Discipline is the road to freedom

having barely seen any as there wasn’t any in the house when i was a kid i didn’t really know what art was i was a right slow starter but i began to get the hang of it after i was given acid by a photographer when i first went to an exhibition i liked i felt there was no real point in going to any more because from that point i knew i wanted to do it myself and going to exhibitions or anywhere else for that matter would just get in the way of what i wanted to do of course there are exceptions but i get that terrible feeling the same i did forty years back when i would see a band playing live i’d watch for a minute get inspired then want desperately to go home and do my own thing not that i thought i was or what i was doing was superior far from it i simply wanted to be doing what / similar to what they were doing but under my own steam on my terms by myself within my mind living out my ideas i just wanted to feel the same freedom as they on the stage or those who had produced that art work i desperately wanted to create something myself purely for the sake of doing it. the journey to it is a long one but i can safely say that the first exhibition i went to which i totally got which shook me and rearranged me the first load of art work which caused me to consider myself what i now consider to be an existentialist and artist was francis bacon the human body at the hayward gallery in ’98 i can still see it now feel it sense it lurking there waiting for me round the corner i went there with a high ranking nazi official who liked to lay down the law as the arbiter of what was and what wasn’t taste in art and i at that point had been swayed by their influence as i was by anyone who appeared to know what they were talking about having been raised and surrounded by people who had absolutely no healthy understanding of what they were talking about and no actual educational information or barely any had been offered to me till that point i’d seen bacons three studies at the base of a crucifixion at the tate at some point in the mid ’80s and though i had no idea what it was i was gawping at i knew that i somehow liked it i liked the orange and the bandages that was the first time to my knowledge i’d felt an attraction to such unsettling things and somewhere along the line i’d seen some old film of bacon him being interviewed draped across a single bed in black turtle neck smoking fags and speaking half in english half in french and he was drinking wine not beer i remember being equally both disturbed and entranced attracted to him and his aura i now of course know that this film was of conversations between he and david sylvester when bacon was probably at the height of his powers i at that time then in 98 heading to the hayward with himmler had no real idea what to expect really it was just somewhere to go though by this time in my life i was in my mid thirties and had well and truly been round the block emotionally and as youthful dreams of love and roses had been dug up torn to pieces and composted the individual i who walked up the ramp into the main room of the gallery that morning was already viewing the world and it’s offerings through trodden on spectacles – and there it was – bacons world – and there it was – my world it was instantaneous in a flash in that moment i got it i knew there then they were people as i saw them the world as it appeared to me all of the awful terror and truth of it all the repulsion and violence the very essence the horror of my reality what i had experienced what had happened to me what was hidden deep within me the truth the truth i couldn’t believe what i was seeing at once the screens the veils between human situations between thought / thoughts and then the stark brutal impact of visual visceral experience all hope was gone dreams what fucking dreams this was it the real actual moment there it was captured frozen stamped forever there on canvas and on my consciousness i knew there and then that somehow by whatever means i could i just had to find and express my own self my own truth that was a life changing moment and i’d barely entered the room let alone approached and studied any of the work studied the work what am i talking about i didn’t have a clue i had no idea how to look at it i didn’t even know what i was really looking at but i did know that just to be in their presence and to feel their power was a transformative experience for me enhanced by the fact that i was immediately and absolutely alone in that moment and throughout the rest of the exhibition as my escort that morning was unsettled by both the paintings and my reaction to them the past was crumbling and a sense of freedom i’d hitherto not known infused me and whether it be by writing or music i knew that it was my mission my duty to recreate that essence that meaning that truth at that point i’d really no concept of painting i couldn’t draw i’d never had a lesson i’d no idea how to do it it was what smart educated posh people did not some house painter like me that was well out of my league but by other means i knew i could do it i had to and there on that morning the next phase of my schooling my life began there were still flowers but i knew then how much rot and shit it takes to grow them there were still rainbows but how infrequent and fleeting they were there was still beauty but beneath the surface of that beauty the burgeoning gore and stench the fatal machinations were so indescribably pregnant and ready to explode at any moment everything changed for me that morning as my eyes opened to the reality of being both alive and dying alone and within my human body.