Surviving

On the 23rd of December at approximately 16.15 pm I was knocked down by a car when crossing a road. I, as you must have surmised by now, survived the accident, which left me severely bruised, stiff, aching and sore but with no broken bones or permanent damage to internal organs. A nasty bump on the back of my head, led to the need for a head scan, but again there was no sign of internal bleeding or fracture. I was lucky, wrapped up in layers of clothing to protect me against the weather, (it was dark and raining), I was cushioned as I hit the road, a wooly hat taking the sting out of the ground as it met my head, several layers of clothing protecting me from the force of the car as it hit me from behind.

I was though sidelined from many of the Christmas festivities, being confined to bed to recover and to give time for my aching muscles and tendons to heal. Reading and making notes, as well as scribbling small drawings kept my mind occupied and lots of visiting by my family reminded me of how important they all are to my vision of who I am and of how much I love them all. 

I was lucky. I am lucky, in that I am reasonably optimistic and was happy to be alive rather than fed up that this had happened just before Christmas. These events remind me how fragile life is, not just my own but via the wider interconnected net that links me to the rest of nature, I'm aware of how fragile it/we/everything is. But we can think about the thin threads by which life hangs in very different ways. Two of the books I have read during these days of enforced rest are Ali Smith's 'Companion Piece' and 'Strangers' by Rebecca Tamás. The Ali Smith book had been taken out of the library by my wife, she passed it on knowing I would enjoy it. Smith always gives me food for thought and in a way that brings things down to earth. She reminds you that a simple thing like taking a neighbour's dog for a walk, can have consequences and that our everyday exposure to whatever it is we are exposed to, is a doorway through which we can walk into a cosmic infinity. Like her novel's protagonist, I want to throw things at the TV as I'm forced to listen to second rate politicians spouting on about how good they are, whilst the country and the planet slips down into a Hell of their own making. Smith sees that the world is indeed hanging by a thread, but her grasp of life's richness, is the thing that saves the thread from breaking. Rebecca Tamás is a more serious writer, by this I don't mean that she is considering deeper concerns, but that her writing feels less happy. I had read 'Strangers' before, a book sub-titled, 'Essays on the Human and Nonhuman', and I re-read it because I wanted to see how I could use its focus to help myself move on and not become too dispirited by all the issues I see impacting on the world, especially in these days of what can feel like end times. Tamás had in her youth suffered from depression but had gradually found a way out of it. Therefore she writes from a very perceptive position. She reminds us that it is too easy to slip into a helpless response to climate change and successive governments inability to do anything about it; it is too easy to slip into despair over the Arab / Israeli conflict, to stick your head in the sand and not look at what is happening in the Ukraine, in Syria, in Yemen and all the other areas of the globe that suffer daily conflict. Tamás intellectually gives me a life jacket and Smith lowers me a rope knotted with chunks of human feelings to climb. As a survivor I have renewed energy, psychic renewal hopefully soon becoming physical, and want to put it to good use. I am an artist and this is where my skills lie. I have no illusions about my abilities as a political orator or community organiser, they are just not good enough, but no matter how small the effect, it is better to try to work towards positive change, than to accept the status quo or to just put your head back under the blanket and close your eyes. 

I have joined in with a local group of people put together and organised by my wife Sue, who are either artists or who like to hang works of art on their walls. Households agree to put forward an artwork that will be selected by a random process. After selection each artwork will go to another household in the group. We decided contribute a work of mine done a few years ago, 'Crows with crow cones'. There was you can imagine a debate as to whether it was suitable, but if images are made to trigger reflection, then at some point they need to be out there on a public wall.

