Tag Archives: Painting

King Stag and His Little Helpers

(A Palpable Character)

Whispering blessings
Under the old squat oak
Into the palm of tobacco
Little brown rivers
Falling into the wind
Settling like snow
That the secret knows
Knotted in the dirt
Tangled grass

Exude a yearning
Sound from the soft bellows
Of my chest, unfurling
In the air the umbrella
Of my opening head:
An earth
Facing flower

*

(Purr Pull Hey Zzz)

Little brother
Psilocybe
Fun-guide
Me to you

Drop your spores
And give yoursElf to me
I will give mysElf to you
We can share this mystery

Psilocybe
Little guys
Please show me where you hide
You are such a joy to find

Liberty caps
Elf hats
Nipple-heads
Little brothers
Fun-guide me to you

Please show me where you hide
Where you laugh
In jungle grass
Let me grasp
Your bell-shaped hearts
And crown mice-elf
A-gain

*

(Other brOthers)

Hello, bless, but
No – not you -
I’m looking for the
Other brOthers.

*

(aFamilyaFair)

I plead
But they stay away
Wrack my brains
Worry that I’ve misbehaved

My greed
Prompting me to pluck ’em too young
Before the mushroom cloud had sprung
In times gone…
(What a pinhead!)
I promise
To leave the children
Who are yet to fulfil
Their function
Growing in the grass

*

(Starring Earth)

Little brother
Psilocybe
Fun-guide
Me

(Let me show you
Where you hide me…)

Unlock the gateway
of my mind,
Hide in visible
Plain sight
Un-why’nd

Wheel dance
On the other side
Spiralling unspoken
Many colours merged
One soul become diverse
A moving ghost
In the singing light
Of our flesh prism.

*

(Another Dimension)

Ferns fizzing green
And rusting brown
Sunlit: one high frequency
Dimensionless like angel-spit
Smoothed around
The space of shade:
A breath into the void
Filled with kindly grades.
The canopy’s shadow
Dappled dimples like dips -
Am I the ship on this ocean?

*

(Wood 'n Sun)

Scan the landscape
To feel for a pull
Watch the flight of a crow
And ask for a clue:
First up & away from me
then turning into my direction,
Bidding on.

King Stag and His Little Helpers; Pen, Ink & Acrylic Paint on Paper; 40 x 60cm. (2009)

Caught like a lightning strike
In my scanning gaze
Leading landscape to a plane
A breathing tapestry:
Lit up for one eternal moment
In the warp & weft of distant trees
And fractal heath -
The tall shining skeleton
The bone-lit King Stag
Moon-flesh tied like wishing rags
To the windless cage of his proud ribs,
Antlers like World-Tree-veins
Pumping ancient days
Through the thin skin of night -
Time is a cyclic flicker
And memory is alive.

Immediate, unmediated
Memory – a meaningful picture
Like a flaw in the crystallised eternity
Of life. Like a crack in the mirror.

RE
EN
CHANT
ME

*

(Young Meat & Old Bones)

Little brothers
Fun-guys
Won’t you show me
Where you hide
Where you laugh
In jungle grass
Let me grasp
Your bell-shaped hearts
And crown mice-elf
A-gain

*

(Little Brothers)

It would be just typical
To find the first of you here
Growing next to the lake
Beside the busiest of paths
- And there you are!
You unmistakable bell of heaven
Ringing in the untold depths
Of our shared being!
The dark gills of your hydraulic spreading -
You rise to release your children into the winds
Of our world: when the seeds are ready
The fruit will make itself known.
Rest in the hammock of my hand
Dear brother, join me in the juices
Of my mouth – transmit the earthly musk
Of your flesh to my flesh: the liveliest of soils
Is lit by the essences of many deaths.

