which is of course the size that both Van Gogh and Gauguin settled on4 and it seems that it is just about the largest one could manage on the kind of box easel I have. Then yesterday, after taking coffee from Biltemma, I ventured over to Frötuna Kyrka. This church and the surrounding landscape is stunning in all seasons and for many reasons but chiefly because it affords a clear and elevated view of a fine lake. This is a splendid motif in itself but due to the elevation it also provides a capital backdrop for more close up compositions and that was my thinking for this one. It was not the planned composition as I had intended to return to the position I took up for the view of the bell tower in order to take my originally intended lake and perimeter view but once again I was struck by a new perspective that couldn't wait. A splendid old tree and this time, due to the size, a two session work which is all to the good. Tactfully erecting my easel between two graves, yesterday I made a sketch. Then today I lashed it on without hesitation and Van Gogh's Old Tree with yellow sky was on my mind5 but how meagre my efforts are in comparison. I hold out hope that working on this larger scale will bring us that boost ahead of our spring campaign. You know working in two sessions is a game of patience and restraint, if, that is, one is aware from the outset that the work will not be completed in one day. The first session is almost a plan for the work but it cannot progress too far, its as if in the first session I take the work to the station, then the next session we get on the train and steam off to the destination. 

Apparently for all his famous patience, Cezanne begins a painting with the abandon of a disco dancer, sketching inn with turps thinned cobalt. At least that is what I read in Danchev and it is what I try to do also. A line seems to have a buzz when done boldly then left the hell alone, like calligraphy. You know in the early 2000's I took a stint in Japan with the artist Rebecca Hough not as a miner but an English teacher and there I experienced on several occasions the attitude the Japanese take to creative pursuits and how everything is imbued with the zen derived concept of energy. Of course this enters the visual art via calligraphy where the importance of the pure and direct strokes is absolutely fundamental but the same ideas run through practices as diverse as flower arranging, tea ceremony and archery. The stroke must be a life; it begins when pen hits paper and ends when pen leaves. That is it. Birth. Life. Death. And often enough this produces the best results in a general sense. This is in part why I enjoy working so quickly in that the speed takes away a certain amount of consciousness from the strokes leaving one in the end with a wonderful feeling of surprise when standing back as if someone else had done it or rather as one says in a zen context 'it' did it.6

But you know, now I must tell you a story or two. I used to hold free conversation English classes in Japan. In Shingu, Wakayama to be precise, and these always reminded me of a scene straight out of Shogun7 in that as each class progressed I became more and more aware of my physical and mental barbarian state as these old Japanese house wives revealed mystery after mystery about Japan and Zen and life. It was I who was being educated to be sure, and it was on one such occasion that Yumi, the groups self appointed leader, demonstrated some calligraphy.  She took out a brush and ink from somewhere, a holster perhaps, and laid a card in front of her and she next to me. Then she dipped in the ink and wrote a character in one mesmerising stroke in a surprisingly slow and heavy hand. I can still hear her tracking the progress of the brush, "sso, sso, and sso." She used all of the brush. The thickest line attained from pressing it flat, squashing it on the paper vertically and gradually retracting to finish with the tip. It was, well, it was not what I was expecting. I think I expected a kind of kung fu of swift and cutting attacks but it was more savoury. She seemed to be showing me everything in the world - slow, fast, thin, thick, heavy, light, time, space, movement.

The meaning of the character was irrelevant to me but it was the process by which it was created which impressed me so and in fact I was so taken that the experience sparked my campaign of process led experimentation with non representational painting 'games' that ultimately led me into the realm of contemporary art practice. Furthermore, because these games were for multiple players it fitted perfectly with the funding priorities at the time for the AHRC who were obsessed with collaboration and my MA at Newcastle was assured. Oh the old world!  

On another occasion in a one on one lesson a man produced a postcard upon which a great calligraphy master had brushed a circle in black ink. It was a nice circle. Then he raised a hand and pressed his thumb and forefinger together and motioned for me to do the same. "Press hard" he said, "and let go." Then he picked up the card and repeated the exercise but with the masters circle now sandwiched between thumb and finger. "Now like this", he said and handed me the card. The idea was that it would be more difficult to separate the thumb and finger on account of the 'energy' of the masters circle. Now at the time I did not feel any difference but that was not the point for me as I was fascinated by the very notion and the grave seriousness with which the man went about it.  My sambo8 at the time Rebecca was not so surprised, having spent more time in Japan and knowing the language she had experience with this sort of thing. She took the edge off my growing scepticism, telling me that she had seen this 'energy' phenomenon in a martial arts context where it can be experienced in a way less tricky. Quite some time later we happened to be on a day visit to a cherry blossom park with her Aikido master and remembering our discussion of the mystery energy, I enquired as to whether he might tell me about it. Well he did better than that! He summoned between his very hands a magnetic force which he invited me to feel and this time there was no mistake. I remember it clearly. He put down his bag, composed himself  then stretched his arms out to each side then gradually brought them together as if  squeezing an enormous sponge ball. He kept squeezing the air, moving gradually until his hands were about a size 109 apart then he motioned for me to feel the air between his hands. To my amazement I felt a definite push and pull as I brought my outstretched hand down between his as one would a dyson dryer.10