Crows with crow cones

It was made as a reminder of how cruel as a species we can be. Crow cones were made of cones of paper, that were set into the ground. They had a few grains of corn put into them as bait. The inside of the cone was covered in a sticky glue, so that when the bird put its head into the cone, it could not get it back off; thus it was condemned to a slow death, as it was now both blind and unable to eat. We can only undertake to develop this type of cruelty if we can 'other' the crows. They need to be thought of as being not like humans, so that for instance we might lead ourselves to believe that they can feel no pain. We need to be able to ring fence our empathy. The analogy of course is that if we are prepared to do this to another creature, then we may just as easily do this to another human and unfortunately to the wider world itself. When I first read about this practice the most awful aspect for myself, was how it was regarded at the time as a source of amusement to watch the crows stumbling around in their confused panic. A book, meant for boy scouts stated, 'this simple device will often mislead the smartest and shrewdest crow, and make a perfect fool of him, for it is hard to imagine a more ridiculous sight than is furnished by the strange antics and evolutions of a crow thus embarrassed.' I wanted to at least give the crows back some dignity in how they were portrayed, but I also wanted to share the image as a reminder of our cruelty and ignorance when it comes to how we treat nature, a Christmas present tinged with the sentiment of Easter. I am also cruel to the viewer, the crow cones being drawn and affixed to the birds as if they are beaks, so at first glance it seems as if nothing is wrong. 

As soon as I could after my accident, I made a few scribbled notebook drawings of my experience of being knocked down. Very fast rough drawings, of the sort I wrote about in an earlier post, 'I Swear I saw this'. The drawings are not very convincing and in no way communicate the situation, but they do act as reminders and instigators of 'next stage' images. I.e. they are like a sort of grit around which eventually a pearl of an image might grow. 

Notebook drawings

I have tried working from these drawings directly, using photographed pages from my notebook which I have then drawn into and added colour and texture using Photoshop software. Working on a laptop has allowed me to keep working when confined to bed and I tend to use my previous experiences as a printmaker to help me structure the working process, often envisioning the image as something that evolves from a layering technique similar to silkscreen, especially when using inks that have had extender added. The image below being the one that most clearly represents my feelings about the accident. 

The glare of the car lights pass over me

I also had a classic lumpen bump that emerged from the back of my bald head, caused when my head hit the road. 

A reminder

I'm very aware that an event like this effects everyone else; people are worried about me and me being the sort of person I am, I tend to turn inwards, and reflect on what happened, make drawings, write about it and generally reflect on its meaning. Communication and non communication, wrapped up together seems to be my way of responding to the confusion of life experience. Being of my temperament can be hard for others, I don't show emotion easily. Finding it easier to make images and write about an experience than speak about it, which suggests that writing isn't just a way of writing down or recording speech but is another distinct technology of reflection. 

So the final post of the year is one whereby I find myself surviving. Anyone who reads this will have also survived another year, so well done. Hopefully we learn from our experiences, both about the strengths and weaknesses of our ability to engage with life and about what helps us to come to terms with that life. I need to make my thoughts external, by making images or writing in order to deal with them. But, I'm still trapped inside my head and so need to continue to sort out how to work more closely with people outside of the technologies of external reflection, (art), which is a continuing conundrum.  As Winnicott puts it in 'Playing and Reality', another text read whilst being confined to bed, we are all engaged in "the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated." 

Entering the CT scanner: A gateway

See also

Trapping and framing

I swear I saw this

Playing and Reality: D W Winnicott

Stained glass: Session eight

Study for Sooty as an animist fetish/transitional object 

Session eight was focused on painting. This time the body of the Sooty puppet and the arm it is attached to were the subjects. This is a particularly important aspect of the idea. I want to suggest that in all animist conversations, (i.e. between humans and non human entities) there is an element of the spiritual. In this case because of the specific history of stained glass I was interested in channelling depictions of the Lamb of God. 

Stained glass depictions of the Lamb of God

After looking at how the fleece was depicted, I made a new study to replace my original one of a Sooty fetish. (See image at the top of this post)

A previous study for a Sooty fetish

The new study as well as exploring textural differences also changed the relationship between the fetish and the audience, this time the Sooty figure stares straight back at the viewer. The different types of glass used were also thought about and my increasing knowledge of working with water based paints as a first layer, has enabled me to have a much clearer idea of what I'm working towards. 

Using water based stained glass paint I laid a graded matte to each section of the bear's body and then worked into these sections with a dry brush technique that was designed to echo how at times hair texture had been rendered historically. 

Sections of the Sooty body with graded matte and hair texture applied

The pads representing the paws of the bear were done slightly differently, using a flooding technique. In order to avoid blistering when fired, when using flooding, you need to mix your paint each time you load your brush. The term 'flooding' is a good description for what happens when you touch a loaded wet brush onto the glass, the paint spreads out from the brush tip. However in my case I wasn't looking for a flat black, so varied the mixes and as the glass for one of the arm/paws was a textured one, this allowed the glass texture to come through. One other thing I was having to bear in mind was how much of the glass the leading would cover, which is why the dark pad is the size that it is. 

