Take my hand.

The sun shines - glorious light spreads like butter over the day. The storm clouds have cleared for a moment leaving the crackle of electricity in the atmosphere. In time they will return. I reach out for your hand, curling your fingers in mine, and squeeze.

For a moment there is warmth, the air is clear and a pause surrounds us. Outside is fear. I look in your eyes and see myself looking back. I am scared. We are scared - change is happening, the world shifting beneath our feet. We must jump, dive or skip - but we must move, and we don't know where to land; or even if we will.

I squeeze harder - and I feel you squeezing back. Whether of our making, or of others, the unknown charges towards us, and gathers speed as it moves. I blink back tears - hiding my fear in anger, and looking around through goldfish eyes. We snap, then hug, finding in each other the strength to take the next step.

The clouds rumble again, building energy for the next random strike.

Me and you, we walk hand in hand towards the future - our future.

Take my hand. 

A silent cry.

"We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry."

These word from Obama, spoken in Hiroshima, have stuck with me - an image startlingly evocative that gathers together feelings into forms. There is a cynicism that dances around me when I place the words into context - an American President standing over the graves of the horror of nuclear weapons. But there is always, and always context. There is the historical and the political that layer meanings - almost with the slap-dash of another layer of paint.

Hiroshima aftermath

I recognise the world. For a moment though I want to zoom in.  To take stock of the pause that the words bring.

I recognise the power of words - an emotional intersection I wish to grasp. From the mouths of babes and speech writers...

Searching for meaning

The images - "the dread of confused children" and "we listen to a silent cry" form pictures - crystallising feelings as I sketch, words rising out of the lines to try and comprehend.

They come baring paradox... As a child - as an adult I find myself dumbfounded - outside of the joke, the hidden meaning - the comparison between nuclear devastation and childish incoherence for a second - a nano second, makes sense. And really in the context of Armageddon how else can you respond? The "dread" is all too short.

I am on Munch's bridge - witnessing the silent scream; a psychological release, a moment from Brecht where the force of internal pain is contrasted with a physical futility that says all there is to say about the frustration and powerlessness of humanity in the face of the machinery, the industry of war. But this is a cry - an act more plaintive - that echoes with anguish.

... 

So whilst Brecht, Marx and all interpreters of the passage of human progress would demand me to contextualise the irony of the speech, I find myself - self-indulgently perhaps - drawn to the poetry. Maybe because as an individual I cannot comprehend how 'sorry' can begin to walk back history - can undo the complexity of all the layers of history - of blame and counter-blame? Against this vision of death and destruction can 'sorry' help us to understand? Do the words of later generations take back what is done? Would we want them to?

The horror and threat of the nuclear footprint I have lived with since childhood; and over time the point is that there is no point. Commemorations, reparations, resignations... The need to interpret - to touch our powerlessness, to delve into futility is the only way I can fathom. So if the images speak to me - I think I'll listen.

Elemental change.

Night streaks - moments of time caught between light, flash across puddles, and up across windows disappearing up to the cloud-strune sky. The water lies sporadically - residue from a season searching for identity.

I'm walking - my mind slowly building its igloo of pace and flow; distanced from what's next. Around neon flares, headlights chatter as ice forms in the air. I follow my shadow towards the vanishing point - cold stinging as glacial paths sculpt out my face; I feel the weathering of my features, the erosion of the years - and the building of character that I was always warned about.

But the cold, the effort - as I make my way onward - heat steaming from within my coat, scarf and hat, seem to justify my sense of age - of having lived (a bit). I watch the darkness dance across the hordings - the signs, the eaterees and take-outs - skipping Loki-like through cars and in and out of off-liscences. 

The trance flickers - I stop to look around, blinking as I process where I am - letting stillness sink in for a breath. There it is - the pub, and my shadow winks: "Go in - take the weight off your feet, warm those bones." "Steady on," I think, "I've lived 'a bit' remember!" But my petulance fades with thoughts of warmth, the velvet of a beer and the chance to awake - seeing who and what is around... and who knows - maybe a dram. My pen ictches.  

Ah well, bottoms-up!

The bar - or the artist as secret agent! 

The mist.

Atmosphere is an enigma. It creeps upon you and dances with your thoughts - at times leading and capering, at times hiding - using guerrilla tactics to taunt and undermine what it was you knew. The mornings that bite with cold - dusting castor sugar over the world. The fogs that make even the most simple street a maze of indecision. The speckled shadows that suggest all is not as it seems.

This capacity of light and haze to transform place and space has always fascinated me. Stages where the nooks and crannies of set become sculptures that envelop, cocoon and create characters - shifting in time and geography through the touch and hue of light and shadow.

This is what I look for in composition - the making strange of what I expected. A passing stranger, the oddness of a colour, layers of shade - taking a view I know, adding the dramatic - the sense of the undertow, the element of surprise. 

My last work turned out to be a drawing. The image had been lying among doodles and photos taken at the Durham Lumiere. This is an exhibition that calls out to my fascinations. The works are outside - transforming the idea of spaces into new places. Recapturing, reforming the conventions of what is expected - juxtaposing the medieval streets with the art of light and projection - a whale in the river, a wave of bottles or the cosmos forming on the facade of a Cathedral. The humour of a cloud of lightbulbs - ideas blinking in the night, or the complex simplicity of a prism across the water. 

