Left school at 16 and went to work in Barrow Ironworks as an apprentice fitter. When the Ironworks closed finished off my time in Vickers Engineering. After a spell in the merchant navy, lived in London for a number of years and worked in a variety of jobs, including engineering, blending tea, building sites, Harrods and a wholesale jewelers on the edge of Hatton Garden. In 1975-1976 some years before Brit Art appeared in the form of Goldsmiths graduates, prior to shark infestation and the anatomisation and preservation in formaldehyde of various animal parts; I frequented the bar at the college in Deptford. if I’d only known, would have re trained as a butcher, or baker, or something.
In 1978 lived in Paris and spent most if the time wandering the streets on foot, drinking too much coffee and overdosing on nicotine.
1980-81 a year on Lipsos, a Greek island in the Dodakanessos, overdosed on retsina and Greek cigarettes, helped a local fisherman lay nets in return for fish dinners.
Since then its been downhill all the way, the slippery slope gets steeper as the subjective experience of time accelerates. Bought an airbrush in rush of blood to the head, which I then felt I had to learn to use. Now attempting to combine airbrush with brushwork, and hopefully paint a few more pictures before whatever?
The Gestalt Image
Gestalt Psychology: A system which regards all mental phenomena as being arranged in patterns, the whole being greater than the sum of its interconnected parts and functioning relationships. The everlasting Universe of things, flows through the mind. Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Symbols:
Isis The desire realm Goddess, Conductor of souls, Queen of Heaven, wears the Ureaus, the golden cobra headdress usually worn by the Pharaohs and Queens of Egypt.
Ankh: The ansate cross carried by various ancient Egyptian representations of gods and mortals in paintings and sculpture is a symbol of life and immortality. A carved granite stele shows the sun’s life giving rays with an ankh formed at the end of each ray.
Spiral: Occurs in nature from the double helix of the DNA molecule, the helical coils of snails and shellfish to spiral galaxies. Stone carved spirals found in the burial chambers of prehistoric megalith builders represent the souls evolving journey. The spiral as a symbol represents cyclic time and contains the infinitely small within the infinitely large.
Serpent: In the ophidian life cycle the serpent sheds its skin periodically as it grows, in ancient societies a symbol of re-birth. The serpent provides the connecting link between symbols. The sinuous coiling motion of the serpent mirrors the spiral to express dimensions beyond human speech and the discursive time bound thought process.
Viewed as a holistic representation the picture engages the non discursive imaging faculty of mind to connect stated and unstated symbolic meaning in a pattern or gestalt of a vast cosmic time cycle.
The borders of our minds are ever shifting
And many minds can flow into one another
And create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.
W.B.Yeats