About
On Technique — Sámi Piece.
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Technically this piece is very intricate and may seem totally accurate but there’s a kind of push/pull between the artist and the medium that always occurs with this type of realism. It’s the question of, which aspects of reality are rigid and which are more malleable? A shirt fold and an individual strand of hair can be moved or adjusted quite easily without affecting the overall piece, whether by design or by mistake, but the weight in the hair as it falls or the hang of material still all need to align with reality.
This piece is a composite image, in that the foreground character is from one reference photograph and the background another. This creates it’s own challenges, such as, does the light follow through correctly? Is the perspective possible? Does it still feel real?
I think there is a lot more leeway than is let on in a piece like this. I find I’m able to move and warp things relatively freely without too much fear of breaking the illusion of reality. This may be because much of the details in reality we simply don’t notice as they’re too small and inconsequential. So when it comes to an artist working amongst these details, it’s found they’re mostly fluid and tangental.
On Fading Culture — Bella Coola Piece.
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Culture is not static. Yet likewise, when the anti-potlatch laws were introduced in 1884, it caused an unnatural disruption to the evolution of the Nuxalk, a First Nations people in British Columbia, colloquially referred to as the Bella Coola. Their ceremonial rituals were outlawed and due to a number of other outside influences their traditions became loose memories. Even by the 1920s elders struggled to recall their heritage, the youth held distain for it and it was even reported by anthropologist McIlwraith, that the memories of their paganism had begun to blend with Christian theology.
Memories are rife with inaccuracies and although it is to be expected when documenting a dying culture to come across errors in recall, the outside force of a growingly global world warped these memories even further. Even McIlwraith’s documenting of the Nuxalk people was prone to distortion. Innumerous edits by officials with a distaste for his work, technological limitations and destruction of vital records left the only significant documentation of the Bella Coola to be forever incomplete. Even now, the 1992 reprint of ‘The Bella Coola Indians’ is an almost impossible book to obtain and has become a faded vestige of knowledge no one cares to preserve.
On Universal Qualities — Inuit Piece.
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There’s a notion, when thinking of the Inuit—whether the Kalaallit, Inughuit, or Inuvialuit, as depicted here—that they are as distant as can be. Despite being a unique and diverse people with rich cultural and genetic variation, perceptions of the Inuit are often reduced to their broadly perceived differences. Yet, in their broadest context, the Inuit—still navigating complex and evolving geopolitical change—can be perceived via a shared connection, going far beyond the narrow concepts of their generic representation.
On the Beatific — Sardinian Piece.
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With this piece I was really captivated by the idea of uncovering the beatific nature i.e. the holy bliss, within human culture. I was soon drawing parallels between the pageantry and Virgin Mary-esque exquisiteness found in the traditional dress of Sardinia, with this idea of finding the beatific nature though faith and devotion — as well as within nature itself. Once I’d delved greater into the history and likewise mythology of Sardinia — in which the tangible and spiritual appear to be symbiotic within the development of their culture — I started to draw connections between the physical, natural side of the beatific, as well as the transcendental aspect — noting that likely both are needed to truly experience this holy bliss.
My thoughts on the beatific came from the writings of Kerouac. Too, I studied Sardinian culture, the Passavamo sulla terra leggeri, canto a tenores and political calls for unification and separatism. Though mostly, my desire is to conserve cultural legacy, specially in our time of modernisation. And likewise it feels, as with the beatific, both the transcendental and tangible aspects of a culture need to be preserved in order for a full picture to be understood.
On Tradition and Craft — French Breton Piece.
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There are many variations in the coifs of Brittany. Each symbolic of the wearer’s identity, signifying region, age and status. However, in boarder context escaping time, the Breton coif is an item of cultural iconography, a tradition belonging to solely Brittany. Although worn now only during festivals of heritage, it’s these reenactments that stop items of importance from falling into obscurity.
In modernity, generally coifs connote visions of nunnery, catholicism and piousness. Concepts as important as culture that somehow evade the inevitable dilution of history. Lace too, evokes labour intensive craftsmanship and devotion. It’s perhaps easy to find reflections of needlework in pencil work. I’d like to quote a passage from Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac to sum up the perfunctory of ‘the craft’.
— “the scene behind the scene. . . shows itself compounded be, of emptiness, of pure light, of imagination, of mind, mind-only, madness, mental woe, the strivings of mind pain, the working-at-thinking which is all this imagined death & false life, phantasmal beings, phantoms finagling in the gloom, goopy poor figures haranguing and failing. . .”
On Neglected Culture — Mongolian Piece.
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Mongolia can have a strange allure to a foreigner. The large, sparse, landlocked country whose empire once expanded from Hungary to the sea of Japan, thought of infrequently and incorrectly as only a land of nomads and unbound steppes, is yet home to array of traditions, cultures and lifestyles. Realities that feel somewhat neglected by the wider consciousness of rest of the modern world.
From my research into modern day Mongolia I found that, despite the country’s many shifts and turns, most of it’s citizens’ sense of identity is entwined in heritage. Undoubtably, any population will be shaped by it’s landscape and the socio-political threads that run through it. Yet even as the passage of time forces Mongolians to recall the memory of their cultures with diminishing clarity there still seems to be strong sense of self remaining.
There is a fear or feeling towards the future that I wish to summarise here with a simile: much like how the source for this artwork was found within the British Library’s, Endangered Archives Program, could it not be that, eventually, an entire nation’s worth of culture and self identity, likewise, could become endangered too?