Looking through my notes I saw my image - taken from The Mist - an installation so simple, but so evocative. The use of dry-ice to cling to the surface of river and bank, and the fluctuations of the light across its clouds. A techique that has always had the power to transport me from now to the moment. 

The pencil begins: soft glances on the paper - brushing shape and shade. Quicker movements start to pull out lines of architecture and forrest. Then more confident - more defined, the pencil etches out the planes of shade - spidering marks of reflection and foreground flora - to pick out perspective. Deeper into the darkness the blocks of existence start to form - before the relief of the rubber arrives to pick out the highlights - the moment the light frames the scene.

And there it ends. Contrast and composition are done - rough edges lead us to the monument, and darkness leads to the light. More could be done, the page could be filled, but that would still the frame, and then the memory would breathe its last. 

Durham at Night  

Love spooning.

A sleepless night. Thoughts of other pressures steamroll through my mind - bringing the cares of the day crashing into the space for sleep in their oafish and uncouth manner. 

I twist and turn - hoping to find some way to settle, to flatline my alpha waves - the ones who clearly have too much time on their hands. The music from the radio is unable to calm the seas of my mind - so I try to step back and try a moment postmodern awareness, only for the waves to batter over the sea-walls.

Exasperated I grasp hold of a millisecond of thought - an image glimpsed in the miasma of my mind - the memory of a soft snuffle next to me and the touch of a hand. I stir myself and head down to grab a pencil and paper.

I stare at the page - searching for the forms that lived for a moment, adding the mechanics of existence, considering the meaning of form. I sketch, and measure, rethinking, then reverting - applying pressure then removing it on second viewing. Slowly my 2-D sculpture - my mind game of line and emotion reveals itself on the page.

Beneath the surface tension I find the torrent of emotion. I dig out images of now and then to grasp my flow of feeling, and express what has been burrowed under nerves and next to do.  

A quick survey, and now I feel some relief. A quick message, and the moment is left for the morning. The surprise can wait. 

Love spooning. 

Butterflies.

The wind skips and hurries tonight - sometimes prodding, sometimes shoving as it plays amongst the buildings and the river and the sea. As I walk - the daily grind ground for the day, gusts shiver through my clothes and give my walk a meandering gait.

Tonight I play I return - veering this way and that to guide my path. I have spent the weekend in creative tumult - working against the futility of a drawing that started wrong and dug in its heels as I worked and reworked the detail - until I finished the work against my better judgement.

The next day time and inspiration led me to a memory of summer - a forgotten half idea that fluttered around my sleep resistant brain, landing in my sketch book with a deft touch. Working through the fear left over from the night before the image crawled into being in layers; slowly realising its final form - the shape and definition evolving through contrast and line.

My frustrated hungry catapillar ate through doubt and anger to gain the strength to form is pupa, to find the energy to metamorphose. I found my kaleidoscope of crazy emotions settled in simplicity on the page, and sought rest for the night. 

Resting.

Soothed I moved myself to complete another work - another summer piece that played in the realm of memory. Commissioned to think back on time and space in hope of what the future brings. Finished and delivered the work has brought its happiness - adding my skip to the winds.

The weekend done the work that begun it all still waits. But there has been achievement and relief since I first started. So I will take time and space to rectify the issues; for nothing has been wasted - just ideas and instinct tested - as they will be again. So for now I smile - and contemplate a curry (another commitment I made - this time to myself) and wait for the wind to change.

A (n ot so) idle thought.

I seem in danger of letting the blog slip - as I've been working on stuff for my wife's school, and a little idea for a children's short story (and now thanks to predictive text a children's snot story). So with that in mind I thought I'd try it out here - any thoughts will be appreciated (and slightly dreaded), along with some of my illustration ideas and process.

"The Cleaning Ninja. 

 Harrison liked to play with his toys. He liked to take them out on long adventures, where they would fight terrible enemies, climb enormous mountains, save villages in the nick of time, and generally get a bit battered and bruised. So it was understandable that when Harrison finished playing both he and the toys were exhausted. Way too exhausted to crawl back to where they lived in the cupboard. Instead Harrison and his toys lay puffed out, until Harrison had to go to bed.

Harrison's Mummy would often complain about the state of his bedroom. She would put her hands on her hips and wonder how he found anything in that mess!  

One morning, after Harrison had been on a particularly tiring adventure his Mummy looked into the room and put her hands on her hips. 

"Harrison, this room is a mess - I'm sure you can't find anything in here. It's time that you tidied it up. Here are some boxes and some cloths, I'm going to the shops, when I get back I expect to see it all put away tidy, and any mess cleaned up." 

"But Mummy..." Harrison started, but it was no good, the cloths and boxes flew into his room, and the door shut. Harrison stood and looked at all the toys around him.

They were everywhere.

