liquid life

A little personal interlude, before continuing with the Big Picture. This painting first appeared here as 'A family portrait'. I must now confess, I did not intially paint it as such. As with many of my pictures, they are not always fully articulated on an intellectual level until some time after I have put my brushes down. While some pictures are the responses to an ongoing discourse, others are painted from the gut and demand some serious post painting contemplation to make any sense. These gut paintings can be surprisingly revealing. The emerging pictures are not always very pretty, but they, after the strutting and the fretting, signify something.
I began this painting after a visit to the Gagosian, on a day when the smart art set was outnumbered by a swarm of stonyfaced goons in cheap black suits, wires and shades. The reason for the hefty security was an 'intimate' exhibition of some of Picasso's lesser known works. As if any of Picasso's works were lesser known. However, they did have that 'whatever was left in the studio' feel about them, which the exquisite lighting and elegant hanging hadn't managed to dispel entirely. You could almost believe the carefully staged spontenaity - if you ignored the goons who took their job so seriously that they frequently inserted themselves between viewers and paintings, as if to guard an already traumatised Jaqueline from any further cruelty. My attention was drawn to a particular group of paintings all done in shades of gray, loosely painted on brown wooden boards. Of course the paintings were as punchy as any Picasso but it was the subtlety of the gray scale intensified by glimpses of golden brown board showing through which I really admired - allowing the cheap wood to shine like flecks of gold leaf. Clever. Around the same time Tate Britain were having a 'there is moore to More' show of sculpture exposing the dark side of Henry Moore. I went several times. Each time with the sound track to Brideshead on my pod. My pod has become the perfect sound shield against the strange comments people often feel compelled to make when attending exhibitions. Rarely clever. In the catalogue is a wonderful black and white photo of Mr Moore in his studio dwarfed by one of his great stone matrons. On the table in front is a box with the slogan 'Bovril is Liquid Life'. That got me painting. I liked the juxtaposition of the artist and his pygmalion and the very everyday reference to that very British concoction that is Bovril as the secret potion that would help the artist alchemist transform his great slabs of cold stone into primal images of new life.
I left the painting for some time. When I looked at it again, I suddenly saw a very personal portrait before me. Perhaps it was just a case of retroactive narcissicism, but I remember saying out loud 'the baby is me!' Clinging to a mother figure in her petrified magnificence and my father dressed in his bourgeois uniform, wearing a primitive, tragic mask looking over at the funny little thing with a mixture of apprehension and tenderness. It is a much more honest representation of our family unit than the black and white photos I still keep; they are as staged as a Picasso exhibtion, but without the goons to protect me.

The Rise and Fall of the Great Petropolis

Ghawar, Azadegan, Kashagan. Are these names familiar to you? Your life depends on it. Perhaps the names, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell ring a clearer bell? The companies that exploit the great subterranean seas that support our way of life. For now.

In my studio, the stretcher bars stand bare in a corner waiting for new canvas, while an oil embargo has been imposed and I have reverted to charcoal. The golden linseed oil which holds my pigments has been put away while I try to learn more about crude oil money and geopolitics.

"Of course it is about the oil" has to be one of the most often repeated phrases of our times. I nod as if to say, well, yes, obviously, but meanwhile I'm thinking, yes, okay, I know it is about the oil, but how exactly? As I am reading Serious Literature on the subject, my painter's mind starts churning images. I begin to draw lines between dots, create narratives, map out a world where, as you know, it is all about the oil.

Those who know their history are doomed to repeat it, so here I go again: High up on the Mato Grosso plateau lies the city of Petropolis. Like Simla in the Himalayas, it is an incongruous collection of unlikely architecture from a lost empire. The grand hotel looks like a Tyrolian chalet, the church is in the neogothic style, beaux arts villas line the streets around a neoclassical summer palace with its art nouveau glass house - which is perhaps the most surprising building of all in a place with more bio diversity than the rain forest. But I digress, for this Petropolis has nothing to do with petrolium, it is named after the Braganza Emperor of Brasil, Dom Pedro, whose family relocated from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro when the political climate got a little too hot in revolutionary Europe, and when the tropical sun rose in Rio, the Imperial entourage retreated to the cool mountains, to their Petropolis. However if we return to Rio, we'll see something else, just out of the famous tourist shot of Sugarloaf Mountain, a gigantic oil rig in the bay with the name Petrobras emblazoned accross its industrial steel frame. This Petro is very much about oil. The petrolium of Brasil. Other petrolium producing nations have come up with similarly catchy names even if their petrolium belonged to another nation, like the British kindly protecting Persian petrolium. But we are beyond that now.