A paw with a water based matte and dark 'flooded' pad

I had used an old piece of glass with lines fired into it for the other paw. When I was looking at old stained glass windows, I realised that there were often re-purposed glass components from earlier times. Glass is very expensive and in future I will try and recycle more, this tiny element was a reminder of this. 

Finally some of these sections will have silver stain added to the back, which should harmonise all the colours and give a yellow intensity to the Sooty image, but that will have to be done on the back, so all these sections will need to be fixed by firing before then. 

The next area to look at was the arm and I wanted more texture but of a very different type. Jo-Ann suggested that I explore a particular spray technique and so I did.

A texture test made by spraying water droplets over a matted surface

Using a spare piece of glass a graded matte was made using water based paint applied with a large hake brush, which was then smoothed and graded using a badger brush, as described in session six. This was dried using a hair drier and after testing that the spray was sufficiently fine, a spray diffuser was used to spray a fine mist of water over the glass. Just one short burst of spray was used, a long one would mean the water would begin to run off the surface. Again the glass was gently dried off using a hair drier. Once dry the badger brush was very lightly fanned over the surface with the faintest of contacts and as this was done gradually the texture of water droplets was revealed. Once I had grasped the technique I applied it to the two sections of pink glass that made up the arm. 

The final task of the session was to return to the leg which has now been fully fired and to stop out by flooding the area between the leading and the trace line.

 

Paint being mixed ready to go over the trace line

A fine line drawn over the existing trace line

The first thing to do was to draw a fine line over the existing trace line. This forms a barrier to protect the rest of the glass from the flooding.

Flooding is applied between the trace line and the area that will be bounded by leading.

Then flooding was applied as it was for the pads that sit within the paws. This means that when light illuminates the leg there will be no confusion between the line of the leading and the painted line of the edge of the leg. 

See also:

Session one

Session two

Session three

Session four

Session five

Session six

Session seven

Bill Viola and Michelangelo: The technologies of spiritual art

Seeing as drawing: Drawing as seeing

The fusion of hand, face and puppet: A materialist thought

The image above is from a sketchbook, one of many I use to record ideas as they emerge from my head as I draw. I am though also aware as an image emerges, that I remember how other things look as I struggle with what I am trying to visually invent. I have 'seen' things in the past, similar to what I think I'm now in effect, drawing out of the paper before me. For instance as I drew the small Sooty figures that move around the hem or base of the human headed puppet above, I was aware of seeing similar shapes in the past; perhaps not an actual border of small Sooty puppets, but things not too dissimilar to the one coming into being. Tapping into visual memories helped my drawing mind make decisions about how these forms could convincingly be arranged. 

Seeing, or the act of visual perceiving, can be thought of as the product of "intermediate level representations in the visual system" or what has been called by David Marr, (1982), "the 2 1/2-D sketch" He argued that we cant see the totality of the visual information surrounding us, and that instead we construct an idea of the three dimensionality of our surrounds in our mind. The first stage of this representation is interestingly called by Marr 'the raw primal sketch'. Edges, tonal values etc. i.e. things similar to those a drawer is centred on when making a representation of the world, are orientated upon a visual map that reflects the orientation and disposition of surfaces in the world, in relation to the observer's viewpoint. The 'sketch' is though, a 'neural rendering' rather than a pen and ink drawing of what we see. I.e. the 2 1/2 D mind sketch is a 'representation' of how things look. As Alva Noë puts it, (2023, p.35) "It is not a representation of things themselves, or of how things, in any perception-independent way, actually are. It is a mere picture." But when ever has a picture ever been 'mere'? Several writers on vision (Prinz, Riley, Noë, Jackendorf) have highlighted the fact that when looked at this way, how we see the world is very similar to how we construct a drawing of the world. The main difference being that a drawing is where perceived information is processed, coupled with raw materials and then perceived again and therefore must always be a second order body of information. You could easily argue that how a drawing works as an operational model, is virtually exactly the same as the internal model that we use to 'see' the world. The drawing in our mind, like any observational drawing made from physical drawing materials, is an image that is made of selected elements taken from whatever is out there and will have more or less information within it depending on amount of time available to see what's there; lighting conditions, previous understanding of the type of situation etc. etc. Except of course the mind drawing has no actual existence, it is a cognitive mapping, therefore an active complex of neural networks in flow and never a static object that can be pointed to. However the close similarity between how we read a drawing and how visual thinking itself operates, means that a physical drawing can be regarded as a sort of analogy that stands for what is actually going on in the mind. 

