One thing I have to learn to do more of, as an artist intent on making a living, is communicate my process: it is key to generating interest in the works. My problem with this is, I prefer people to draw their own narratives from my work: I believe the power of a work, is in its relationship with its audience, and that the audience themselves have to create the relationship: from their own associations, memories and, imagined lives, for it to have any real meaning to them personally.

That’s not to say I don’t imbue them with as much of my own understanding of symbology, colour theories and psychological intent as I know how in relation to the end goal of producing something people want to at least look at and engage with, if not own. It stands however, that if you, as an audience member, don’t feel any connection to a work, that work has little, to no, meaning for you.

Somewhere in the reluctance to over-share the processes that go into my thinking and making of a work, there is a personal attribute of just not being someone who shares this particular aspect of their lives: I can talk about most things, at length, often longer than anyone can listen >.< (I jest), but I can also write in depth, about almost any subject I have a fleeting knowledge of, let alone those things I have some considerable knowledge of.

I once heard a comedian joke that, the British are a people who can talk for hours without actually saying or revealing anything. We’ve long been known for our repressive tendencies.

The works then.

I began this series as I do so many works: I sit down to create and, something comes, or, it does not.

This came.

It was ‘present’ though, through much of it’s early stages, where a lot of works take so much time to actualise, this, did not. It is also not without its ironies if you adhere to the theory that, in order to create; something, must be destroyed.

Destruction was the first painting in this series:

Once I saw it was Destruction, the envelope of category came almost immediately; this was  going to be the Endless project.

Again, not without it’s ironies is the fact that the next work in this series as it happened, was Dream: the entire Sandman series is predicated upon the interaction of this ‘idea’ of destruction with the idea of ‘dream’. If you haven’t read the novels, this is largely lost on you, but the works themselves speak to the ideas behind the concepts, at least from a largely westernised perception. I won’t go farther than that because… being stardust is irrelevant.

The work of  dream holds a few concepts within it: the concept of transmission vs. reception, autonomy, agency, macro and microcosms, the distance of universal bodies, the grandness in such scale and the perception of such for individual egos; what is it to dream in a cold and very large universe?

Dream:

There are a couple of ‘pairs’ in this series, and it would be a fair assumption that Destruction and Dream are the first pairing.

Delight and Delirium were the next pairing as they are ‘literally’ in this sense the same character: within these novels ‘Delirium was once Delight’ and this concept appeals to me not least because I received a late diagnoses in life of Bipolar affective disorder and I understand a large part of my life under these concepts, but also due to the painful alcoholism of my father; the approximation is complete:

‘Delirium, was once, Delight‘;

When you lay them side by side like this, you understand the visual juxtaposition better: you see which way these ‘concepts’ face. Without this placing, you cannot see the connection between the states of perception; which in itself is a clue on the path to the discovery of ‘the point’.

I do however, hate to force an interpretation upon an audience, but in context like this, bigger themes arrive that are not available through a single sitting of a single piece.

Delirium is huge, and expansive, it is the fire hydrant of ‘the internet’ as opposed to the trickle of previously ‘copeable information’, this idea is present in the works themselves as Delight was a step on the way to Delirium. Delight is a formative experience, whereas delirium is complete, if also never ultimate; ever decreasing circles open up beneath you should you step too far into this domain.

Next comes the ‘apparent’ lynchpin of the story, and it’s actions are closely followed by its twin’s, on the aspect of family: where Desire plays, Despair is waiting; “Despair is patient”.

Desire is a forest fire: Desire is the sacrifice of precious resource into short-term-gain, it is the sacrifice of society, to the self. The need of ‘me’ outweighing the need of all. Desire burns, consumes all rational thought and action, it is the agent of destruction if not tempered by better forces.

Despair is the realisation that the highest of your ‘better’ inner forces is not enough that your desire be worthy of fulfilment.

Desire and Despair are twins:

Then we come to Destiny and Death, these took the longest to solidify as the concepts were so much larger than the rest in terms of human experience. They are also the most ‘singular’ of the experiences in terms of the ideas represented by the concepts of the ‘Endless’, the others we share: no one destroys their own life, without other people feeling it, no one desires or despairs so deeply, that it affects only themselves.

Our Destinies and our Deaths are unique experiences, how to convey common experience?

Death is a wave of the new crashing over the old, with a language previously unknown. Destiny is the singular, riding through the multiples and variables that your previous lives are pointing towards, it is your actual existence and your meaning, as well as your end.

We live; we learn.

The final pair: