INDIGENOUS SPIRIT SOMEHOW

5 Sept

Lately I’ve been mostly running on left-field whim and during an exploration of Graphic Design stuff with my eldest child I ended up down a rabbit hole of mirroring, patterning and symmetry. We thought about making a ‘creepy pets 2027 calendar’ and from that one idea I ended up with all this stuff, we started with some font ideas, progressed into redrawing creepy pets and then whilst wrangling with motivations and the whole pointless nature of me trying to make another pointless calendar that no one would want we retreated in to my beloved hi-fi. Whilst looking for CD’s to listen to we stumbled on Björks, Verspertine and the art work inspired me to start drawing wee sketchy, black line worlds . The following images track this process, I only drew half of each one knowing fine I would mirror them because I am a chubby, middle aged man who is trying to exploit any conceivable efficiency.

Ambigrams are a great exercise in perception acrobatics and left-field whim is now my Modus Operandi.

Ambigram type that spells ‘Creepy’ and hand drawn patterns mirrored in the computer. I later added the geometric texture to the font inspired by a day spent looking at Caledonian Pine remnants (more on that later). I will add my child’s drawings to this creepy pet world soon… Below are my original pen drawings flipped horizontally, vertically or both.

HERITAGE SEEPS OUT - UNCONCIOUS - ALIVE

Using the images above I would sit and riff on the mirroring and symmetry, faffing with the rotation, scale, amount of copies angle of mirror etc… That produced all this…

These are just a few of the permutations I created. I love how they seem Celtic, Pictish with a Gothic Medieval mixed in… There’s definitely an overarching look of ancient Alba to them don’t you think? Dàl Riatan ‽

This was totally unintentional as I think I was aiming for something that was kinda doomy, durge metal inspired as I have been highly influenced by the SUNNO))) & Scott Walker Album, Soused and Brìghde Caimbeul’s Album, Sunwise. As you may have noticed everything i do right now cycles back to some sort of auditory input. I’ve always yearned for a high quality hi-fi and as you can see it has genuinely inspired the sh*t out of me.

I see faces, moths, plants and an unmistakable biological, earthy influence in all of these despite perfect, mathematical symmetry being completely unobserved in nature. Closing my eyes and getting lost in auditory landscapes is clearly stimulating my third eye.

BANAL PASTICHE & THE IMAGINATION BYPASS

Inspired by this I started running other complex artwork I have done through the same process, to surprising and quite extraordinary outcomes.
Here I ran a development sketch for John Mulhearn’s book ‘let piping flourish.’
Book Available here
I also used this set as a vehicle to rant on social media about the aberration of a sculpture that was hung from the Finnieston crane during the commonwealth games.
»»»»»»» RANT OPPOSITE »»»»»»»»»»»

Recently I was incensed by the plastic, light up Charles Rennie Mackintosh token, pastiche, sculpture that was hung from the Finnieston crane. Not only did I think it was aesthetically banal and brutally synthetic, it was also constructed in complete contradiction to the principles of the arts and crafts movement.

• Reject industrialism and mass production. Celebrate and value the unique touch, skill and style of individual artisans.

• Use sustainable, local, organic materials.

• Strip away superfluous, fake historic ornamentation. Remain true to locale and time.

• Utilise organic forms, derived from locally unique inspirations.

Of course the Glasgow Rose was Margaret MacDonalds work, Charlie got the credit because of patriarchy.

I drove past that sculpture on my way to and from work and it made my blood boil. People would say ‘who cares, it’s just a stupid sculpture’ and they’re right. It is a stupid sculpture, however I am getting pretty fired up about this tumble drier of Scottish pastiche that is drying out our rebellious, hard fought for individualism into a desiccated stump of hackneyed, post colonial triumph. Highland Cows, Harry Potter Trains, Songs about holding girls hands on Hebridean beaches… Do not let this pass, this is the plan, the Sir Walter Scott write over… It’s up to us to make our culture. Like Charlie and moreover Margaret and her sister Frances did… Not to recycle false and imposed standards…

In 1987 for the Garden Festival. George Wylie wove a massive straw locomotive, by hand, over a chicken wire frame. Once the 12.2 metre sculpture had been exhibited hanging from the Finnieston crane - a crane that moved around 20,000 real locomotives on to boats to be shipped around the empire- the sculpture was led on a procession to the Springburn locomotive works and cathartically set ablaze in the style of a Viking funeral. That locomotive works is now largely a Tesco Extra!

I present these stupid wee patterns as some sort of reparation for the cultural melange I feel I have helped to build. Maybe art is over for me, or maybe it’s just beginning again? It’s clear that I care a lot about it.

The 10,000 year wood high above Mullardoch, taken in heavy rain a few years ago.

THE 10,000 year wood, a left-field loop & A transcendEnt SYNERGY THAT SEEMED TO SPRING FROM THE GROUND.

I made a trip to my beloved 10,000 year wood. After all the fire in the Cairngorms my resolve had been galvanised to seek strength in this jewel of nature I have been visiting my whole life.

This place is unique in its straddling of two worlds, with pockets of pristine, native environment largely untouched since the ice-age whilst lying next to one of the largest hydro electric dams of the inter war period. The loch was raised 160 meters and the trees I have photographed here are the bones of the sunken, ancient trees that were deluged in its creation.

I have waxed lyrical about this place for decades, the Chisholms who inhabited it, the nature, the prickly land ownership and even the European Union (who used to maintain the deer fence and remove invasive, non native species)… Though I have explored this place thoroughly, there are still multi day trips I need to make to pockets so wild I have not ventured past their edge.

I think you can see from these (analogue film, mirrored) photos that this place is uncompromising and ghoulish, yet I feel at home here, connected, feet on the ground. The air changes, human addictions and psychological artefacts evaporate, this place is not a lochs & glens bus tour, it is not a ginger highland cow or a “poem” about holding a bonnie lasses hand. It’s a place of endurance, indomitable spirit and perseverance in the face of epochal opposition. It is gnarled, mutated and saturated with ghosts.

In its forms and patterns I find my actual heritage, the lineage of imagination and inspiration that informed the music and art of my forebears, this place is the opposite of regimented, colonial, romanticism. It’s the wild indomitable past of uncivilised matter refusing to bend to the whims of now. Yet it grows amongst its dead, woven and subsumed slowly, with reverence and gratitude. The whole of it, over and under; close knit. The universal veil thin and haptic like distant music on the wind. Wide, minor key, slow and hypnotic, the darkness not foreboding, nor evil but standing right next to you, holding your FCKNG hand.

This whole creative meander feels serendipitous, grounding and seems to reveal some sort of truth in what I am doing. It’s no secret that I have been struggling for artistic meaning the last few years and this month has unwittingly provided some small epiphany. My love for deep time and my indigenous spirit has led me here in the most unplanned and sporadic way, I have vowed to myself to continue this journey, I have ideas… Music, Painting, Field Recording and Photography all seem to be weaving themselves together into a knot-work of authentic expression. I want to cast metal and make textiles… I feel like my dead Mother has put her hand on my shoulder and led me here, of course my daughter too - my lucky charm - and there is so much of my Mother in her too. OOOOSH. My wee boy’s starting uni… I’m actually emotional here…

I will end with photographs I took of Pictish stones in Morayshire to which I have applied the same process.