Hollowman Gains A Soul

Hollowmans visiting the funeral ghats when, befuddled by indifferent bodies and the unemotional smoke, stooping, he misjudges a metal door and cracks his own skull open by mistake, which being hollow allows a soul to enter andbut concussed he forgets the whole episode.

Now he’s emptying the dishwasher.

Before this felt a bit hollow.

Today at the back of the cupboard

Behind the cups he senses a presence

And he knows he’s not alone.

‘Am I changing

Or am I settling in

Between complaint

And commendation?’

Lacking ancestors,

Hollowman, inheriting all,

Becoming nothing on reflection

And even more than all

In due course,

Observes himself thinking while

Nibbling at cloves

His body taps his hand 

on the kitchen counter 

Without him knowing (and 

comma without him knowing 

Let’s eavesdrop upon the chatter)

…the perfect cannot be reached through a series of imperfections. Each part must be perfect. But then there are no parts as a series of perfect parts is wholly perfect. Or there is no perfection. Or there is no reaching. But if there is no perfect end then each moment is perfect in itself. Or there is no perfection. Unless there is one perfect moment. In which case it is surrounded by imperfection and is therefore both perfect and perfection indicating that imperfection might be perfection without perfection ever knowing. Then perfection might be imperfection without imperfection ever knowing. Then perfection might be imperfection whilst considered to be perfection and imperfection might be perfection whilst considered to be imperfection. But what if each perfect moment can be divided into perfect and imperfect? And each imperfect moment in the same way…

We interrupt this flow to let him know 

His hand is tapping on the kitchen counter 

And he should focus on coffee

And jotting down his thoughts

Hollowmans getting on a bit

He’s reading on a park bench

Judging a book by its index

No Minotaur no interest

He doesn’t try to catch

Falling leaves any more

But if one were to land

In his hand then ok

He seems disappointed

Wait is he nodding off?

No he isn’t.

He’s a pristine puppet

Being walked onto the

Not-Modern stage

Wideyehappyface paint

For the new production of

Why abstract painting? Why not realism? Why not figurative?

I am a figurative painter. I am a representational painter. Reality is abstract. I paint reality.

Reality is abstract. Then you witness it, act upon it with your senses, turn it into abstract language, painting a safe predictable recognisable patterned non-granular sequence of flowing events on a ground in abstract space-time. It becomes an emotion, then a comparison, then an opinion, then it stratifies into a familiar picture. Your version of reality.

Imagine you were born into a state of sensory deprivation, without language, without dimension, without light and raised like this into your teens. Then suddenly you’re exposed to the external world. No word for bird, flight, tree, colour, depth, distance, time, reality…Would you be confronted with a cohesive, organised, predictable flow of events governed by learned convention in language based dimensional space-time? 

Or would you experience a flat textured two dimensional plane within which time, line, form and colour exist simultaneously?

Sounds like a painting?

Whose is the more authentic experience of the world? Yours or your imaginary alter?

The great western modernist experiment that began by treating everything as anatomy to be dissected and understood through finding ingredients and classifying results thus gaining control of our destiny by plotting cause and effect that is currently expressed by particle collision, neuroscience and psychiatry is fine and useful and important as it rules a lot of stuff out and adds to knowledge but

that same method requires that anything that cannot be understood through the method, that is, a slicing, tearing and smashing of its parts, known as proof, is outside of reality and unworthy of further investigation. That’s called dogma. Consciousness for example, doesn’t lend itself well to the methodology. So its either labelled The Hard Problem or the method contorts its own premises to account for it.

No, these aren’t paintings about dogmatic modernist methodology and how it fails to engage with consciousness. They’re just materials bumping up against my me-ness.

.

At great speed you catch up with light and time slows because information cannot outrun the light that delivers it. But is light the same as time? No – light is just a wave length. Time gives permission. Also if you cannot get to tomorrow now, then where is the matter in between tomorrow and now? In a field of probability? If so then what does it look like, that movement from the probability field into a recognisable world? There would have to be a point at which the recognisable world is half way between probability and actuality?

Like a tugging at the heart

Or a guttering candle

Or I think they might be coming

To

I think they’re on the way

Does the non-existent past look the same as the non-existent future?

Expended energy/potential energy? Do they look different – these non existent worlds?

Where is the tree in the immediate future? its right there right? Its available. So

Where is the tomorrow tree?

No – this painting is not an attempt to paint the once and future tree. I don’t work like that. This is just materials on a canvas. But sometimes a painting lends itself to an idea. In fact the way I work is more about actualising or windowing or accelerating or capturing the moment at which the fuzzy field of potential begins its collapse into a human now because for me that perfectly describes the very act of working with paint on canvas.

Turns out Hollowmans a polyaromatic ring

The future comes with him fully formed

The past a matter of opinion

But still he thinks he’s

Happy even though

He’s just relieved

(that) (it)

Ink, acrylic, gouache, pigments, iron-filings, canvas 150/101cm

The imposition of blind faith

On the rival relic island orders

Where its said

The importance of words

Not their meaning (meaning?)

But momentum bulk vibration frequency and splay

Is anyone out there

Out there

There

Air

r

Aye?

Let’s say there’s

The grey haired boy

Practicing drums

Between the trains on

The tracks that of course

Run parallel until they don’t like

Mutations beneficial

To survival short term

Are passed on

But may prove detrimental

In the long term who knows

Meanwhile

Pouring gravel

Into his own flooded ruts

By the same train tracks

Dressed in longhi, stained white vest

Smoking a cigarette while

Cleaning his teeth

On this lovely Sunday morning

Ignoring the tourist watching him

From the open window of the 10:40 east bound is yes!

Flimsy Tough-guy Hollowman!

Contorting to better

Regurgitate the concrete bile and

Grasp the hatred put there

As a comfort

Easier by far than love

But his thoughting

Finds ‘longing for longing

More interesting than

I long for longing’

Without consciously

Understanding why

Until

Does the universe have doing-ness? Or only undoing? entropy? Was there really only one Big Doing and the rest is Expending/Diffusion? Is there doingness hidden concealed in the undoing? Is it exhausting itself in its doing-ness? Ok there is being and/or becoming yes. But what is the source? Not the cause – cause/effect is on shaky ground – too obviously human. But the inexhaustible source? Consciousness?

No this painting is not about that. It was the usual cascade of disasters, accidents and calamities.