Projections of a single totality

Max Beckmann

"On My Painting" ("Über meine Malerei") was a lecture delivered by Max Beckmann in July 1938 at the New Burlington Galleries in London. It was written while in exile, shortly after the Nazis had labeled his work "degenerate". I read it many years ago and occasionally parts of it come back to me as I struggle to clarify my own approach to art making. In particular it was his search for the invisible through the visible that intrigued me. He sought to capture the deep hidden mysterious reality behind perception. As he did so he felt he might eventually "find the Self", as well as some sort of sense of the divine. In order to do this he felt that an artist had to maintain a commitment to human sympathy, thus putting empathy with others at the centre of his practice.

Max Beckmann: Blind man's bluff

I find this time period not dissimilar to the one Beckmann was experiencing and feel that fascism is on the rise again, not just in Europe but across the world. Fascism relies on oppositions, it sets people against each other and destroys the delicate connections that we have with one another, replacing them with fear, alienation and collective unthinking action. Beckmann wanted to visualise what he called "the profound mystery of all—the human I am". Therefore he began with an investigation of himself. In the context of his fleeing from Nazi Germany, you can see that he understands that art can have a role in maintaining human sympathy and understanding during times of intense turmoil; in order to do this he visualises the world as a vast stage where the artist constructs metaphorical images of both his own life and the trauma of history. He had set himself a high bar, one I would like to aspire to, but don't have the resources to accomplish to the same level. However my memory of Beckmann's writing has inspired me to put down my own thoughts as to why I think my personal pursuit of art is useful.

I wrote recently that whether I'm making a drawing of the landscape in front of me or constructing a drawing out of my imagination, both are projections of a single totality. This is something central to my practice as an artist, so bare with me as I try to unpick this somewhat.

The inside and the outside, landscape and the body, fantasy and reality, objective drawing and imaginative play, all are at one time or another seen as opposites and yet when looked at from another perspective they can all be seen as being part of the same venture, that of visualising the experience of being conscious.

From drawing a life: 2026

Visualising the experience of being conscious is a complex artistic and philosophical challenge because consciousness is an entirely subjective experience. However whether or not it is physically experienced or not depends on whether or not you argue for its understanding as embodied. I believe that as I am a very different physical entity to a dog, my consciousness will be shaped into a more human like form, which is itself physical. It is always a "first-person" experience, composed of "qualia", (a term for the information that comes in to the brain), whether this is from outside the body via the five senses or from inside via interoceptual feelings. As an artist I have to use various metaphors and abstract concepts to visualise this. Subjective experiences of consciousness are the ones that we think of as "what it's like to be". This inner awareness is what I am trying to communicate to others that have only a limited awareness of what I might be thinking. The aim is to grow that joint awareness. In the image, 'Drawing a life' above, I attempted to visualise another life, one that I was aware of through various conversations and from glimpses of that life given to me via my computer screen, it is though also a projection of a single totality, my feeling tone having filtered the information coming through and although the image is of another individual's narrative, it is, like all the other images I make, a product of my own consciousness. Perhaps the best realisation of this would be my sketchbooks, where observational drawings sit alongside imaginative investigations of ideas and where iterative thinking is used to find out what it is I'm thinking about as an image. These sketchbooks I tend to think of as batteries, storage devices that are also energy converters.

As an artist I try to externalise and make physical those hidden feelings and perceptions that I have. In doing so I aim to close down the difference between my experience of being conscious and another person's experience of being conscious. But as feelings, thoughts and sensations are private, they are impossible to describe objectively. However, I am aware that damage to the brain directly effects consciousness, which tells me it must in some way be dependent on physical structures. I'm also aware of evolutionary theory, which posits that things evolve because they are useful. Therefore consciousness will probably have evolved as an adaptive function for complex information processing and interaction with the environment. If so, by engaging with it, hopefully I help myself and others become more aware of it and how we use it to become more aware of the consciousness of others.

As consciousness is a phenomenon where subjective experience meets physical reality, engaging in art making in order to investigate it does therefore feel as if it is a good move. Every art object made is in effect the externalisation of a thought. But not just that, it is a physical embodiment of a dance that occurs between the material properties of the media of making and the consciousness that sits within the shape and form of a human being. I can't step outside of my body, but I can watch others who have similar bodies to myself do things. As they move they also react to other things, perhaps grimacing as they lift a heavy weight or smiling as they are touched by another human, as I watch I can begin to see a possible connection between my own responses to situations and the responses of others. I can begin a process of guessing or having intimations of the awareness of the minds of others. If I can guess what someone else might feel by observing their actions and reactions, then I might be able to make something that stands as a substitute for the process. Inner feelings and outer perceptions are constantly in play as I experience the world and both come into play as I make a piece of art. This is why, (and I shall now repeat what I have just written above), when I'm visualising things that attempt to crystallise experiences, the inside and the outside, landscape and the body, fantasy and reality, objective drawing and imaginative play, can all be seen as being part of the same venture, that of visualising the experience of being conscious, which is what I suspect all artists are in fact trying to do. In my case my images are thought of as projections of a single totality, a philosophical stance as much as a political position. 

