Hybrid Artifacts

 John Keats - To Autumn

I

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
      Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.


II                                  

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
   Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.


III

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
   Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
      The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Why have I posted this? Maybe because its the spirit of the land where I live, and it permeates much of my artwork. Maybe because it is an amazingly beautiful poem. and I just happen to love it. I think though that it's actually because so many people on LJ seem suddenly to be very sad, almost closed off from the world around them or caught up in 'events'. I feel a need to celebrate the land itself. To reconnect with it.

I have been reflecting this morning that in general people often just don't 'get it' in life. We struggle to come to terms with things that may actually be a bit obvious.
Perhaps to be perfect, perfection must contain imperfections.
That making anything always involves destroying something else.
If love must sometimes be tough to be true, might a tough universe also be a perfectly loving one?
Is that the natural state of all things?
That perhaps we are embraced by by a perfectly loving universe - perfect because it's flaws make it so, loving because it gives us all we need, even if sometimes it has to take them away. That we are in a constant cycle of transformation, birth, life and death and that rather than getting upset by it, we should just learn to go with it and see it for what it is, a crucible of love.
Life sometimes really sucks. But its constantly amazing and I love it.

We spend too long forgetting the magic of that first time we open our eyes and see it all as a child. In consequence we become blind to how glorious it all is.

Creativity is vital to the recall of this magic. It's often about opening our eyes again, surprising and delighting us, shocking us, or just reminding us that there is a wild and strange joy in all things.

Here are a few things I culled from my daily online newspaper read:


http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/chinese-classical-poem-was-brothel-ad-1058031.html
(this one was just funny)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/08/lapland-new-forest-christmas
(as was this one- move over 'Bad Santa' reality is worse)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/14/books-dictionary-culture

This last one I found thought provoking. I am a firm believer that the way we use language affects the way we think and vice versa. There is a fascinating book by Walter Ong 'Orality and Literacy' that suggests that the switch from oral tradition to a literary one had profound affects on people. These days we seem to be increasingly moving into a post-literate age, one of predominantly visual communication and music. I for one don't like the idea that words relating to bureaucracy and technology are displacing ones relating to expressions of the physical world and nature, even in a dictionary. I want a world where people know what a catkin is.
So a question - is this a 'bad' thing? What do you think?

Just a quick note to everyone that I have my Etsy shop: hybridartifacts.etsy.com back up and running with new, lower prices. With the exchange rate now very different between the pound and the dollar it means I can cut prices in dollars quite considerably, especially on my Alice collectors prints. Since this doesn't do much for prices to the UK, I have chopped a bit more off the price of these so everyone can benefit from a lower price.

I only have a few items showing in the shop at the moment, but you can always ask for a print of pretty much anything you have seen of mine here, or on my website www.hollinghurst.org.uk using the 'request custom item' feature on the right of my Etsy shop pages.

Christmas is early this year...

Having been doing far more fine art and selling at art fairs, recently I have been dipping my toes into doing illustration for book covers. I actually used to do a lot more 'commercial' art in the past than I have been recently (though I have done a fair bit of art for websites in the form of icons and the like over the last couple of years) so this is both a step in a new direction (my first book cover) and a return to more commission based work for me. This is also one of the reasons why I have not been posting much artwork lately - I have been very busy working on other covers (all rather horribly low paid stuff right now alas, but good for my portfolio when it comes to tempting an agent to represent me). I don't like posting this sort of work until it will be in print, hence the delay in posting.

So-here it is-my first published book cover:
www.immanion-press.com/info/book.asp
This should look familiar to people!
Storm felt that 'The Speakers House' would make a great cover for this short story anthology, and having read it I'm inclined to agree. I did add a snake in the lower left corner for her though. Read the book and you will see why.

Storm is a fantastic writer, and if you haven't tried her books I would certainly recommend them. I really enjoyed reading 'Mythophidia'.

I just read an interesting article in The Guardian about a clock:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/sep/18/corpus.clock

It's well worth checking out (and seeing the all too short video of it in action) because it is a wonderfully eccentric and grim design and rather unusual. A 'time-eater', or as the Guardian put it- the 'monster of clocks'.

Sometimes a newspaper article comes along that demands to be shared...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/08/usa

It starts weird, and gets weirder.


