My creative process unplugged
January 16, 2009
My painting practice – since 2006 when I finally was able to stop thinking – has been simply the manifestation though me of the creative energy that is inherent in all of us. This energy is the primitive impulse behind every creative activity. It is the core of life itself as understood by the devotees of the Dionysian religion of ancient Greece.
This life/creative force when exited intensely can overflow into a frenzy of erotic madness – mainomenos Dionysos (mad Dionysos). It was this energy in its most phallic, demented state that I opened myself to whenever I worked during 2007 in order to be able to switch off any rational thought so that the paintings could take their own shape; as autonomously as possible. This process resulted in the craziest, most powerful work I’d ever created – until last year.
Why 2008 was a different story
According to very old Dionysian rites, even before the height of Greek culture, the Dionysian calendar was split into two alternating years. On the first year (depending on how you look at it), Dionysos is absent. He is in the underworld. He is dead. On the following year he is pulsating and overflowing with the virile energy of life (and creativity) to the point of madness (and destruction). It is this second Dionysos – Dionysos Mainomenos – that possessed me during 2007 as mentioned above.
2008 was a different story. I wasn’t overcome by spontaneous creative/sexual madness and had to work in a more earthly way to try and get into the spirit of this more subterranean Dionysos called ‘Dionysos Chthonios’.
As legend has it, this period of Dionysian life is not about mourning his death. Instead there is a yearning for life. Dionysos wants, and indeed needs, to be awakened. Back in the day (as I nostalgically like to refer to antiquity), it was the women devotees of Dionysos, the Thyads, who then became the Meneads during the year of his presence, who awakened the god in the form of the phallus – one of his embodiments; which is also the life (and creative) force within us.
So, if you get my drift, it’s all about life/creativity. Dionysos tells us that life is energy. Modern science respects that and adds matter. So, in order to create paintings I have at my disposal, energy – in the form of my ‘dance’ in the studio, and matter – which are the materials I use.
The energy aspect is harder to fully understand – perhaps one day I might. As for the materials it is my duty as a serious painter to understand them as intimately as possible. They are, in this case, linen and oil paint – which is made of linseed oil plus pigments. Each of these pigments come from different substances, and – if not tampered with by paint manufactures –has its own characteristics which need to be respected and nurtured. It is these pigments that give the titles to these paintings.
The result of this synergy between the different colours (pigments) and the linen is somewhat beyond my control, or so I like to think. The result is in fact the paintings you can see in the images above and will be able to see in the flesh at Tin Sheds Gallery in November 2009.