Recent work has involved a process whereby an initial installation idea was visualised by myself using Photoshop and then developed in conversation with a curator, who decided on what furniture to buy from second hand furniture shops in Graz, based on my initial idea. 

The first visualisation for the installation reflecting on loneliness 

Final installation: Forum Stadtpark, Graz: "Islands of Loners"

Details: Images taken during the construction of the installation

Some of the 'votive' lino cut prints used as part of the installation

An early tryout for an installation of the 'choir'

The installation included ten of my lino prints, a blanket and pillow cases designed by myself and printed commercially, as well as forty ceramic figures making up a 'choir' of singers and several  'votives' that I had shipped to Austria for the purpose. This complex could have become very fragmented, however I hope that it cohered due to the fact that the installation was both a product of many years of my visualising the experience of being conscious and the fact that I'm still prepared to listen to the advice of others. It is a projection that has emerged out of the totality of my life's experience and as such I regard it both as personal as the prints displayed within it and as collaborative as the many images that have emerged out of conversations I have held with others. Art is a collective experience beset and troubled by the paradox of individualism; therefore I must express my gratitude to the team of Forum Stadtpark curators, who managed to tactfully help shape the final outcome.

So does a work of art still have a role in maintaining human sympathy and understanding during these times? Beckmann visualised the world as a vast stage whereby the artist could construct metaphorical images of both his own life and the trauma of history, however I have not had to witness the 'trauma of history' in the direct manner he had to; I see it via newsfeeds and on screens. My work evolves out of conversations, it acts as small moments of solace or as reminders of the shifts in our inner feeling tone, as we experience life's changes. Unlike Beckmann, who had a powerful vision of what he wanted to achieve, I struggle to clarify my own approach to art making, but out of that confusion, perhaps a different sort of myth arises, less heroic but more achievable and of the quotidian, rather than the cosmic.

See also:

Qualia

Penone draws a tree

The geometry of consciousness

A conference day

Drawings as aesthetic transducers

Who sees what where?

Frontview magazine: Micko and the Mellotronics announce new single

The issue of audience sometimes raises its troublesome head and an old debate comes back to haunt me. I can still remember a tutorial with Keith Arnatt that was held near to the end of my first year at Newport College of Art. I had been ill and confined to bed for several weeks. Whilst in bed I had continued to make work and had brought the results with me for the tutorial. Some of this work was in the form of collages and Arnatt seemed very pleased with them, but then I produced some small paintings, whereby I was trying to play a game with religious iconography and figures taken from the world of popular culture. He dismissed this work as being too illustrative. Here I am 55 years later still worrying about this artificial divide. In my mind Michelangelo worked to both illustrate the Bible for the Pope and at the same time make images that were transcendent of their initial function. It has always seemed to me that artists work at their best when having to squeeze meaning out of tight constraints as in for instance John Piper's stained glass, which I first saw in Coventry as a schoolboy; his New Cathedral Baptistery Window stimulating a long time fascination with the power of light shining through coloured glass to give spiritual uplift to imagery. 

John Piper: All saints Church: Clifton

Sooty heals my plantar fasciitis heel pain

I have for some years been making votives and have been interested in how an animist world view might help us all build a better relationship with the world around us. Therefore when I had an opportunity to study stained glass in more detail, (thank you AN for the bursary), I wanted to see if the spiritual uplift I felt when I first encountered the technique, could still be harnessed. In this case Sooty uses his magical powers to ease the pain and cure the ailment. This was of course a case of "physician heal thyself." My own arm coming in from the side of the image, with my hand inside a Sooty that is rising alongside my leg, in preparation for an act of psychic healing. The ability to do this in reality would involve severe contortions of the body but somehow that seemed right, as the 'something's not right' bit of the brain, is what ignites those inner feelings of unsureness, which in turn open the door to the unconscious and the workings of psyche.