On a completely different note:
My day was punctuated by a small trip to the town next door to pick up some slides offered on 'Freecycle'. I'm always on the lookout for royalty free images I can use for artwork/reference (since I tend to use teeny tiny bits of images I need ten times the amount I would normally). Today the universe smiled on me and quite by chance, along with some wonderful images from around Europe, there were also several shots of bits of Yorkshire with some great drystone walls. Quite by chance, I happen to be working on a book cover that needs a Yorkshire setting, with drystone walls. I had built up a rough, but was really keen to find some good quality images I could use to work from. The timing could hardly be better as I was just about to start work on the walls in the image!

Sometimes you have take a detour to get where you are going. Had I just stayed at home and slogged on with the piece I would have missed out on these. I am enormously grateful to the gentleman who kindly put them up for collection!

A teacher I had back in secondary school actually did that for me - at a parent/teacher review he once looked a bit blank, then said - 'There is a lot going on inside that boy's head'.

That was the same teacher who also managed to sum me up in a one word- idiosyncratic.

Thinking about it, my journal tends to reflect only a tiny portion of what's going on in my head. If it were to do that (and maybe it should), it would also hold fragments of stories, ideas for games, comments on all the subjects you are not supposed to talk about at dinner, observations and reflections on the world and nature and people, doodles, scribblings and links to things I have found online and off. Then again-maybe I shouldn't- I don't really have the time to act on even 10% of whats going on in my head, let along record it for others to see! Perhaps I should just continue to cherry pick?

taken from awesomeart and my beloved winggleam   :)

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (read about half already)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac --
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Looking through the list I detect a rather strong bias towards Jane Austin. I have never read any of her work but I reserve the right to having a healthy scepticism of the status the list gives her. The Same actually goes for Dickens, who I have read a lot by. I find Dickens to be highly variable - some brilliant writing (especially some of his short pieces) and some that's total drudgery to read!
I would be inclined to just have a single example by any given author on my own version of the list so authors like Umberto Eco can be included! It was all based on voting though, so thats why its such an odd list at times.

I had a look at The Big Read website and the list there is actually different and includes a few books I adore (like Gormenghast- my all time favourite on both lists):

1. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
7. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
18. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
20. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling
23. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
24. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
25. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
26. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch by George Eliot
28. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
29. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
31. The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
35. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion by Jane Austen
39. Dune by Frank Herbert
40. Emma by Jane Austen
41. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
42. Watership Down by Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm by George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
48. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
53. The Stand by Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56. The BFG by Roald Dahl
57. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
60. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
61. Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
63. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
65. Mort by Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
67. The Magus by John Fowles
68. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
69. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Perfume by Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda by Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
77. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses by James Joyce
79. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
80. Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits by Roald Dahl
82. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
83. Holes by Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
85. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel by Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
89. Magician by Raymond E. Feist
90. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
92. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
93. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine by Anya Seton
96. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
97. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

This list has far too much Terry Pratchett. Any list with even one book sole authored by him has too much for me. I think he is one of the worst writers of all time. Why have I read so many then? Well, I will read almost anything when I have the time and his works is so popular its always lying around somewhere near to hand. These days I given up even doing that with his books though.

A post by angusabranson
suggesting possible evidence of time travel has reminded me of a picture that may also be a clue that time travellers have been active in history and leaving accidental or deliberate clues to their presence in the past.
Here is the post by Angus:
Did the Roman's play D&D?

So-the first piece of evidence we find is this:

A Roman d20 perhaps used by a time travelling dungeons and dragons player.

followed by this:

A time traveller strikes the 'buddy pose' as an in joke for future observers.

Has anyone else got any visual evidence of the presence of time travellers? What is going on? Are these being left accidentally or deliberately? Who are they, and what are their motives?
Perhaps collectively we could organise a hunt for evidence of their activity?

Stolen from </span>"</b></a>shadowbunny"

 I don't normally do these, but there is always an exception! IF YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, I want to know 36 things about you. Short and sweet is fine ... You're on my list, so I want to know you better!

BE HONEST! COPY FROM HERE THEN SEND DIRECTLY TO ME IN A COMMENT THEN, REPOST THE EMPTY QUESTIONS.

All answers are screened....OK EDIT!!! Never having screened comments before I just discovered that if I reply to them, everything gets unscreened!! You live and learn. Since I said they would be screened, I shall remove them from sight ;) and then not reply so they stay screened (hopefully)
( ??? ) 

My brain is in 'bounce mode' right now... that is, ideas are firing off left right and centre and forming all sorts of chaotic connections that then slowly take shape and form.