The aspect that then becomes even more interesting, (well it does for myself), is then to follow what happens as the activities of drawing and painting expand their use value and move from documentation stemming from observation, on to ideas based on the observations made, and then even further to ideas based on possibilities that stem as much from the material implications of drawing itself, as from the images made possible out of recombinations of memories of previously seen, drawn or painted experiences. I.e. the processes of imagination. If the making of drawings and paintings can be thought of as the materialisation of an extended mind, then each approach to problem solving in image making, could also be regarded as an analogy that could stand for different ways of thinking. In visual languages the move from observation to imagination, is rather akin in verbal languages to a move from a description of events, to the creation of a work of fiction. The recomposing of live experience as imaginative futures, is actually at the core of the way we read every complex of incoming perceptions as a possibility. This means that as we react to experiences, we make images of positive pathways that can be followed for day to day living. Fight or flight being just two very basic directional responses to the possibility any one set of perceptions offers. 

My recent work has been an attempt to represent an older more animist way of thinking, using a avatar based on visual memories of a Sooty puppet that I used to have when I was a child in the 1950s. The drawings, paintings and ceramic sculptures that I have made, respond to the memory of an object and how it operated for myself as a child, as a 'transitional object', or buffer between myself and reality. This idea relates to a materialisation of what I now, looking back through an animist lens, see as a fetish. However it is a concept that has been emerging for a while. I have been trying to visualise a more animist engagement with the world around me for some time. For instance, I have been seeking to make connections with plant life. I spent many hours drawing, trying to form a connection with the vegetation that surrounded me and I still try to do this. My recent training as a permaculture designer being just another attempt to find a way to foster that connection. So let's look at some flower images.

I am trying to build an argument that there is a seamless movement between drawing as perceptual description, to drawing as fictional invention. I believe that it begins as soon as we see something, because we are already inventing as we see. If I take some drawings and compare them it is perhaps easier to understand what I'm getting at. 

Dandelion studies

The drawing above is from an old sketchbook and it documents a time when I was interested in what a dandelion looks like. On the left a seed head and next to it two studies of dandelion flower heads. At first glance they look as if they are accurate records or documentary drawings of things looked at closely, but in fact all three images are fictions based on perceptions. My eyesight isn't as good as it used to be, therefore each image has to be an impression, or a simplification. The drawings are in pen and ink, so they are very much to do with pen and ink possibilities; for instance the line flows as only a line drawn in ink can flow. My focus was on the flower-heads, so nothing else is recorded and therefore the degree of selection and editing is enormous. Above all I was looking at these things with an inner eye, one that was looking for idea potential in the forms of nature. However the drawing is based on experience. I did look at the dandelions in my garden. I picked them and held them up to look at them. There was an exchange of some sort made, between myself and these dandelions and the exchange changed me, by adding to thousands of neural pathway movements, in such a way that the experience was made available for recall.

Detail of flower sculpture made for an installation

I had made a series of sculptures for various exhibitions based on flowers. These sculptures were 'invented' out of clay. However their invention relied a lot on my previous observational drawings of plants. 

The three drawings immediately below are from pages in a sketchbook where I'm playing with ideas that relate to flower heads. The one with a rabbit form beginning to emerge from a flower was drawn as an idea, just as much as the ones further below.

The flower hosting an animal

Thinking of a vessel / closed flower head

Study for a ceramic flower form

The transition from observation to invention is seamless, there being as much invention in an observational drawing of a flower, as there are visual memories of observations made of flowers, and other things, embedded into the invention needed for the making of constructed fictions. 