The invisible contortion

When I was working with the idea of Sooty as a contemporary fetish, I little realised that the imagery would chime with so many people, one of which was a musician who needed images for his forthcoming album and associated singles. By agreeing to provide the images for the purpose of illustrating these things was I demeaning the work, was I somehow diluting its impact by taking it out of the fine art arena? I have been 'accused' of being more of an illustrator than a fine artist several times during the course of what is now a long career and it still worries me. Illustrators have to listen to clients and work to a brief, in my work I hold conversations with people and listen to them and respond by making images; so perhaps yes part of what I do is illustration. I also make images that tend to be figurative but I am not a painter, so I cant use the rhetoric of painterliness that surrounds the painting profession. But I've always worked out of a fine art context. My DipAD is in Fine Art not design and I see myself as an artist. However I'm very aware that design offers many positive attributes to a fine artist, in particular the sense of visual problem solving, a clear recognition of communication theory and the need to pitch work in different ways to different audiences.

Single review

Misery guts: Single artwork

Perhaps the main issue is that as illustration my work is seen as supporting the main event, which is rightfully the music. Therefore my work is set alongside other graphic images that are often unacknowledged as to their originator. This doesn't however mean that the images are not important. Both my Sooty image and the yellow and black 'Louder than War' image, carry messages that will be interpreted by the music focused audience in different ways and if interested someone can look to see who made the original artwork. 

King Crimson: In the court of the crimson king: Image by Barry Godber 1969

I still remember the image on the LP cover of King Crimson's 'In the court of the crimson king', an image cropped from a painting by Barry Godber, who at the time of my listening to the music, I wasn't aware of but I associated all sorts of ideas with this image, as it became part of my world. Like the work of many artists of the Medieval ages, these images went out into the world as anonymous products, in support of a main event, the Bible or more recently a CD, but now years later, the work is appreciated in its own right. For instance the Crusader Bible features Old Testament scenes in medieval settings, with brilliantly coloured illustrations attributed to seven anonymous artists.

The Crusader Bible

I like the idea that the people looking at the Sooty images used to support 'The Trinity' will come to them from outside the fine art world. These images will be seen mainly digitally, but also in printed form if people buy CDs or vinyl copies of the music. They will of course associate the images with the music listened to, their entry into the meaning or understanding of them, coloured by a relationship to Micko and the Mellotronics' lyrics and sound. 

Would you believe it: Single review

As several of my Sooty images have been used and associated with different single releases, people will become aware of them as if they were being drip fed a narrative. 

Artwork used for 'Proper Job'

Depending on which order you come across the images, you have many ways to interpret what the images might mean. This reminded me of Keith Arnatt again, who in 1969 had some work on German TV; which consisted of single episodes of his photographic series Self-Burial (Television Interference Project). Because people would randomly find these images appearing on their TV screens, very few would have seen all of them in sequence and therefore the audience would be left to make up stories as to what it was all about. 

Keith Arnatt: Self Burial

My Sooty images have been appearing randomly as different singles are released. Several of them are to do with the time I used to take my Sooty puppet to the Gaumont Cinema in Dudley. Sooty was a companion who would observe the films too difficult for myself to watch. My mum was an usherette back then in the 1950s and when I left school, sometimes I would go to meet her in the cinema and if she was tied up, I would sit in an empty back row seat and watch whatever was being projected, until she was ready to take me home. Into my Sooty series I have woven memories of 1950s film media, an awareness that inanimate objects can become animated and in certain cases operate as fetishes, something that as an older man I've become more and more interested in. 

On the Trinity CD's cover is a more painterly image from my Sooty series and as in all the other covers, the designer has had to crop my originals to fit a square. 

The issue of cropping didn't worry me, in fact it seemed to give a new twist to how the images could be read and it reminded me why I had developed a certain dynamic to their composition in the first place, helping me to see my work again.

The Trinity: CD

I was pleased to see that 'Louder than War' top tracks of 2025 included 'Misery Guts' at number 24, which must be some sort of success and hope that Micko is pleased with how his ideas have been received by the music world. 

From Louder than War Top Tracks of 2025

The point I'm making being that I'm very happy for my images to be used in another context. There is a certain serendipity in the processes of distribution surrounding any of the images we make and put on line. In the past many artists will have worked hard all their lives, only to find that their audience was hardly there, but in the days of online imagery, we all have the potential of our work to be seen by and used by many. Copyright in the age of AI being a whole different can of worms. Seeing printed images on a CD cover is I realise not the same as people seeing the originals and their hand made quality, but it is an aspect of audience reach, that I'm quite glad to tap into. So thank you Micko Westmoreland for keeping an eye out for my work and seeing the possibility for it to be used in this way and thank you Harry Corbett for inventing a puppet for the children of the1950s, but most of all lots of love to my mum who was working hard to hold on to a job and at the same time raise a boy who would still be making ideas out of his experiences of growing up, many, many years later.

