Drawing consciousness

Thinking about my body while walking through landscape

I’m still thinking about how to justify the fact that when I’m working to visualise invisible sensations such as pain or certain emotions or feelings such as being worried, angry, thirsty or too full, that I rely on intuitive responses more than any form of logical analysis. This is the case in both my responses to visualising my somatic awareness of my own body and in my work done in conversation with others, whereby we jointly try to work towards the making of images that are meant to communicate interoceptual experiences. One problem is, as I have pointed out before, that my conscious awareness of the sensations I have is an interpretation, sometimes the interpretation might seem like a visual image but at other times the same information, could be received through my skin as heat. (The infrared issue) This feeling of consciousness seems to be something science can’t help me understand, or at least not the science we are used to using. Which is why I have in these blog posts occasionally reverted to the exploration of pseudo-science or outdated beliefs, in an effort to feel for a way of understanding something, that has I have come to believe, only to be understood intuitively and not logically. This is another attempt to approach the issue, this time though using some of the theoretical work produced by Regis Dutheil and his daughter Brigitte in France and first published in French in the 1990s.

Regis and Brigitte Dutheil (2024, p. 55) stated that there was an ‘incontestable correlation between physical parameters (e.g. wavelength, intensity) and the quality of the sensation (e.g. 700nm wavelengths evoke red as a sensation, while those of 450nm are bluer).’ However as I have pointed out before this 'correlation' is suspect, because the same wavelength received via the eyes, can evoke an infrared colour for a snake or human wearing infrared goggles or contact lenses, yet also evoke a feeling of warmth if detected via the skin's thermoreceptors. However, Regis and Brigitte Dutheil go on to question whether or not sensations can be quantified. They state that it is not possible to map sensations back onto the physical effects that stimulated them into existence. They also believe that there is no functional representation of the real world mapped onto the senses; there being a discontinuity between cerebral activity and its registration in conscious awareness. (p. 56). They go on to argue that this phenomenon therefore lies outside of the ability of science to understand it; which does suggest that like myself they agree that the mind creates the sensations we become aware of. 

As they advance their argument they point out that the mind can hallucinate and as it does an individual’s conscious awareness may well tell them that what they are experiencing is true, even though those around them can clearly see that the experience is not coming from any outside the body stimulus. I. e. that the mind shapes our reality, not any outside experience. They then go on to propose that this ability of the conscious mind to shape reality is very similar to quantum mechanics, whereby an observer also shapes reality, via what is known as a superposition collapse. (p.57). In quantum mechanics, superposition is the ability of a quantum system to be in multiple states at once until a measurement is made. Its collapse is the process where it is reduced down into a single, definite state upon measurement or observation; i. e. the potential outcomes described by the superposition are reduced to a single, actual outcome. In the same way our minds when stimulated by sensations decide what these sensations are going to be represented as. For instance, that scarf on the chair which is being activated by a gust of air blowing through the window, was for instance first seen out of the corner of my eye as a cat, however when I look again, it is redefined in my consciousness as a scarf. 

I found all this very interesting, as it for myself allows art back into the frame and their descriptions of altered states by particular drugs or meditation practices, reflected my interest in how a shaman might operate as a conduit between the everyday and the spirit world. A role that Joseph Beuys argued was something that artists could appropriate. My work to find an intuitive visual language to represent interoceptual experiences, was I felt not so strange after all and that what I was doing was also illustrating something about how consciousness itself works.

However this last week I have been out in the landscape walking and drawing. I often need to do this as it charges my batteries and feeds both my perceptual and my interoceptual imagination. When I'm drawing from the perceptions that flood in as I engage with landscape, I use my artistic interests as a filter and this last week I have been trying to see the landscape as a body, finding organs in its embedded forms, my internal somatic awareness operating as a compass to help me navigate the external world. The more I work to visualise internal worlds, the more I see the internal in the external. What I invent in drawing to capture my perceptual experiences, is I realise limited to the extents of my personal visual language and this language has been shaped by all the other drawings I have done up until the moment of making a new one, including therefore my recent attempts to visualise pain and associated emotions, which are in the background of my visual thinking as I begin to record the landscape.

I began drawing on the first day in West Wittering by looking at the coastline as something constantly being reshaped by the sea's waves, a shifting boundary that is permeable. Then once I had attuned myself to its ebb and flow, I began see the landscape as a body that flows around me as I walk through it; its fine grain the equivalent of blood platelets or the fibles I see within a split bone when looking through a magnifying glass. Sound, ground, air, vegetation all flowing past as I walk and draw, whilst bird noises talk to me and I begin to sense that they also need to tell stories of the land and what passes through it. Perhaps their songs are like drawings, I learnt recently that birds have a particular chemical high as they learn their songs, being rewarded by successful tuning and vocalising when babies, with dopamine releases. I also feel better when I get a drawing right, could this be a similar effect?