Drawn from life

An idea emerges of a bird's head from a flower head

Flower bird clay study

One of the several flower hybrids that were installed in Harlow Carr Gardens

Once again I'm reminded of 'disegno', a term involving both the ability to make a drawing and the intellectual capacity to invent a design or visualise an idea. Some of the skills needed in order to draw are developed by constant drawing from observation, and then the skills that have been acquired are used to invent and to visualise possibilities. By practicing these skills, these in turn become more refined and focused on the realisation and visualisation of invented form.

A sharp eyed hunter is 'sharp eyed' because he or she is always looking and noticing things that help in the understanding of possible future scenarios. This is perhaps a form of drawing without needing to draw. 

 

Drawing can be seen as a model for the act of looking itself, therefore it can also be thought of as an analogy for looking. This implies that aesthetics ought to be regarded as being at the forefront of philosophical thinking. How a drawing looks being a model for how a thought is seen. 

References 

Jackendorf, R. (1987) Consciousness and the Computational Mind Cambridge: MIT Press

Marr, D. (1982) Vision San Francisco: W. H. Freeman

Noë, A. (2023) The Entanglement: How art and philosophy make us what we are Oxford: Princeton

Prinz, J. (2012) The Conscious Brain: How attention engenders consciousness Oxford: OUP

Riley, H., (2021). A contemporary pedagogy of drawing. Journal of Visual Art Practice, 20(4), pp.323-349.

See also:

From perception to concept: Why draw

Drawings as aesthetic transducers 

Visualising energy flow

Drawing and philosophy 

Drawing at art school a symposium 

More on perception and research

Stained glass session seven

I needed to catch up on myself a little, so this session was one where I had to re-cut the glass I broke as well as speed through the painting process, so that I did not have one piece left behind. 

The leg sections after the first firing of the water based paint

After checking that the painted sections of the leg had fired ok, I found the last piece of pink glass big enough to cut the foot shape from again. I'm now fairly confident about cutting, so managed this without mishap. The issue was could I catch up with the painting? I therefore went back to the water based paints, ground the edges down and washed my newly cut foot shape and laid a matt ground and blended it as I had done before. I then left that to one side and began the process of oil painting.

Mixing lavender oil into the dry paint

I had bought a small bottle of lavender oil from Boots during the week, (£4.70) as I knew this would be needed and as I had had a cold it had the added bonus of its smell helping to keep open my airways. Again, as with the water based painting it was important to add the oil very carefully, blending and blending with the small palette knife. 

Once mixed a fine sable brush was used to apply the paint. I had used this technique before and I wanted to use a version of the way I had handled the paint again. I also had a choice as to whether or not to oil the glass surface with the lavender oil before I started, as this can help flow. In this case I decided not to do this. 

Previous example of my stained glass painting, with silver staining for the yellows

The area of paint that surrounds the central image was done using an oil painting technique, over the top of a previously fired water based layer. I was using an almost 'pointalist' technique and liked the way I could use it to vary tonal values. 

Detail showing how the oil paint texture has to be applied to flow across from one piece of glass to the next. 

Painted section now with the foot completed on a switched on light-box

Once I was feeling confident that I could get the quality of image I wanted, I added in the water-based section, painting directly on top of the unfired tone and line drawing. I had to be vary careful not to touch the surface, as this would remove bits or leave marks, but by using a bridge I was able to put the two methods of painting together, so that the foot section could be fired at the same time as all the other leg components. 

Leg section as it appears when the light-box is switched off

You need to keep switching the light-box on, so that you can see how the glass will look when light is behind it. However because the leg section is a long one, it is slightly too long to see it lit all at once. 

Cleaning the brushes was done with neat lavender oil, a paper towel was soaked in it and the brush gently worked into the towel until it was clean and all the time trying to ensure the tip is kept pointed. 

The next area to work on is the figure of Sooty and this is quite problematic, as I need to find a way of making the image work for stained glass. My idea is that the Sooty figure is a sort of fetish and as such is rather like a religious icon. Therefore the style of rendering must indicate this. However first of all the pieces that make up Sooty have to have their edges ground down to remove all the sharp areas that might cut into the expensive brushes used to lay grounds and finally the surfaces are cleaned by being given a good wash in soapy water. 

White Sharpie numbering used to identify where all the parts go

All cleaned and edges ground down

These pieces are now all ready to paint, but I now had to spend time getting my head round how I wanted the final image to work. 

