Where does the time go? It seems I must rush out to work while life is buffering but fear not, my absence has not been for lack of painting although I have lacked time to correspond and consequently today I have sent a batch of studies as opposed to my regular commentary on each work. Did Van Gogh not send batches?1 For various reasons life is becoming spread ever more thinly and it has been all I can do to manage to dash off a few studies in short order in the segments of time I have and as I alluded to before, this is now a matter of staying sane in the Post Truth era through autonomous creative work. There is no ambition beyond that at present save the need to show my girls that another life is possible but eventually we must direct our hard won sanity into something more, some way to merge our doing with the struggle of the new against.2 So the thought of a commentary for each work, which we had agreed, now seems unlikely at least until I can find some more time or money. Perhaps your government will cast me a bone in the autumn.
Even now when I have so much to tell about these 11 studies I am pushed for time but generally we can say that these works take us out from the icy grip of winter and into the miraculous spring. You know in the UK midlands3 where I was raised the nature was rather more, lets say, 'organised'. Default life was urban and nature played second fiddle but here nature takes centre stage and it defines ones life experience far more and so one pays more mind to it and its changes quite naturally. Every winter I cannot imagine how anything could recover (people as much as plants) and as it transforms one watches the changes and then one day you realise that it has happened. Spring has sprung, it is a reality and one can hardly imagine what winter was like or how it could be again.
Brexit has played out like a monkey circus. I stopped watching after the leader of the country (perhaps after watching House of Cards with her blackgaurd advisors)4 cynically attempted to side with "the people" by blaming Parliament for the farce. It was disgusting! From that moment I could no more watch Brexit than I could eat a trof of slopp. I literally do not know what has happened.5
My standard ode to spring suddenly strikes as a depressing analogy for these worrying times of ours and the realisation that something that you have been watching and waiting for is suddenly reality - so it goes for the far right and its bad influence on society. God damn social media technology and the strange politics it has enabled! God damn the gangster politics of the Russian State! Thanks to the Oxford Report6 and many others the disinformation campaigns of Russia are now common knowledge but does that indicate a decrease in their effectiveness? I think not. It is as strange as it is worrying, I even gave the good people of avaaz7 some of my meagre funds to fight it. It's a famine of the imagination and no mistake, feed the World!
I have been working at the lake near the hospital for a few weeks now and have settled into a rhythm with my daily two hour work window.8 I try to begin the week with drawing to regain a feel of the place, then begin a canvas on Tuesday and look to bring it to a conclusion on Wednesday and by that time I have the next work in mind and can, depending on the rub of the green9, start on it on the Thursday, and so it goes. That is the best case and if it remains so I can just about cope and modest progression can be achieved but this schedule has left precious little time on the bone for this luxurious autofiction10 of ours and make no mistake, the painting comes first.
My canvas arrived folded and unprimed instead primed and rolled but I'll live with it. To re-bag it and ship back to Dalston would be a delay so I have researched the priming process and shall do it myself. You know that stickler Hugonin11 told me once in Newcastle that he primes his canvas 17 times before a stroke is layed!
I see Pete Brown12 and a gaggle of the other usual suspects have created a new sect called 'British Plein Air Painters'. An exclusive club of course (27 members) and designed ultimately to trick collectors into the idea that this group is the cream. It's all very Midsommer Murders. I may be an impostor but I see not a jot of energy, vigour and struggle in their efforts. I compare to the 19th century French source when there was an ever present sense of research and experimentation in the work which prevented exactly the kind of pre determined shtickism13 which exudes from this gaggle of 27.
Russia? Putin? Their meddling has really done it. You know I am reminded of when Padraig Harrington14, having wildly exceeded expectations by winning his second major, saying that he must reassess his career goals. Well, the same goes for Putin. Even he could not have hoped for such a harvest from the chaos. What could he achieve on the back of this success?
It seems from my sheltered lookout that Russia's english language news channel has played its part. Only now do I realise how I fell victim of the manipulations of Russian State media via their RT service. It is clear. When I first watched RT it was about 2010 and it was a very refreshing change to the mainstream news in the UK. It seemed more intelligent, more diverse, more critical. It appealed to the radical left, it gave voice to academics and theorists, they supported Occupy...they were building trust. They twisted this trust masterfully perhaps but the mask slipped over the annex of Crimea. Then all critique of the behaviour and actions of Russia becomes the subject of tactical derision and mockery of the 'paranoia of the western media'. Still twisting still appealing; Max Kieser, George Galloway, the Wikileaks fella. Then Trump is elected and: Realization. The power of disinformation combined with social media technology is revealed. Of course all media has its biases but the strategic manipulations of RT and the disinformation factory is a new level. Let us marvel at some old spy movie where the soviet state struggles for tit bit intelligence and now thanks to the chaos doctrine15 combined with a social media they have the President of the USA! Zahar, bring me some Kvass!16 They should erect a statue of Valery Gerasimov and Mark Zuckerberg clinking glasses!