*

(HammocKing)

Liberty cap
Elf hat
Nipple-head
Little brother
Little guy
Psilocybe
Fun-guy
Fun-guide
me to you

*

(ShadowSaurUs)

Sing gracefully
In wordless gratitude
A growing tune
A knowing tune
Sing gracefully

The resonating chamber
Clouds of coherent sound
The mists of awareness descend
Like tiny hands drumming into shape
The unfurling umbrella
Of the mind of never
Like a bubble
Rising from the deeps.

*

(WitCHat)

I think I am
Following my knows
But where am I
Being scent
?

*

(Shooting the Breeze)

On the sunny side
Of a wide & wise old oak
Smoke explores the possibilities of space
In air that is solid with light.
The strength of the sun
Strips form to its blinding essence
And sets it in eternity.
My map is not this territory
But together we write this story
And so the leaf of this tree is a flag.

I see it would
Make sense to meet
In the field known as: “Ham”
For that is the sound coming from
My little blood brother
Lit from all angles
In the warm womb-honey
Of our living memories
As he speaks my name.

Little brother
Psilocybe
Fun-guide
Me to you.

Share my senses
Make a present of my tensions
Free them like a burp
To be gobbled up by birds
And we will be now
Here together.

Make my senses
Share my meaning
Until the dreams of life
Become the winds of my feeling.

Little brother
Psilocybe
Fun-guide
Me to you.

*

(Peekaboo)

And hear they come
The exclamation marks
Of my joyous song!!!
Little winks & laughs
From my brothers in the grass
Punctuating the weave
That permeates my being -
Purring mutant souls of the soil
Flinging themsElves into the path of my vehicle
Drawing my chariot, shuffling my sheep
With an invisible pen – sieving my particles
To find the wHole of
ME
RE
EN
CHAN
TING
The world responding
To some mutual urge
To meat – Two meet
Tweet To Eat & Chatter
Like a skeleton’s jaw
Caw! Cor!
The awe-full core
Cannot be guarded
Caw! Cor!
Nor can it be
Discarded.

It is alive
It is life itself
It is ever present
It is forever representing

I T S E L F

Testing

Seeing

Exploring

Living

Fullness

.

(The Leaning Power of Teaser)

Give us
Oh lOrd Our
Daily breadcrumbs
And lead us not
To the which-is
Confectionary abode
But delight us by living
In the flesh of our fields
AHHHHHHHHHHHH
OMMMMMMMMM

*

(Little Dears)

Thank you
For making me

An unselfconscious
Hunter-gatherer

Once more

I stalk with the purposeful
Nod of the crow

And graze with the graceful
Dip of the deer

They do not fear man
When the mind of never is near

Important things are conducted sideways
As rainbows from the duct of a tear.

*

(Atlas)

Pleased to be
meat, you?

*

(An Opening)

It can be rude
To blow your blessings
Directly in the face of one
So radiant as the sun
(My coat of arms
is a brotherly hug?)
Better to put-put the smoke
Gently around its circular aura
Dabbling a soft spiral of acquaintance
As the breath peters out.

*

(Woven)

Little brother fun-guy
You are such a joy to find
Growing in the glowing grass
All things pass but small things last

You tricksy little monkies
You pretty micro-pigs
Snuffling out the wind
And smuggling in

The ringing
Of your bells
Inside the hallowed spirals
Of our sleeping shells

Humming with
The living memory
Of the first sun
F
A
L
L
E
N
So close to silence
In the calcified womb
Of the earth’s moon

Every faculty
In this universe-city
Swooning
With the deliciousness
Of sense itself

I T S E L F

Thinking

Singing

Eating

Laughing

Freeing

*

(Tree Chi)

This is the field
I have been feeling
This is the field I’ve felt
This is the end of the trail
Of breadcrumbs, this is
The home of the sweet
Little baldheads, this is
The place where the pixies
Are meeting, this is the place
Where the golden-tops gleam.

*

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Nigh Times

These Are Nigh Times.

