"Ararat"; oil on canvas; 71x71cm
New paintings every other month.
See the Great Crashing Bust; The Time-Travelling Mermaid; The Day After it Rained Forever! Marvel at Jupiter Strangling a Feral Cat with his Bare Hands; at the Ultimate Descent of the High-Flying Consumer and the Final Destination of the Unwary Explorer! Thrill to A Young Man's Dreams and their Aftermath; the Nineteen-Nineties Navel-Gazer, the Miraculous Crossing of the Stony Creek Backwash and a View of Hobart from Mount Wellington, and above all, ... oh - you want serious!
Categories! They remind me of the far-too-frequent occasions when financial desperation has me filing papers in some mind-numbingly boring office (not that I'm much good at it - my Miscellaneous files are the only ones in the known universe with multiple sub-categories). I particularly dislike the tendency of Art People to classify my paintings as Surrealist.
Surrealism grew out of the anti-art movements of the second decade of this century. I wasn't there, so I don't remember it. It appears in hindsight to have been an exclusive club of immature men playing "I can be more outrageous than you" with each other and speculating about women and sex. Personally, I find this sort of behavious childish and distasteful; I've always been too busy enjoying sex to bother speculating about it, and on the odd occasion when I've wondered how a man felt about something I've found one and asked him. This saves a lot of time.
My main objection to being labelled a Surrealist is that my intentions are diametrically opposed to those claimed by the Surrealist school. Where they declared hostility to rationalism, I maintain that, like it or not, there is no sensible alternative. My paintings take the Irrational to its logical conclusion - and further, if that is semantically possible. Far from relying on subconcious imagery, I consider the contents of my paintings very carefully. Which does not, however, prevent me slipping in something totally silly just because it seems like a good idea at the time.
My aim in life is to have as much fun as possible, and I'm right on target at the moment. I suspect my philosophy is rather more Bugs Bunny than Bunuel or Breton. And my art? File it under "Miscellaneous".