My last post was about asking questions about art and cultural significance and the changing patterns of these. It bought me to a point of considering art as a shared meta-narrative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative and then as the reverse (through a comment my wife Suzette made about people taking pictures of everyday stuff like toast). That led me to making an edit of my original post (so if you are interested, go back and read the edit because you need to read about toast for this to make full sense).  Apart from appreciating that Suzette is often far far cleverer than she suspects or knows she is, it also started pulling me in an interesting direction when combined with </b></a>and his comments on the process of selling art. While the process of selling art wasn't what I was originally wanting to write about, it obviously does tie in with how people relate to art (in effect, if art means enough to someone they might buy it). I thought long and hard about images of warm buttered toast and why people might want one on their wall.

Then I started rabbiting on as I do about Baudrillard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard love or loathe him, or in the vast majority of cases, not know who the hell he was or what he was saying, he does often seem to have a great relevance to a lot of things (at least to me).
Having read a lot of his writing and then read the wiki link as well, it reminded me of his early work on consumerism. He came up with this, which is not only relevant to the process of consumerism in our culture, but also to the act of creating and of selling art:

He wrote that there are four ways of an object obtaining value. The four value-making processes are as follows:

1. The first is the functional value of an object; its instrumental purpose. A pen, for instance, writes; and a refrigerator cools. Marx's "use-value" is very similar to this first type of value.
2. The second is the exchange value of an object; its economic value. One pen may be worth three pencils; and one refrigerator may be worth the salary earned by three months of work.
3. The third is the symbolic value of an object; a value that a subject assigns to an object in relation to another subject. A pen might symbolize a student's school graduation gift or a commencement speaker's gift; or a diamond may be a symbol of publicly declared marital love.
4. The last is the sign value of an object; its value within a system of objects. A particular pen may, whilst having no functional benefit, signify prestige relative to another pen; a diamond ring may have no function at all, but may suggest particular social values, such as taste or class.

Now, art doesn't (correct me if I'm wrong with any of this), operate on the level of functional value. Unless you are VERY successful it tends not (for most of us artists anyway) to operate on exchange value.
It does operate on the last two levels-symbolic and sign value.

What I was mulling over was the process of change over the centuries in the symbolic value of art - in effect that it has shifted away from met-narrative value as our faith in meta-narratives is disrupted. Without meta-narratives, meaning becomes localised...and voila, you have pictures of that piece of warm buttered toast!

Artists are often encouraged to place symbolic value in their art-in fact most of our cultural assumptions about the role of artists rely on the idea that an artist is someone who can instil symbolic meaning in something. That goes way back to early cultures painting pictures of deer on a cave wall - they were relating the image to the object for a cultural effect i.e. being able to successfully hunt the deer and put dinner on the family table. This evolved into art as a descriptor of those meta-narratives- the vision of the power and wealth of the state, the vision of the church and its stories it needed to tell, a reflection of the growth of the power of the mercantile classes and the growth of our modern consumer culture.

Maybe what I was asking in my previous post was actually this - do we still need art to depict the magic deer so we can bring it home for supper? Do we need art to tell us stories other than those of local narratives? Do we need to re-energise meta-narratives in art for our cultures sake? Maybe I am influenced by the obvious problems we have with our economy, with the environment, with our general sense of listlessness. Perhaps I am asking if art can (or should) seek to address this? Or should we all be making pictures of toast? If the original role of the artist (the primal role) was as a shaman (yes, I go on about shamanistic art a lot I know), to what extent has that always been the case, and what are the (resonant) images that enable the shaman to bring healing to our culture, to open the doors of perception?

As artists we can perhaps make a living selling images of toast to people that need to feel a sense of comfort. A good friend here on LJ was recently reinvigorate by a piece of cake- maybe a good picture of cake can remind us of how real cake can invigorate us? While that's all wonderful and cosey and nice, it doesn't actually put real toast on the table, nor does it solve the problems created by the act of desiring without consideration for its long term effects which I would suggest are are current pressing issues (our economic and environmental issues right now are largely driven by a philosophy of unrestrained desire needing to be satisfied by unrestrained consumption so far as I see it). Is there a role for artists to restore meta-narratives of some kind, or to free our local narratives from the process of desiring consumer goods somehow? Can we replace desire for material things with immaterial ones? The shaman in the caves became the priests of monolithic religions over time- their pictures became ones not of deer in the hunt, but of abstractions for living nobler and 'better ' lives. Can we, as artists, create a process of desiring that results in symbolic value being more universally accorded to our work? Can we live by that? Can we have a cultural impact through that? Should we?