We’re drifting off together (she may already be asleep) at the same time as standing outside cemetery gates together, somehow in a jovial mood. There’s a hint of apprehension about entering but I know I’m dreaming and decide to demonstrate this. We walk into the cemetery and I lift off the ground about a foot or two, my legs together and my arms out to either side, cruciform (the preferred form of this graveyard, it would seem). I hover forward quite quickly and she runs to keep up with me, skipping every now and then like an excited child. I remain aware of us cuddling on the bed and seem to be able to hear thoughts from her sleepy head manifest as excitable comments within the dream. I close my arms around her dream-body and decide/say: “Let’s do it!” and shoot us up into the air (I’m sure at this point she giggles out loud). As we get higher I become aware of these huge shadowy protean shapes, giant monsters whose duty it is to stop such flagrant violations of the rules. I decide not to heed them. We soar ever upwards beyond the grip of the beasts until I sense the beginning of some kind of fainting, wilting dissolution – as if dream-space is curved… at this point I think she changes position and I wake feeling slightly disappointed. In the morning when I tell her the dream she is amazed – she was just about to ask if we “did anything together last night”!
(30th October 2005)

The dream you just read was my first proper lucid dream since childhood. Back then I remember looking forward to sleep: wondering what never-to-be-invented sweets I might eat (for free!) in the shops of my dreams… yearning to ride my flying armchair on red-arrow-heatwaves… to swim about in our submerged house. This ability to dream lucidly faded gradually as I entered my teens, and I can think of only one good reason it’s surfaced again recently: I’ve been keeping a dream diary.

Dreams are funny things, they interact with and reference the waking world in such endlessly inventive ways. When I look back at some of the dreams I’ve experienced over the years it’s clear there’s no real line between them and the waking events they emerged from and became entangled with – they are part of a continuum, part of a process. Dreams happen as much as anything happens, in so far as they happen to us. Memory is a dream, and so is imagination. Part of you is dreaming now.

As a child I couldn’t fall asleep listening to my heartbeat. It scared me. (I’d sculpt a little hollow in the pillow in which to lay my ear so as not to let the pressure amplify the booming.) There was the discomfort of the beat like the ticking of a clock, counting time, and the worry that paying too much attention would cause it to skip – but there was something more: each beat was the soft but ominous thud of a Wolf’s paw, advancing on me steadily from afar, so far away that it wouldn’t have bothered me were it not for the fact that each beat drew him one step nearer. I had the sense that when my head left the pillow the Wolf just froze, and lay waiting for my heartbeat to reawaken him. I experienced this fear for the best part of a year; until one day, sleeping in my dad’s old bed at my grandparent’s house, I forced myself to keep listening to the beats. The Wolf started running as the adrenaline flooded my heart, coming at me out of the dark woods with burning eyes and matted fur, I held my ground as he came closer and closer, close enough to kill me. The last I saw of him before he disappeared were his open jaws, right in my face.

Just a dream? Or the conquering of a real fear?
Both, neither, and nothing so clear…

These are Nigh Times:
Immanent, imminent,
And already here.

*

CONTENTS

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PsycHome (Paintings & Memories)

These paintings (& random bits) all come from 2006-2007 when I worked as a Health Care Assistant in a fairly large Psychiatric Hospital. I worked on an all female ward; I wish now that I’d kept a diary, for many of the stories & moments that were so vivid at the time have already faded. I both loved & hated the job. I’d had my own personal experiences with “mental health issues” that helped me relate to the patients (or “service users” as the current politically correct euphemism would have it.)
         The thing I really struggled with was the control & restraint (or “physical intervention”!!!) – no matter how much a person was acting out, there always seemed to me to be more humane (though time consuming) ways to deal with them. I still shudder at the memories of screaming ladies pinned face down on the floor while the big needle penetrated their backsides. There were times when it was most definitely necessary to intervene in such a rape-acious manner, but these were in the minority (in my opinion) and often involved physical violence in the first place… On the other hand: I forged decent relationships with some of the patients there, I loved escorting people out into the community or taking them for walks in the gardens, I ran a few painting & poetry groups which challenged me and had a positive effect on the ladies who took part – there was much about the job I really enjoyed, towards the end it was like walking into a room full of friends and getting paid for chatting & hanging out & occasionally dealing with their shit, but the bigger picture was too depressing for me to be able to keep it up.