Picture the scene, Westphalia 1648, bored with battling over old ideologies, Europeans hit upon the idea of the nation state. Since then national borders have been extended, disputed and moved, countries have invaded and colonised one another in an orgie of exploitation, but the basic principle of geographically defined states has not changed. Individual states have at different times sought autonomy in self sufficiency or in elaborate trade agreements with one another- or just naked imperialism. But it was essentially all about land. The primary resource was human labour and the basic fuel was food. Humankind needed land to grow. Landowners were power holders. Then, Industrial revolution. Machines. Political revolution. The internal combustion of old regimes and then; 1848. Perhaps the ideologies which fired the imaginations way back then have fizzled out, but something happened which ignited a change beyond the wildest political dreams. Even the Russians missed that revolution. Drilling for oil took place in Baku in 1846, but Czar Nicholas didn't get to know about it until 2 years later. Then the Nobels and Rothchilds moved in. And the Russians caught up.

And then, at the very beginning of the most violent century in human history, the Americans joined in. New century, new power. Texas hit oil and for a brief moment America took the lead and made the most of it. Back in London, the first Lord of the Admiralty, the Nobel prize winning author of Great Man history, changed his mind and lost the British Empire. It was all about the oil. Winston Churchill decided that British war ships should convert from coal to oil fuel. Britain had plenty of coal but no oil. Time to make friends in the Middle East. Gertrude and Lawrence flirted with Faisal while Winston had a cigar with the Shah, but Roosevelt trumped them all and Saudi America ruled the world. A power hybrid, the Great Petropolis at the centre of a whole new world map.

As with maps of old, unchartered seas are often home to great monsters, so this new map had its creatures of the deep. Whereas in the old world, humans worked the land to feed themselves, in this new world humans have become dwarfed by some Wagnerian nightmare, drilling deep into the ground to feed the great machines. Like Churchill's warships, these machines are primarily created to protect 'strategic interests' that is, a great oil guzzling war machine has been created to secure oil supply, this great leviathan has risen from the underworld and moving accross the land in a ferocious battle for self preservation. Even if the names of the oil fields under ground are not so well known, everyone has heard of the battle fields, Baghdad, Basra and now Tripoli, Luanda next?

But the great beast is fighting a losing battle. A new map has been drawn. under ground. The new world is easily divided. Forget first, second or third worlds. Forget developed or developing countries. It is all about the oil. Either you have it or you don't. Either you buy or you sell. Surplus or deficit. The battle lines are easily drawn. North America, Europe, India and China are buying. The Middle East, Russia, South America and Africa are selling. That is the power distribution of our world. The terror that we are fighting is our own. The simple realisation that we are powerless. Nevertheless we shall go on fighting until the last drop of oil. And everybody knows.

And I'll be stretching my canvas, reaching for the linseed oil and decide between raw sienna or burnt umber, while I contemplate the lines in the most important piece of graphic art I have ever seen. The graph shows two lines, one the rapidly declining and finite supply of fossil fuels - that is all the hydrocarbons, not just oil; and the ever increasing human demand for energy. The lines crossed in 1986. To imagine that this is just another recession to be overcome is ludicrous.

Then I remind myself that oil is itself solar power. Stored for millions of years, a 'Trust fund' if you like, of photosynthetic energy preserved in the earth. An immense source of wealth from long long before human history even began, which we have spent in what? six generations. On what? War and destruction. Then I try to imagine what we could have done. How this great wealth could have been spent. The success of a species depends on its ability to adapt to its environment not its ability to destroy it. For all the lustre of the Great Petropolis, I think we need to walk in the sun once more.

all things black and beautiful

I love coffee. The subtle rush of the first espresso of the day. The lingering over a mocha in a cafe. Watching the world watching you with your cappucino moustache pretending to be an intellectual, but being destracted by the street theatre until you catch your own chocolate powdered reflection staring back at you. This collage is called "Facing Mocha". It came to be after a conversation with a friend of mine. We observed that we were both wearing green t-shirts and I asked him if he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, after which the pilgrim may wear the green turban. He looked puzzled. Where? Mecca, you know, your holy city. Then a revelation, "Ah, Mocha!" he said with a beaming smile. And ever since I have thought of that when a look into my black brew. My own little ritual, facing mocha. I went to Brasil to see where the coffee grows. A friend of mine took me to his family farm. Behind the mango and avocado trees, I saw the coffee growing in lines undulating over the soft hills. As I stood there feeling the richness of life all around, a withered old man in a battered straw hat and tatty old poncho came up to me and without saying anything, reached out, plucked a coffee cherry and gave it to me. My pilgrimage was complete. I had taken my coffee communion. I still carry the bean as a holy relic.