I had an earlier study made to help me think about how the image of Sooty would fit into the surrounding cut glass fragments but it wasn't right, it did though point the way.

Study: Acrylic Paint

The study did not take into account the various different tonal and colour values of the glass that will actually be used. The eyes are in the wrong place and the ears are wrong, but I liked the idea of making Sooty hirsute, it feels more Medieval. Therefore I returned to the cartoon and developed the image of Sooty, to more accurately reflect the decision making that had occurred during the process of cutting glass from fragments that were available in the studio. 

The stained glass Sooty before silver staining on the back: Cartoon study

Thinking about the fetishistic hairyness of Sooty

To complete Sooty the eight pieces that make up the body will need to be visually cohered and to do this the two clear sections of glass will need to be silver stained on the back, this will even out the colour, making it a varied but intense yellow and hopefully add to the fetish/religious relic effect. But I think it will be the painting of the texture and how it is done that will signify the ritualistic nature of the image as fetish. 

From the Vyne Chapel, Sherborne St. John, Hampshire: 1525

In this beautiful image of a dog from Sherborne St. John, you can see overall tonal modelling, as well as texture, and it is something like this that I think I want to achieve. 

Lamb of God

The sacrificial Lamb of God is closer to the concept of image as ritual fetish. The texture is modelled to give an idea of weight and volume to the lamb as a 'lamb', but the lamb is also a spiritual thing, a substitute for Christ. 

A slightly cruder version 

See also:

Stained glass session one

Stained glass session two

Stained glass session three

Stained glass session four

Stained glass session five

Stained glass session six

Stained glass session eight

Drawing on transparent drafting film

Bringing the inanimate to life.

The Japanese artist Maruyama Okyo was reported to have painted a ghost so "realistically" that it came to life and frightened him. 

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Maruyama Okyo frightened by his own art

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was fascinated by ghosts and depicted them regularly during his long career. He loved the fact that Maruyama Okyo had been so good at their depiction that he became frightened by his own work. I suspect Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was having a moment of fun at Okyo's expense, but if you do look at some of Okyo's ghosts you can see why he might have frightened himself. he was able to hold that fine line between life and death in an image by using a language that is as much about what is there, as what is not. There is something about making images of ghosts that I think of as being central to the depiction of animism. The ghost is a spirit form, one that usually is some form of representation of the dead. Another way of thinking about this is that these are images that attempt to give life to things that are now inanimate, even if once alive. This opens a door into that territory between the animate and the inanimate. Many cultures think of spirits as being things that animate all life, Central to animism is an understanding that everything has a spirit; humans, plants, animals, landscapes, words and weather systems can all be animated and have some sort of personhood, and so of course can the dead and other things that have past lives. 

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Images of ghosts

Ghost: Maruyama Okyo

The ghost drawn by Maruyama Okyo above sits on that representational razor edge between the animate and the inanimate. She looks back at you, however she is only just there, her hair without volume, her lips thin, and she has no legs to stand on, her wispy body floating into view; she is there and not there.

A ghost in the lantern: Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Ghosts because they are no longer alive, can inhabit other things and the spirit of those other things can be conjoined or animated with the ghost's spirit. The ghost in the lantern above suggesting a hybrid spirit, one that perhaps gets its malevolence from its human aspect. What is animate and what is inanimate, is unclear; in the case of ghosts and similar spirits, the line between life and death is crossed. For an artist that makes representations of things, this is a really fascinating area, because I am often concerned with what gives life to an inanimate image. How can I make or draw or paint something that although inanimate can become 'active' or 'alive' in someone else's mind? 

Making art that comes to life is an old myth and one often debunked. Goya depicted Pygmalion with his legs spread wide, cock sure, readying himself to take a mighty swing of the chisel, which is aimed directly at Galatea's crotch. Leaning slightly forward, she looks out with a fearful expression. Goya's interpretation of the well-known myth being a satire on an artist's fantasy. All this artist wants is to open up the woman with his chisel. Goya had seen enough of reality to become very cynical, but as he gets older, his mind also became prey to ghostly images. 

Goya: Pygmalion

14th Century manuscript 

In this image from a 14th century manuscript, Pygmalion looks as if he is raising Galatea from the dead. 

