Added May 28, 2014
As an artist and art tutor I have long realised how important creating something is to state of mind. And by ‘creating’ I don’t just mean painting, writing, music, etc - I mean any form of creation. A well made bed is a creation to a chamber maid, cars parked correctly are a creation to parking attendant, a pile of mud is a creation to a child. In fact, everyone creates and everyone should.
Why? – Because you’ll go mad if you don’t.
If you live among civilised people, you are continually obliged to follow rules. You have to stick to speed limits, you have to park carefully, you have to be polite, you have to follow fashion, you have to go to work and do what is asked of you, you have to know what time it is all the time so that you can do all the stuff you are meant to do every day. You have to be nice to people even when you want to slap them, you mustn’t swear, you must pretend to enjoy weddings and so on. There is nothing wrong with this – it is the only way the human race survives. However, it is unhealthy if you never get the chance to do things YOUR way.
Artists are lucky – they create images, music, prose etc to make something that pleases them and them alone - and that does not have to ask permission of anyone. Where else in life does one have the chance to create worlds as they would have them?
My favourite form of creation is painting. A good painting has promise and mystery and the possibility of being a doorway out of one space and into another. A good painting emotes and invites and delights the viewer and can change state of mind just by looking at it.
When I was 12 I read ‘A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde in which Dorian gets his portrait painted and then puts it in the attic once he realises it is ageing and corrupting instead of him. He then proceeds to misbehave and over indulge in all things without apparently ageing or getting messed up because the painting suffers the damage instead. WHY CAN’T I DO THAT????
I know I can’t because the self-portrait I did when I was 19 still looks young and beautiful and a size 12. (sigh…) However, I love the idea of a painting coming to life and this is what I try and make my paintings do. I also remember reading a scary story where people kept disappearing from ‘real life’ and reappearing in a haunting landscape painting of mountains and dark forests and strange log cabins. I want to be able to do that (as long as I get to choose the venue because I’d hate to appear in a Francis Bacon painting).
Both these stories made me realise that the reason I like painting is the possibility of magic. I usually paint things I can’t have. It is my way of being able to have them. I can’t have a tiger for practical reasons but I can have a painting of one. I can’t have Arabian horses or anything with fur because I’m allergic to them. I can’t have a beautiful villa, a Lamborghini and my own Caribbean Island because I am rubbish at making money. But I can have paintings of them.
The paintings which most inspire me by others have this quality of allowing me to step into them, or have the subject step out of the picture. One of my favourite paintings is ‘The light of the World’ by William Holman Hunt. It is a painting of Jesus knocking on the door of an old cottage in a wood. Even though I am not a Christian – it is impossible not to be moved by a desire to step into the painting and open the door for him. This is the power of painting. Most paintings around in the world right now do not appeal to me. But when one does it is like a siren pull. Even Mark Rothko paintings – as abstract as one can get – have the allure of ‘this may be a doorway to another world’ in them. I like that.
So why is being creative so therapeutic? Because we all need a universe that plays by our rules and not someone else’s and because is the only way to not go nuts – deep huh?
