... That’s what I wanted. Colour and line and texture combining in anarchic form… A collision of charcoal, paint, glue, newspaper, tinfoil. An artefact dragged up or out of the huge sea of consciousness. If enough random elements are allowed to emerge then the artist becomes creator of private multi-verses. I put the laptop down, a long time since I’ve tried to write and the words fuzz up and become disjointed and convoluted. Oh for clarity, purity of vision. I enter stoned trance and allow my movements loose, balletic. Slashing at the canvas with a black wax crayon. Gaze at the easel for hours, invoking ancient impulses and ideas.
I tear meaningless articles from The Independent and scribble white paint over photographs. Two phases: 1. random selection of elements 2. Conscious design and modification.
My collages are diaries where the pages become traces of events merging and leaking forward and backwards in time.
I once imagined myself a wolf, teeth bare, fur clad, ice inches thick in all directions. I read the lives of Van Gogh, Modigliani, Brian Jones and Rimbaud. Loved Cubism, Modernism, Shelley, Burroughs. Fell outta school drunk. Saw the shimmering intelligence of trees, stars and roses in the Duthie Park. Got thrown outta art school. Sacked from every crappy job. All the time there were St Vincent’s night paintings and Picasso’s 1907 self portrait. I drifted and tumbled, soared and staggered like the tarot fool with dogs snapping at my heels. Dreaming back now, memories that never happened and forgetting so much that did. The books of magick and war and art are absorbed and spill out in curious ways…
Misquote, apply half learned theories recklessly, become The Hanged Man, be not afraid of pretension or mediocrity. Failure is a trusty guide, as is pride and dissolution. Only after passing through the dark night of the soul can one fully step into the light. Epiphany after epiphany, a life most ordinary, but the ordinary is anything but. Have you ever sat on the black painted bench at Union Terrace and felt the stillness and beauty of a cold autumn afternoon? Church spires and luminous mother of pearl skies, and suddenly you are looking at you, or realise that you’re remembering you being there.
We talked as we smoked. “y’know that girl from Brazil?” you say looking straight ahead.
“Eh, you’ve mentioned her.”
“I can’t understand a word she says”.
We leave it at that and just sit there, there’s really no need to do anything else.