Sooty blasted by Gort

Of all the films I had to watch at the time, the one that I was most frightened by was Robert Wise's 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. I can still remember the tension in my body as the giant robot emerged from the spaceship and I hid behind the cinema seat backs; then as Gort the robot sent out energy blasts to decimate to surrounding military forces, I had Sooty watch the action that was too much for me to take. Nearly seventy years later I would make the GIF image above as a memorial.

The Trinity by Micko and the Mellotronics, will be released by Landline Records on June 12th. 

See also:

The narrative tradition in drawing 

Why I'm making animist images 

Stained glass

Communication theory

Marc Chagall and his Gogol etchings

Мarc Chagall Mrs. Korobochka’s yard. 1927 Etching. 28 by 38 cm

Some artist's work I go back to again and again and Chagall's work in particular I have found most rewarding. It is the fusion between the awareness of looking that has come from Cézanne via Cubism and the visualisation of the mythic folk traditions of everyday life. Because of their stripped down nature, his etchings are I think easier for me to assimilate, they walk a tightrope between the flickering moments of outer perceptual awareness and the inner visions of memory, a tightrope walk that for myself, ties together interoception with perception, that constant flicker of conscious awareness that lies at the centre of life.

The Garden Beyond Plyushkin's House: From Dead Souls: Etching and drypoint 

During the 1920s Chagall made a suite of etchings illustrating scenes from Gogol's 'Dead Souls'. These etchings testify to the vision of a man torn between the folklore and literary tradition of his homeland and the new post Cubist lens of modern art. One image in particular has for myself become a keynote and it has helped me to think through how to potentially reconcile my approach to drawing the landscapes of perception, with my more imaginative reflections of what lies within. 'The Garden Beyond Plyushkin's House', etched and engraved during the period 1924/5, flickers with the scan of looking. The vegetation rises up and literally grows out of the ground behind the house, the house itself broken open to allow the rapture of energy to emerge. 

In my own drawings I have many times tried to achieve this sense of nature being looked at and at the same time being visualised as a living, growing entity. 

Sketchbook pages

I have also seen this sensibility in the work of other artists such as David Jones and Leonard McComb.

David Jones: Flora in Calix Light.

Leonard McComb

My grandad's shell case with flowers

Every now and again I try to find a way of drawing the world around me that echoes my own sensitivity to these same issues. An image such as the one above I made from my grandad's shell case, into which I had inserted flowers, was one such attempt to capture the flicker of my own looking, whilst at the same time finding an image that had symbolic force.

Jones and McComb also exhibit an uncertain certainty. Something I have written about in detail before. However, the important issue for myself about Chagall, is that he is also able to embed his interest in a mythic Russia, into his attempts to remind the observer that 'I saw this'. He is able to capture the feeling tone of a memory induced by Gogol's text, and at the same time access it via something that I feel was actually seen in Chagall's youth when he lived in a Russian village. Perception, memory and illustration entwined.

Yelizaveta Vorobey

In 'Dead Souls', the name Yelizaveta Vorobey is brought up by the landowner Sobakevich while he is listing recently deceased serfs to sell to the novel's protagonist, Chichikov, who will in turn try to sell them on to the government. The surname Vorobey translates to "sparrow" and in Chagall's image, she is both a dead soul and a lively old bird. Perception, memory and illustration entwined and imaginatively reinvented through etching; for Chagall, dead peasants are in his mind always very alive.

I have recently been asked to draw illustrations to a children's book. I hope I can like Chagall achieve something that transcends the text and that can stand alone as well as sit alongside the typography. I'm worried about this new venture and wonder how it can enhance what I'm trying to do, hoping that it wont simply be a diversion. But sometimes you just have to try things to see how you respond to them, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I hope what I come up with wont frighten the adults, my idea of a good children's book illustrator being Maurice Sendak and I know that adults tend to view Sendak's works as too dark and frightening, whereas children are enthralled by them. We shall see.

See also:

Uncertain certainty 

Trench art

Why draw animals?

New wine in old bottles

Imaging Inscape

This iconography was obtained after a prayer to the spirit of intelligence and of light to reveal itself by a form. A shower of lights and of intelligences. Luminous olives with trails and bent stem. Projected rays. These falls of lights, intelligences, understandings, according to the degree of their virtue will constitute the spirits of varied hierarchy and the beings which will reach carnal incorporation.