Love working with the crazies — hate that crazy system!


One Private Universe on the Edge of the World

One Private Universe on the Edge of the World

I could get to work and back along the beach, which made all the difference to my state of mind;—one morning I was taking a breather on a bench overlooking the ocean before starting my shift when a guy walked past with his hood up, mumbling persistantly; he had obviously come from the hospital so I kept an eye on him; he walked down to the edge of the water and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to stop – but he turned and started strolling along beside the breaking waves. I contemplated him: hood up, still mumbling, and clocked the absurd disparity between his intense intro-spection & the limitless possibilites of the open ocean rippling calmly in the morning sun – first thing that came to mind was the phrase: “One Private Universe on the Edge of the World;” thus the germ of this painting was born.

_______________________
2007. Acrylic, Watercolour, Sand & Feltpen on Paper. 40 x 30cm. For Sale.


MeanWhileSleepSmile

MeanWhileSleepSmile

I was working the night shift when they brought in this straggly-haired elf of a lady, old & small & sweet, they’d found her at the bottom of a cliff but didn’t know anything about her because she couldn’t speak: she’d bitten off her tongue. They didn’t know if she’d done it on purpose, or accidentally during her fall, as I said: they didn’t know anything. She was assumed to be high risk and put on the second highest level of supervision, meaning someone must be watching her at all times, (the highest level means someone has to be within arms reach at all times.) So I was assigned to watch her. She’d walk over to the window and do these tai chi-like movements that I felt were some kind of prayer. She was incredibly shy & nervous. Eventually she fell asleep, and for the first time since she arrived I saw her smile:—her situation was horrific, yet here she was, glowing like an elf in some peaceful dream, wearing a smile that was completely serene.

_______________________
2007. Acrylic & Watercolour on Paper. 40 x 30cm. For Sale.


HyperVent

HyperVent

This painting was not directly inspired by any particular experience, in fact it arose from a desire to blow some paint about (I got quite light-headed, hence the title: “HyperVent” from hyperventilate.) But it comes from the same period and speaks to me about my own experience of madness: the blinding chaotic burst of uncontrollable experience, the many beings surrounding the brain, the swimming eyes – but, beyond all this, the calm observer lurking in the shadows… the unflappable centre of the true self… it is this sturdy centre that is my saviour, yet I wouldn’t know it half as well without my wobbles!

_______________________
2007. Acrylic, Watercolour, Feltpen & Pencil on Paper. 30 x 40cm. For Sale.


Percy

Percy

I actually painted this whilst working on the ward, I’d raided the activities cupboard in an attempt to relieve the stifling boredom, and spread out a bunch of paper & paints on a table in the lounge. One of the ladies asked me what his name was and I told her I didn’t know – did she have any ideas? “Looks like a Percy to me,” came her answer – and so he was! This lady was among the first on the ward to interact with me: It was my first day and I was sat on a chair nervously guarding the door (this was before they made it a ‘locked ward’) as she muddled up in her nightgown and said: “Do you mind if I talk to you?” I could see a fellow HCA smirk and back away, so I wondered what was coming but still said “No, not at all.” She looked immensely pleased, I got the impression no-one had agreed to converse with her in quite some time, and then I found out why: “I’ve never had a cup of tea…” — “Oh really? Would you like one?” — “…I’ve never been on holiday, I’ve never watched TV…” — “Well, that’s great actually but there’s a TV in the lounge if you’d like to…” — “…I’ve never had a cup of tea, I’ve never watched TV, I’ve never been shopping, I’ve never been on holiday, I’ve never worn a dressing gown, I’ve never had a cup ot tea…” —!— This went on indefinitely… I actually quite enjoyed it.