There was no way he could tidy all this, not by himself. You would need Ninja skills to be able to get anywhere in here. Harrison slapped his forehead, "Of course!" he shouted. He had forgotten that only last week he and Blue Ted had climbed the Himalayas to the temple of The Monks, where they had learnt how to be Ninjas so they could defeat the evil dinosaurs of doom. All he had to do was remember what he had been taught.

Harrison stood and closed his eyes. Ninjas were cunning, and could flip and roll so that they couldn't be caught by enemy weapons. And they could make anything into a weapon, so they were always prepared. Harrison remembered all the skills he had learnt, and thought he could use it to tidy his room. 

The next second The Cleaning Ninja was flying through the air, before rolling through his toys - flicking them into the cupboard where they lived.

The Cleaning Ninja (character design). 

Just as he was about to hit the wall, he spun and pushed off the side, grabbing his building brick spaceships and using them to glide toward the cupboard. At the last second he let go, bouncing on the chair to send his dinosaurs and soldiers sailing into the cupboard with the others. He then dealt with the stragglers - chopping and kicking the last few toys into the cupboard before those who were left ran there for safety. 

Harrison, 'The Cleaning Ninja', bowed deeply toward the cupboard and shut the door. 

Just as he took off his mask, the bedroom door opened and in walked Mummy. She blinked.

"Wow," she said, "this is much better, and so quick - I'm very impressed. Aren't you good?" Harrison smiled. His Mummy walked around the room - checking to see it had all been cleared. "Isn't this nicer?" she said, leaning on the cupboard door, "Now, do you think you can keep it like this?"

"Oh yes," nodded Harrison, just as Mummy knocked  he cupboard door and all of Harrison's toys whooshed out and covered the bedroom floor. Mummy looked around at all the mess and wailed, "Harrison!" 

"Don't worry Mummy," smiled Harrison, "The Cleaning Ninja will sort it all out.""

Well that's where it is at the moment - along with some rough thumbnail sketches to pepper the story. 

Development ideas. 

As well, I suspect some more of the chaos - which I'm looking forward to drafting - as I get to act it out first 😉. 

Bursting with ideas.

I'm finishing a job at the moment - a couple of quick canvases. I enjoy the challenge of trying to work out the nuance of jobs like these - what it is I'm trying to achieve? After all these jobs are for other people - sure my eye and instinct are important - but I'm not the person at the end of the journey. 

Much as I enjoy working on commission, or to a plan, I find that it's always when these occupy my time that my mind decides to kick up as many ideas as possible. Now is the time when this or that drawing springs to mind, when I see a sky that almost dances onto a canvas - rolling there for all to see; or something happens that properly reasonates, and right now the idea of illustrating some short stories for kids is tugging at my elbow - and it's really annoying.

My point is that imagination will out. The time I spend on craft and honing skill just makes the unpredictable and the unexpected try harder. So for all the hours I spend getting flesh tones exact, I correspond with images and doodles that spin off in wild tangents or awkward compositions. I muddy colours through hunch - and scratch away with a knife to reveal the kernel of an idea. 

Much of my work is about the act of looking - of seeing a thing, a scene, a person in my way - through my understanding. With each brush stroke I etch away at the idea of what it was I saw.  

When my head breaks free of this intense focus I see my pen start to dabble in the mechanics of what could be; see perspectives I can only try to represent on paper. It is a moment of excitement, but also one of deep frustration - waiting for a idea whose moment has not yet come.

The idea trap. 

Anticipation.

There is a trembling. The surface tension holds for a heartbeat; and for a second we wait in the hands of potential.

The ink blobs like jelly. Inside are a thousand strokes of the pen, a myriad of different shapes and forms, a multitude of shade and contrast. 

The pen waits - set in the blocks ready to pounce, looking up - anxious to know the direction it will travel. I inhale - letting my cheeks strain with the pent up puff, then release - breaking through the skin with the blast, insides spilling this way and that - droplets speeding across the page, scared of their own shadow. 

My pen dives in - scooping up a line and chasing it to the end of the road, then scurrying back to join the departing rivulets into form. Hurrying hither and thither in scribbles of perspective and depth. 

Chance settles on the familiar - a thing, an object and quickly improvises on the known in order to scrape down to the unexpected.  

Here are the results of idle thoughts woken with the urgency of the random; and from these experiment of thought - these variations on a theme, come aspects of the soul unbidden, but not unwelcome.

Primordial Ink.

Dropped toothpaste.

Cold. The chill. The ice on the air. Eyes open sluggishly - blinking to make sense of the world around them. Darkness clings to the surroundings - a murk that warns of the day to come.

Outside the streets cower - striving not to be seen. Others stumbling, as I, on the way to work - with stamping and clapping to get the blood flowing.

The week's beginning takes its toil. Cul-de-Sacs of sleep litter the geography of daily abulutions. Extra seconds of recollection and numbness that take the clocks hands past where they should be. Time taken to acknowledge reality as it crawls itself over the day, and links arms too, too strongly. 

This is Monday. The wheels of the week slowly cranking through the gears to generate the energy to see another revolution of the disc.  

Toothpaste smeared on the brush and over the sink, I stare into the mirror, blinking myself awake. Blink, blink... Blink. 

The horror of the now.