Sinope

First, a disclaimer. no, not the nudity, I make no excuses for that - and besides you'd need some mighty big fig leaves, the original of this painting is larger than life. But this is a sepia version of the original, which you can find elsewhere on this blog, if you are interested. I like the combination of computer manipulation and very old school painting on canvas, which I stretch myself - in some ways the most enjoyable part of the process, physically hard work, preparing the surface, getting a feel for the actual size, upscaling and recomposing preliminary sketches. Then the painting begins. No matter how many sketches I have done, there is something daunting about the large white canvas. It really is blank. And I am not painting by numbers. All the abstract ideas which feed into the image, all come flooding through at this moment and with the best will in the world, I never stick to the original design. Virgin territory. Especially with this one. It began as a response to my catholic upbringing. The omnipresent Virgin Mary. Role model, mother figure, so we girls were told. But I could never make those saccharine images fit with anything I expected of my gender. She was clearly someone else's construct. I didn't write the figure of Mary off completely - after all, if you believe her story, she is quite a woman. But I wanted to paint her the way I saw her. Everybody knows about the Marian myth's pre-christian origins, Isis, Ishtar and so on. I stress the word myth to distinguish the historical ficure from the legends she inspired. As I began painting, I soon had to concede that the Marian thing was not going to hold. The image emerging, was something, someone else. I even tried painting in a blue bird, hinting at the annunciation, which is such a favourite marian moment for painters. But no. She was emphatically not Mary. I sat in my studio, brush in hand, staring at this emanation. I listened to music from the Bahia region of Brasil and danced around. It was all turning rather pagan, or shamanic if you like. I had created this image who now loomed large in my studio. Who was she? Where did she come from? and what was she saying? At the time I had begun working on a poem which I called the Song of Sinope. Sinope is a place on the black sea, part of the last bastion of the Byzantine Empire. It is also the name of a woman in Greek mythology who is the daughter of the river god Asopus. Her name is also given to the red earth which has been used by painters since images appeared in caves. And one of Jupiter's moons bears the name of Sinope. So I was working to bring all these strains together and out of it came some of the first verses of what sounded like a song from the earth. Yes, can't quite escape Mahler, who of course wrote Das Lied von der Erde based on old Chinese poems. I began to think that this painting was visually related to those ideas, so I gave her the name Gaia. But really, she should probably be known as Sinope. I have yet to finish her song, and fully understand what she is about. Meanwhile, there she is, a rather commanding presence.

whatever happened to baby jesus?

well, he grew up, realised his divine nature, was sacrificed and saved mankind. Impressive. But here, the question is a personal one, for, you see, something strange happened to me a while ago: My devoted parents had booked me on the Paradise Express, a comfy seat in the compartment marked RC, heck I even met the saintly pope. I was a somewhat grubby sheep of the Lord's flock, but I believed with a sincere and contrite heart and despite the healthy scepticism, I never imagine that the basic tenant would change. It did. It was neither conversion or aversion. I didn't suddenly turn against religion. There was no crises of faith. I just got off the train. I left, turned and waved goodbye. I had painted pictures of the saints, written icons, designed vestments, altar covers and chalices with complete devotion. I could not do this again. I did not know it at the time, but this turned out to be the last drawing I did of Jesus the Christ.

t s eliot

Not many people like this painting, but I do. It is difficult for me to know what it looks like from the 'outside' and I shall gladly concede that it is not a particularly good painting, but I like it nevertheless, because I managed to do at least some of what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to paint Eliots poetry - or rather illustrate my own response to it. So in a sense the painting is a portrait of my experience of Eliot's poetry. If you see what I mean.

Like Mahler, Eliot was always around in the house where I grew up. My father had a wonderful old recording of The Poet reading The Wasteland. I remember listening to it and being surprised by the high pitch of his voice, not to mention those queerly clipped vowels. Since then I have made a habit of reading The Wasteland. It has become the way I measure the expansion of my frame of reference. When I was very young I didn't understand a word of it, but I liked the sounds and rythms. I still read it out loud to myself. Usually when I am wasted. It is a good little exercise. When I am sober, I read Old Possum's Book to my cat. Eliot created some of the finest lines, now lodged in the collective. From Prufrock:

I have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

and from the poem, Marina, the evocative line, which for me became the inspiration for another very personal painting, which I have so far only managed to make an oil sketch of, but hopefully one day will be able to paint:

Under sleep, where all the waters meet

Alas, Thomas Stearns Eliot never did walk into my studio. He was not of my time, and I am not of his talent, so the painting is more akin to the process I imagine an icon painter must follow, the conjuring up an image in the mind's eye. Of course I could look at photograps, and the many portraits that talented artists did paint of the Poet in his lifetime, I can read his work and books aboout him - his lectures at Birkbeck college, plays and even a film about Tom & Viv describing his troubled relationship with Mrs Eliot who ended up in a mental hospital in Stoke Newington, the part of London where I now live. He never did visit.

And so now I have come full circle in that I have painted about writing and written about painting.