Regardless, I think that perhaps it might be helpful for those reading this post who are artists to consider the last two levels-of symbol and sign when they create and sell art. At least we can understand then that the symbols and signs that have value for us won't always have the same value for others (or enough value to them to result in sufficient desire in them to buy it), but that inevitably it will have value for some. We can then perhaps at least find some peace over the need any artist with integrity feels to create art that is true to themselves rather than 'selling out'. Maybe we can discover practical ways to target that-to make affinities stronger with those for whom our art has power? Perhaps for some of us it will affect what we create?

For those who do not create art, perhaps it opens a door for considering the role art might have in your own lives? Are you in need of images with stories to tell? Do you need to relate to the feeling of a particular artist in some way? Do you need art to comfort you, or to inspire you? To be a band aid on a wound or to bring healing and suggest solutions to how the wound got there in the first place? Next time you look at art online, in a gallery, or in a book, or in your own home, where might these thoughts take you and how might they affect your relationship with art?

This post is intended as a jumping off point for anyone interested - the links are there to facilitate the beginnings of a personal exploration for those that fancy the idea. Some days I just think around things and become very absorbed by ideas. It can spill over into what I talk (and post) about.

I have had a growing interest over the last few years in the role of images in life and our cultures. Why is it that while I might like a certain image, it still leaves me unaffected within, while others (sometimes ones I don't like at all, but usually ones I adore) can affect me profoundly? We are all aware when music affects us - when it tugs at our hearts or plunges us into introspection, but perhaps most of us no longer allow for the time to stop and contemplate the similar power of some images?

Maybe we are surrounded by too much 'visual musak' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_music ) - bland images that sell but do not 'tell'? Perhaps we have lost the art of letting images speak to us? I know some of us still have this art, but in a wider cultural sense I suspect it was lost some time ago. We may if we are inclined sometimes sit in an art gallery and let a particular painting we love wash over us, or be amazed at the skill and beauty in its creation, but the vast majority of images we see are perceived, but never truly observed, and when we do stop and contemplate them they often have little substance worth the effort. The images glide past us in profusion like landscapes sliding past us on a train journey-there but almost instantly lost to us. One seen and gone every second.

So- this post is all about standing still and looking at images (especially at art, but not exclusively so since even nature is an image to our eye and can affect us profoundly if we let it).

I am probably wrong in this - but I feel there are three core traditions of seeing images beyond the casual (two still practised and one largely forgotten). They are: Icons (and western religious art), Mandalas and the Alchemical/magical. Both Icons and Mandalas are known invitations to contemplation - Orthodox religion still practises the contemplation of Icons, though its practise is often ignored outside of it and wider Christian tradition seems a bit blind to it as a spiritual tradition (and lives too fast at times to see its own spiritual potential), while perhaps the Mandala is the best known these days. It is a little ironic that an Eastern tradition is better known and understood in the west than our own. The Alchemical is probably only really known to a fairly specialised group of people interested in that particular sort of mystic and  magical practice. It does tie in with both Icons/religious art and Mandalas though, as a form of contemplative visualisation. I believe it also extends sometimes into a form of visualisation tied into such esoteric things as thought forms and some magical workings - if anyone can tell me what the correct term for using an image in such in a way in magic is I would be very grateful as I have seen one used but forgotten what it was!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon  ; (while the article discusses veneration of icons, it fails to really explore contemplation of them in a personal meditative practice)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala ; and http://www.alchemywebsite.com

This is the base of my thinking here - those three inter-related forms can form a starting point for asking questions about art in western culture. Why do some images have 'power' and others do not? Is it the empathic creation of a conduit for the artist's vision/feelings- something some have the skill to do and others don't? Is that some artwork contains symbolism and signs that have archetypal or personal significance for us? Is that some art tells us stories that we need to listen to? Or is it sometimes that art can invite us to contemplate simple things like light and colour and 'beauty' in ways we otherwise might not? That it is an invitation to see differently (or simply to just stop and realise we ARE seeing).