I really want to stop writing about that now.
One interesting aspect of the works above is that I have managed to eek out a bit of pictorial symbolism for the times. It was an organic enough process, the idea chanced upon through contact with the environment rather than plucked from the monkey mind: upturned boats and broken trees...
This period also included my eldest daughters 8th birthday for which I resolved to mark with a portrait and further more to begin a tradition of birthday portraits. I dashed off two self portrait studies to get back into the habit. I rather lost the heart for portraits after the debacle in Torpoint.17
Look here, I do not say these things about Russia with any patriotism for the UK the West or for Europe and it is not as if the object of critique that has shaped leftist critical theory has disappeared leaving only the threat of Russian led neo fascism. No. The crisis of capitalism is the root and Russia is merely exploiting the failure of societies institutions brought about by the crisis and subsequent austerity crimes and to boot they press home the attack with a disinformation assault on the imaginary. In addition this gangster politics of Russia provides a handy foil against which capitalism can become ever more harsh on people while still seeming like the better option. (The powerful are all gangsters of course but the Russians are perfectly cast.)
I know not what ground I stand to espouse these views but it is a shaky, crumbling island. An island of post graduates, of critique and commentary, populated by fumistes who reject the very idea of a party political affiliation. The atmosphere thick with post war continental theory, identity politics, thoughts abstract, critical, complex and subversive but look here, contemporary fascism has gripped the world and I dare to believe that this is the circumstance where finally a left political culture will fuse and play for power. We have all tried to change the world without taking power18 and look whats happened. We can keep trying that, it has its benefits but lord help us if we cannot play the democracy game even if it is to reform'or destroy it (like the alt right). Of course its all rubbish, a facade but whoever wins the game calls the shots, just see how reality has become a material with which to sculpt. Can left politics be used in the same way? I am not at all sure. An alt right man will tell you that that is what has been happening for decades and its called the Cathedral,19 but this disinformation game to spread fear and hate has no flip side...Oh goodness, you see how plagued I am. Maybe I should see a therapist:
"What seems to be the problem?"
"I feel very stressed because we are being overrun by a tide of fascism and no one seems to be able to stop it."
"I see, and how long has this been going on..."
Thank goodness for the spring. The blossoms are arriving just in time to relieve me of my confused thoughts and I shall endeavour to mount an attack on them with all the vigour I can manage. Atlas it will be meagre in comparison with our dutch ghost but doing alone feels like a victory.
With a clasping hand,
John
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1 Begining in Arles Van Gogh sent regular batches of his paintings and drawings to his brother Theo in Paris. A certain flattening of semi dried areas of thick paint of some works is a result of this transportation. He rolled them up and and put them on the train.
2 Refers to John Holloway's idea of a critical state of being 'against and beyond' capitalism.
3 John was born in the town of Leamington Spa.
4 Television drama about corruption and scandal in American politics. The drama is based on the British version of the same name from 1990.
5 Nothing has changed at this time.
6 Refers to the Oxford Research Group report about Russia's campaign of disinformation on social media designed to influence the US election in 2016. The name of report is: The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018
7 Global left wing activist network.
8 John has only two hours in morning before helping his elderly parents who live in Norrtälje.
9 A phrase meaning to have luck, entering the popular imagination via the game of snooker where it refers to the particular way the table cloth is brushed or rubbed and the influence this has on the path of a snooker ball.
10 Currently fashionable genre of writing that blends autobiographical elements with fiction. The term was originally coined by Serge Doubrovsky in 1977. John seems to be placing his Dignity Scholarship writing in this category.
11 Refers to James Hugonin, an abstract artist from UK renowned for his long winded, painstaking methods. Stickler: 'a person who insists on a certain quality or type of behaviour.'
12 He is president of the New England Art club.
13 A gimmick or routine.
14 Irish golf professional.
15 Also called the 'Gerasimov doctrine' - see note 5 to work seven.
16 A reference to Ivan Goncharev's book Oblomov about a lazy aristocrat. Zakhar is his servant.
17 John attempted to start a portrait painting business during his residency with the Torpoint Art Service but it fell apart after the maiden portrait of Ana and Michael was rejected. See Torpoint Art Service Work 11, 17.
18 Refers to John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power in which he argues that anti capitalist activism that has state power as its goal is counter productive.
19 Alt right conspiricy theory.