'Imaging Inscape: The Human Soul' is the title of Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc's 1913 book whereby he discloses the results of his experiments with photography and its ability to capture images of the invisible spirit world, as in the image above. 'Imaging Inscape' is also as a title, perfect for my research into the visualisation of interoception. 

The 'inscape' is what I am visualising when I mentally delve down below the skin. It was the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who I think first defined the "Inscape", using the word to refer to the unique, inner identity of a thing, as well as a human being's interior mental landscape. Baraduc's use of the word I presume is in acknowledgement of Hopkins, who coined the word "inscape" to describe the inner essential character or "thisness" of a natural object, person or landscape. For him it was the distinct, dynamic pattern that constituted a being's identity, often perceived by Hopkins, as a fleeting, sacred and intense moment of beauty that revealed that everything was the result of God's creation and therefore at its core it had to be beautiful and wonderful. Hopkins uses 'inscape' to wondrous effect in his poetry. In 'As Kingfishers Catch Fire', each element has a special something that is essential to its being. the kingfishers catch fire as opposed to the dragonflies drawing flame. Just close your eyes and think of them both and their differences. The sudden dart of a kingfisher is like a flash seen against the dark of a river bank, the dragonfly flits along, its wings drawing flame as it crystallises the sunlight and dances with it from flower to flower. Hopkins sums up his idea in the phrase, 'Each mortal thing does one thing and the same', telling us that everything has a unique something that is essential to its identity. 

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: illustration in 1862 letter to Charles Luxmoore

It is no surprise therefore that Hopkins loved drawing and was in his drawings looking for that unique something that was essential to a thing's identity. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Landscape: Flowing water

Text and image flow together in Hopkins, his awareness of the visual nature of reality penetrating his words as well as his eyes. His landscape is an 'inscape' as well as an 'outscape'. His drawings being very straightforward, with no pretension, simple records of a few moments of looking.

Beech, Godshill Church behind Fr. Appledercombe

Drawing of flower forms

Hopkins also draws in his letters, in my mind perhaps at exactly the same time that Van Gogh was drawing in his letters. Both men were of a religious cast of mind, Van Gogh wanting to become a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church. His intense piety leading him at one point to work as a missionary in Belgium, Hopkins converting to Catholicism and working in both England and Ireland as a priest. Both men found a way to embed their piety into their art, one into painting and the other into poetry.

The 'iconography' as Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc termed his images, that sits at the top of this post, was obtained after a prayer to the spirit of intelligence and of light. Baraduc is like Van Gogh and Hopkins of a religious cast of mind. I tend to think of my own work as touching upon some sort of secular idea of the other, of spiritual forces that are more in common with the findings of contemporary physics, both which nevertheless seek to probe beyond what we can see and feel with the limits of our outer perceptual organs. Our inner feelings it seems to me are still surrounded by mystery and never fully open to objective clarity. It is in that gap between knowing and intuiting that art can operate and as it does I make no apologies for it touching upon the spiritual, an admission that I know will be for some readers also an admission of failure and I will be accused of hiding behind the mumbo jumbo of mysticism but if so, so be it.

An exploration of interoceptual feelings: Painted glass

I'm writing this post in a hotel room in Ganz, resting up after a day hosting workshops and working with the curators at Forum Stadtpark. The installation that houses my work, is one that is in my mind designed to echo the environment of an older man, like myself, who lives in a room of his own, unlike myself, that is composed of furniture he bought back in the 1980s. As the environment was constructed I was reminded of an older post, whereby I was reflecting upon how then current exhibitions were being hung. As the installation evolved, minds were changed many times but hopefully we got there in the end. Today there is going to be a 'round-table' and I get to speak about what I'm doing. Tomorrow the exhibition opens. 

Poster advertising tonight's talk

As I put the talk together for this evening I begin to wonder about 'instress': If 'inscape' is about that inner unique identity of things, 'instress' is the force or energy, that holds the inscape together and allows the viewer to experience it. Instress was seen by Hopkins as the power that carries the inscape into the mind of the observer. I wonder of that could be another name for 'art'. Thinking of which, here are a few shots of the exhibition.

Some of the lino cuts made as votives

I'm seeking to find visible symbols of invisible truths, attempting to externalise what are inner sensations and making feelings concrete, by embedding expression into imagery. All facets of a way of thinking that I have for a while now, thought of as animist. Rather than treating the non human world as a passive resource, animist thinking engages with it in terms of reciprocal relationships, therefore the objects I make also have their own agency, possessing powers that can engage with others and become agents for change. 

Reference:

The Human Soul: Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc

See also:

From making votives to visualising interoception

Witnesses of the invisible

Lines as symbols of invisible forces

Drawing into installation