This completely blew my mind and all the more so when he simply stopped producing A MAGNETIC FORCE BETWEEN HIS BARE HANDS, picked up his bag and called out to his son who had drifted off to the cherry blossoms. We all just went about our day and I had little choice but to go along. I have long since felt that daily routine cannot be stopped; should an alien craft land on a frozen lake and a five headed creature emerge and skid about on the ice...well, the snow plough must still run. But the really charming part of this story is that a few days later the Aikido master arrived at my house with a little booklet of about four or five pages that he had printed out and stapled together which gave instructions on how anyone can create their own energy field. I still have it somewhere. Do forgive me, talk of lively lines always brings back memories of Japan but enough stories, this is not an autobiography after all!

Back to the Doing. Today's painting does provide, I feel, a glimmer of hope for the future and perhaps some indication that my efforts over the winter have not been wasted. There is less a feeling of blocking and my medium strokes appear smaller and generally working on this size 30 allows for more play. Like a full pitch compared to a five a side and it only remains to focus on the job of painting and try to keep spirits high in these physically safe but mentally trying times.

It is not okay for our world to be governed by white supremacists! But was it not ever thus? It has become explicit. By my reckoning it seems that we are experiencing an intensification, an acceleration of the writing that has long since been on the wall. And all of us obsolete dark matter creatives11  and humanities scholars will feel the burn of the sun through the glass but we must hold on. Not to our dream of a creative economy or some old drivel but to the dream of a left imaginary.12 More must be done! We must battle the white supremacist culture we see influencing the minds of so many, especially at election times, and whether this is Russian meddling or not, a method that works has been adopted by some very determined racists all over the world and they gain ground. To be sure there is a meme war and it is real but each sides aim is to bolster and expand their own side, to elaborate their own imaginary and I think the right have made a better fist of it, and perhaps because of the calculated lying to stir things up they seem to be translating viral memery into actual support and votes. More must be done I say to attack and erode the effectiveness of this system of propaganda and not simply by engaging in a meme war but a far more Machiavellian approach. I say let us study the success of their campaigns, let the thousands of dark matter artists, curators and critics gather, archive and analyse this new and devastating propaganda. Then lets give this work the art world treatment. A large show at a respectable contemporary arts centre. Then let us create a cannon of all this white supremacist/alt right propaganda doing justice to its 'intelligence' as such. We shall discover who is the genius of this field. Let us institutionalise this dark cannon and in so doing, with the boot very much on the other foot,  rob it of its critical power. Have  the best memery monetised in limited editions, collected and discussed. As the elections roll on and the latest white supremacist/alt right propaganda pops up over the world, let us place it neatly within the canon. Let us in short cynically recuperate this propaganda as art. Now that really would be a contemporary critical art project, a dark matter project lets say and I would pay to see it! 

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Oh lord you see how every trail of thought leads back to the 'times'. I shall bore myself to death if I continue. Tomorrow I will endeavour to work at Borgmästarholmen for a view amongst the fallen trees. Its utter devastation on that little island...

 

John

 

 

PS Lets keep that last thought close although I am sure this work is already underway. 13

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1 See Work 11

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2 See Work 3 paragraph seven.

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3 'Saverage' does not appear to be a slang word so this is most likely a typing error as 's' in next to 'a' on the standard keyboard which we presume John uses.

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4 A french size 30 is 92 x 73cm. For both Van Gogh and Gauguin the size 30 became their preferred format over the time they worked together in Arles and after.

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5 Refers to Trunk of an Old Yew Tree, Arles, 1888.

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6 This is possibly a reference to Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel

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7 Shogun is a 1975 novel by James Clavell which follows the fate of a British sailor who after being shipwrecked in 17th century Japan becomes an influential figure in Japanese society.

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8 Here John is using the Swedish term for a long term partner.

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9 French standard canvas sizes. A size 10 measures 55 x 46cm.

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10 A specific type of electric hand dryer that blows a horizontal stream of air into which one lowers and raises wet hands until dry. 

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11 A reference to the work of Gregory Shollette. See Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture. John included this book in TAS Work 22 Three Crisis. 

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12 The term 'imaginary' refers to the work of Cornelius Castoriadis. John seems to be most interested in the broad idea that a society is created and held together by a collective psychological process (the imaginary) which must be continually instituted to function. John also refers to Castoriadis on several occasions in his Torpoint Art Service residency:  Work 5, paragraph 3 regarding a conference he attended on the subject and Work 24, paragraph 10 in the context of the rise of far right in the UK.

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13 Angela Nagle's Kill All Normies analyses the memes of the of alt right.

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