Detail: Pygmalion and Galatea' by Jean-Léon Gérôme

The image we are more familiar with is the one made popular during the Victorian age; Jean-Léon Gérôme's idea of being able to have access to a nude nubile woman in the privacy of the studio, being typical of the way classical art subjects were used as a sort of cover up for the fact that some men just wanted an excuse to be able to put pornography up on their walls. The central issue with the Pygmalion myth being that it suggests that the only relationship humans have with the inanimate is one of desire. We want things to be moulded in our image; we pride ourselves on being superior to everything else. In Genesis, it is stated then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.” A statement that has in many ways led to an uncomfortable relationship with the rest of the world. How can you have a proper dialogue with all the other things that you are entangled with, if you believe in your innate superiority to everything else? To rule suggests that you make your subjects give you tribute; you take the things you want. In contrast, animism suggests that you are just one voice amongst many and that in order to make your way in this world you need to find an accommodation or mediated position between the needs you have and the needs that all other things have. Reciprocity is central to the animist world view. 

However there is a totally different approach to the idea of bringing the inanimate to life and that is to depict what is inanimate in such a way that it feels like it is alive. Jim Dine's drawings and prints of tools are a good example of how the techniques normally involved in giving expression and atmospheric quality to representations of human beings, can be applied to inanimate objects in order to suggest that they too have a life of their own. 

Jim Dine: Etching

Jim Dine: Lithograph

These images of tools could also be seen as 'portraits' of inanimate objects. Their bi-lateral symmetry makes for a very easy human/tool association; after all tools are extensions of ourselves. 

Wayne Thiebaud 

The knife stuck into the watermelon is easily seen as a substitute for a possible human tragedy. 

Van Gogh: Boots

These boots have as much life in them as the person that has just taken them off. They can also be thought of as a type of 'synecdoche', whereby a part of something can represent the whole. For instance a boot could represent an army, in this case two old worn shoes, stand in for the person who would normally wear them, a working peasant, and thus all working peasants. 

But this is just a small step into the world of the animist. These objects are extensions of ourselves but as we become aware that an old boot can have some sort of élan vital, then perhaps anything inanimate or animate can too, not just things that have a close association with ourselves.

It is the Earth itself that we need to find a proper relationship with. If it has any sort of consciousness I would have thought it would be pretty fed up with humans right now. The Earth's spirit is something we ignore, repress or deny at our peril but we can learn to begin a new relationship with it by turning to other cultures. There is a Japanese term, 'Tsuchi' that as well as being a symbol for the Earth, is also something that can stand for mud, clay or earth. In some  animist thought the Earth itself can therefore be held in our hands when a form is made in ceramic. A spirit inhabits the clay, which is itself part of the spirit of the world, the Earth itself.  A ceramic vessel can therefore, become a holder of a part of the primordial Earth's soul.
Meditation and deep contemplation, may begin a new dialog between a material and ourselves and once a basic material such as clay and mud is seen as being worthy of our love and care, then hopefully all the other materials and inhabitants of the Earth; animal, vegetable and mineral, become linked to an awareness of a pulse beyond our own, one that gives us a sensual and tactile connection with the charge of life forces that vibrates through everything. An awareness that activates for us what some people used to think of as the non-moving stillness of the inanimate or the dead. In fact the inanimate is never that, all things are in reality animate; the dead are also therefore still alive. Deep within all matter lies energy. 

Iranian area: 1,000 BC

You can sense that when this vessel was made that the maker saw many things at once. The material possibilities of the making and a love for the clay, an awareness of the spirits of animal forms and a feeling for how this vessel would be integrated into daily life. It pulls together various conversations with the non-human world and makes them also very human. You feel that this object is of the Earth not something ripped out of it to make some form of profit. 

As my own work develops and I have more time for it since retiring, I'm drawn more and more towards animist ways of thinking and the idea of objects being mediators between ourselves and the world. In this case an awareness of how as a boy I used a Sooty puppet as a mediator between myself and the frightening complexities of the adult world; it was in psychiatric terms, a 'transitional object'. I was a young animist, but never realised it.

Sooty rises above a fear of insects

See also:

Animism and drawing lines

A talk by Tim Ingold

Drawing together science and myth

Drawing and ceramics

Object orientated ontology