As an artist these are vital questions to me. I want to explore 'resonant' art, while at the same time acknowledging that to survive commercially I also need to sometimes produce art that is more like visual 'musak' . Ideally I would like to think I can consistently make resonant commercial art (and that's struggle and a half which often results in failure alas).

In the end I am left with questions to ask - can art speak us to from a commercial base? Can it speak to us in transition, in passing as we move rapidly by, or does it demand we are arrested in our movement and take the time to contemplate? Should we be making more time to contemplate images and accord them real worth, and should we sometimes extend that practice into a more spiritual investigation of art around us? Should we be inviting art to transform us, to edify us, and be a tool in itself of placing us in relation to our physical and emotional environment?

There was a time once where images had power because the only time we saw them was in a context of profound shared meaning - we saw them on the walls of churches, in illuminated manuscripts, as treasured records of people important to us or as memento mori. Over time they started to become records of the everyday, records with their own value and insight, but increasingly the vast majority of images we see are packaging and ads and their messages perhaps detract from the real power of images to enlighten and transform us.

What do you think (and feel) about the role and power of images? What IS resonant art, and what is visual musak, and is it important that we distinguish between them and perhaps encourage one over the other? What happens to resonant art if we treat it like visual musak? And what might happen to visual musak if we treat it as resonant? Should we  invest more time in contemplating images, and is that best done within a pre-existing tradition of image contemplation, or do we need to find new ones?

I believe that images can have the power to turn lead into gold - to enact a 'magical' transformation of mundane materials into  resonant art that can challenge and change us, opening the door to a wider, deeper, transformative perception. A visual alchemy. I look for it when I see art - does it hold the seed of this? In the end, at its best (like music), it evokes feeling beyond words and language - something we yearn to express that forms raw emotion alone and strive to 'decode'.

EDIT....
In a reply to markmc03 below, I mentioned this:

"My wife, Suzette, raised something fascinating this evening- that right now pictures of everyday stuff (photos, not paintings), like toast or a cup of coffee, are really popular. Effectively what's happening (so far as I see it) is that people are reintegrating the saturation advertising images of product all around them into their art. In effect they are simply regurgitating the advertising images that surround them everyday. To me that smacks of an institutionalised thinking-accepting that what one is conditioned to see and expect is what one can produce and consume. What do we dream of? We dream of products at Anthropolgie at 25% off. What do we want on our walls? The products we cant quite afford, or the ones that sell us comfort and familiarity. Why do we want it? Because we have been told to want it by people selling it. Is that what we dwell on these days? What does that MEAN...deep down, in our very being?"

I am going to add another thought to that. On seeing a friend on LJ recently revitalised with a piece of cake it reminded me that sometimes the best solution for a problem is a simple, practical one. Meeting a physical need can meet a spiritual one at times as well. Perhaps these pictures of toast are working on another level I overlooked? Perhaps they are simulations (c.f Baudrillard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard ) of that process of eating 'real cake'? Maybe it IS art with power because it addresses a real need cultural need for toast? For images that comfort and reassure us? Perhaps it is still a problem that it is tied into commercialism (as most of our gratifications and desires now are), but maybe its all about the degree/level of things? Maybe all the great resonant art is just about really grand, deep and profound versions of toast? But we don't all operate on that level all the time - sometimes we just need an actual piece of warm, buttered toast - and an image of that can remind us of the feeling and simulate it in a good way?

Tara of '3 Rexes' jewelry has been very kindly promoting my artwork, first on Etsy with her treasury pick, and now in her blog - I'm flattered!

Her jewelry is rather lovely- see http://www.threerexes.com/   and her Etsy shop   I think the piece below is especially grand-it feels like it should have magical powers:



Do check out her Etsy shop and webpage-there is some splendid jewelry there!

"Inspired by the opulence of the Baroque & Art Nouveau eras & deep influences from both the Dark Ages & the Bohemian Love Generation of the 60's, the Three Rexes line is a unique & timeless collection."

You can see some of Tara's artwork here.

I have put up some new Etsy prints as promised! I decided to go for $20 a print - I just hope that is a fair price... I hate pricing with a vengeance.

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5631226

I shall be preparing some more to put up shortly (and if anyone wants to suggest a few favourites that is fine by me)