Pinkurple Profile

Pinkurple Profile

I painted this at the same time as ‘Percy’ – not much to say about this, I just wanted to paint something pretty to stick up on the sparsely decorated walls. The ladies liked it, I told a few of them they were welcome to take it after it had been on the wall for a while, but no-one ever did.



Elephantine Snail

Elephantine Snail

This was drawn for me by a young lady who had a history of making accusations of misconduct against carers. We got on pretty well, she was difficult to manage at times but it was just like dealing with a slightly troublesome child, so when she asked if I would take her out for a walk I agreed; she was deemed quite a high level of risk so we could only wander around inside the hospital, I took her down to the vending machines and passed the Occupational Therapy department then back to the ward; when we got back the nurse in charge asked her if she’d had a good time, she looked at me mischevously and said: “I especially liked it when me and Sam got lost in the cupboard together.” !!!



Throw-a-wayKey

Throw-a-wayKey

The male & female wards shared a dining room, so at meal times a carer from each ward would stand in the lobby outside and make sure no-one tried to escape. We’d often sit on this big window ledge, eating a few smuggled nuggets of the patients’ food & chatting. We had these folders with sheets inside for keeping a record of the comings & goings of those patients who were allowed in & out, I sat and doodled this on the back of a blank sheet one morning, I showed it to the guy next to me and he said (perhaps a little predictably) “You want to keep that to yourself mate or they’ll have you in here.” I was probably considered a little odd by most, but respected for having a way with people; among my nicknames were ‘Gandalf’, ‘Mop-head’ & ‘Jesus’!

Robot Destiny

Robot Destiny


Soil-people

Soil-people



The scrawl on the left is one of the many notes I made mid-job, when such absurd little sayings would pop into my head and I’d be compelled to write them down. The scrawl on the right is one of many little notes handed to me by one of my favourite patients. She had done some awful things in her time as a result of her illness and had ended up on our ward because no-one else would have her – though we weren’t really equipped to deal with such challenging behaviour and she ended up being under constant supervision for weeks. I wrote a letter advocating for her, as it was my opinion that being watched constantly was actually the source of some of her problems (especially when she didn’t get on with the person doing the watching!) and they did eventually scale back the supervisions, which mostly worked out for the better. I found her to be quite an amazing lady; I can’t really go into any details but she was very creative, perceptive & knowledgable & had lived a very interesting life. This is another one of her notes:

Snails making for Magic Mushrooms

Snails making for Magic Mushrooms

She had this entire mythology about snails, in particular one special snail called: “Snalien” …

She was room-bound in a previous home due to some reasonably serious misdemeanour, the windows only opened a little so she had them as wide as they would go and was looking out into the garden, a snail crawled up the wall and started slithering into her room and she freaked out and closed the window on it; she felt bad about her impulse reaction and opened the window back up – a third eye came poking out one of the cracks in its shell and she realised it was no ordinary snail: it was SNALIEN! She put him on some plasterboard which he ate to heal the cracks in his shell, and thereafter he was her friend and came to visit on many occasions. One time when they’d doped her up and she’d crashed spread-eagled on the floor she woke to find he’d been keeping her company in the night: traced in a perfect outline around the spot she’d been laying was a shining snail trail (like the chalk outline where a murder victim once lay.) It was glittering transparently… shimmering with friendly meanings.

There were many more stories of encounters with Snalien, even a creation myth,
but I’ll have to make a more concerted effort to remember them some other time.

Is that the Question?

Is that the Question?

I’ll leave you with a poem she gave to me,
including its notes, and a final doodle…

         O MYSTIC ROSE
         DID SOME SILLY BEE
         WITH DIRTY LITTLE FEET,
         STICK HIS PROBOSCIS
         UNDER YOUR COVER
         FERTILISING YOU?

         IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
         OF EARTH MOTHER
         THROUGHOUT ALL

*Mystic Rose is the Mediaeval name of Mary Mother of God.
*The word “silly” in Mediaeval times meant wise
applying to Witches, Healers, Seers & Prophets.

She wouldn’t believe me when I told her I loved her poem.

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