SamhainN
Happy Samhain…
I painted this one with my dead friend’s paint. I had to use a tube of process cyan up before it went hard…
Apologies for the know it all condescending tone here, I’m aware it’s a problem but still I want to make the point.
Samhain is on the first November and is the Gaelic for November. Sauin in Manx, Galan Gaeaf in Welsh, Kalan Gwav in Cornish and Kalan Goañv in Breton. Hallows eve or halloween as we have been trained to call it means All Saints’ Day. Of course this is colonial programming that was shoe horned in to a “pagan” festival in order to quell the heathens who have held this festivus for around 4000-5000 years (mainstream history will place this around 2000 years for obvious reasons). In our Celtic culture this time is when the dead are welcomed in and the barrier between our reality and the reality of the spirits is thinnest. Samhain is about half way between equinox and winter solstice and its coincidence with the mushroom season is no accident. All this colonial stuff about being scary and spooky is designed to detach you from the power of death in life, the connection to your ancestors and what they can bring you. If you have ever squeegeed your third eye, you will know that our connection to the earth, the universe and our passed on loved ones is not imaginary mumbo jumbo but indeed a super power which leads to enlightenment, resilience and an ability to tap into ancient, long-held wisdom that transcends the material reality of winter in Northern Europe.
Recently through the emerging technology of quantum computing, Einstein’s theory of ‘spooky action at distance’ has been observed and thus proven to be real. Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon where two or more qubits become linked and share the same fate, no matter how far apart they are. Creating a supernatural connection between matter that appears to contradict our current laws of physics. Basically what I’m saying is that you can absolute communicate with spirits, particularly with those who you have loved deeply, the cellular connection does persist and does in some states transcend matter. If you have vibrated in harmony with something once its decay can be perceived and acted upon by the very particles that make up you and everything else that ‘exists’.
I’m not trying to ruin Halloween here, far from it, it’s meant to be a fucking party. Just frame it in some sort historical framework that is actually true to our heritage and negate somewhat the twisted, cultural melange that colonialism has thrust upon most of our celestial festivals. Yeah we don’t know what the stone circles, or cairns, or kists were actually for. But we can feel it, we’ve got an idea... And at this time of year, in my mind people gathered at these sites, took mushrooms and communed with the dead, the Rowan and the Aspen the stars in the fucking sky. The matter that makes us all vibrating in harmony with the universe, creating magic and innovation ; charging the imagination for the dark to come in the Dùbhlacht. The skeletons are your mum or grandfather, the ghosts of your dead friends.
Brain tumors, gas poisoning and lymphoma, you can not have it all. Please pay your respects.
I’m off to Cumbernauld to bathe in dank, brutal mysticism and wonder what the flying fuck.
X
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✴With Gratitude
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This painting is intense and meaningful. Although this painting looks dark it becomes absolutely illuminated in direct sunlight and is highly textured so casts it’s own shadows. Whilst varnishing this thing I noticed what looks like a rose in one corner… Now, the house that I’ve painted (in Cuidhnis, East Harris) had a rowing boat called Rose, tucked in behind the gable end and protected with a fishing net. The Rose that has appeared in my painting was not made by me; it was made by eroding layers of paint with masonry brushes, bed sheets and knives. It appeared supernaturally, of its own accord. Random happenstance created it but it came from another plane and I must say that I’m pretty spooked by that.
Truth be told, this house still haunts me. I saw plates in the preas, the kettle still on the stove, Sunday-best shoes laid neatly by the bed and a-top it, a packed, brown leather travel case with a silk scarf and an ornate vanity mirror. Throughout my visit I was entirely calm. I felt welcomed. The house was peaceful and I felt respectful towards the people who had once lived there. However, when driving back up the west coast road, I was struck by a sharp, brutal pain in my right foot, as if I’d stood on a nail and not noticed. I stopped to check twice, at one point convinced that blood was pooling in my welly. It was as if the house was calling me back. There are two schools of thought on why folk left all their belongings behind in such a meticulous way; one suggests a sense of pride in leaving behind the remnants of a life well-kept whereas the other espouses that your belongings be left as an offering to the land which helped raise you.
My experience at this house left quite a mystic impression on me; it plays a starring role in a music video I made for James Lindsay to accompany his 10-minute Gaelic/metal/folk/jazz odyssey Lewisian Complex. You can watch it here.
I value this painting highly for it’s third eye vision; for it’s shadowy depth and what I perceive to be some sort of living connection to something dead. This painting was originally the cover of Breabach’s Album - Fàs. Which depicts the ‘last ent of Affric’ an elm tree stuck way up Glen Affric that looks like a grieving owl. It is thought to be several hundred years old and a survivor of the ice-age forest that once blanketed the hills there. My experience visiting that place was also a strange one, with macabre blood soaked snow, a murder of crows and cutting snow storms that nearly scraped the face off me. So the artwork for that album is underneath what you see now. Needless to say I have channeled quite a lot of something on to this canvas. Our diaspora, the wonder of the dead come alive, confusion about the mystical channel I seem to be able to tune into occasionally.
I shrug, I move on… I had this hanging in my house for 2 years and have not tired of it. However, I must make a change and move in to future somehow. I must search for ‘spooky action at a distance’ that compelled me to create this thing, painful though it was.
Some sort of cleansing… some sort of leaving?