As I invent my way through drawing, I invent my way into how I might in future draw myself. I see the space of landscape as an opening for my emotions to enter and a place to give form to the body's feeling tone. Gradually my mind begins to quiet itself and accept the situation, the drawings become more focused and I feel that I am becoming entwined with my surroundings. I feel my body becoming fully immersed back into landscape and as it is, it is something to quietly and gratefully accept. 

Sketchbook drawings

Reference

Dutheil, R and Dutheil, B. (2024) The Superluminal Universe London: Watkins 

See also: 

The geometry of consciousness

The topology of dreams

Seeing and feeling

Drawing and quantum theory 1

Drawing and quantum theory 2

Freud and invisible forces

Geometrical psychology

Contemporary landscape drawing

Principles for art during the time of the Anthropocene

Value the hybrid and the clone. 

Twelve Principles for making art in a time of the Anthropocene

After undertaking a course in permaculture design last year, one of the things I promised myself I would do was to go back to the 12 principles of permaculture that I tried to apply to my then art practice and to see if they could be further reshaped, as I began to develop a more research led aspect to my work. I might of course continue to change them as my work unfolds, but the process does help to remind myself that I'm unable to extract what I'm doing from the wider ethical and ecological concerns of my time.

Things to consider when making art in a time of the Anthropocene. 

The Anthropocene is the geological epoch that we currently inhabit. A time when human activities have had a significant impact on the planet. The word is a hybrid, combining the Greek anthropo (human) and cene (new) and it suggests that in order to inhabit our world in a proper manner, a drastic change is needed. The reality we seem to be faced with, is that we have already impacted upon the world's ecosystems to such a degree that the future of our species is cast in doubt. Science tells us that there have been several extinction events in the past and that the majority of them involved climate change. We therefore face an existential threat, far beyond war or localised environmental disaster. If faced with such a dilemma, I believe we have to construct some sort of resilient framework out of which we can still operate on a day to day basis, without just lapsing into despair. I have just spent a week walking and drawing in the landscape, observing the flow and ebb of vegetation in relation to landforms and changes in soil, as well as simply standing looking at the wonder of leaves moving in the wind and trying to make marks that capture the experience, not just from my point of view but from that of birds, insects and the tree itself. As I draw, I become lost in the moment and become aware that all experiences are in reality as significant as that moment of a breeze moving through the dense masses of a tree's leaf structure. The moment of a life of some extinct creature from before any of the previous extinction events, was just as wonderful, as will be all the moments of being in the world that all the creatures of the future will have and in that realisation, perhaps there is a reason to be hopeful and resilient as we all face an unknown future. 

1. Observe and Interact
Humans are not the centre of everything. Try to observe the processes of the world through the senses of others. How would a tree feel about the situation, a snail, soil, a bird, a mountain or a fish. Use process led observations that immerse us into the lives of others, rather than using an objective fixed viewpoint in order to measure something.
As an artist making observations and responding to what has been seen is often central to the way work is developed. The more we look, the argument went, the more we can learn, but perhaps we can focus more on observing the nature of systems of interaction, be these about the interaction of people, people and things, people and other animals, things and animals, things and things, i.e. trying to open our vision out to include non human others, and events, so that we can move ourselves away from always being the centre of everything and valuing the world in relation to what we can own. We can experience events and interact with them but beware of seeing things simply as nouns, try to keep an eye on how processes are shaping the world around us.

2. Catch and Store Energy
As well as exploring the possibility of projects that can directly respond to the storage of energy, such as creative planting and growing, art making can itself be seen as an energy store. Operate to make artwork like a battery; create work that can recharge others, by layering and folding within the things you make, ideas and thought forms that unfurl in others minds as an energy release and not an energy drain. Look for the channels of energy movement that allow you to communicate without wasting energy, and let nature be your guiding principle.

3. Obtain a Yield
Non-tangible yields can be happiness, health, joy in making or mental well-being. Practicing the close observation of nature can lead to mental well-being. Develop processes of art making can be used as mindful exercises and these coupled with more sustainable approaches to art making, can become embedded into a lifelong approach to working with, as opposed to working against nature. Always check that what you are doing is leading towards a positive outcome for both humans and the rest of the world. Make things that the community needs, not just what you want.

4. Apply Self-Regulation and Feedback
A regular critique of what we do needs to become central to art practices. Increase an awareness of how your work impacts on sustainability, and build more robust tools with which to analyse your various working practices in relation to their impact upon the world. Use iterative processes. Make it, test it, tweak it, repeat. Make it, test it, tweak it, repeat.

5. Use and Value Renewables
By using the power of the sun, the wind, or water, we can harness non fossil fuel based energies to make our artworks. We can also in the reuse of materials ensure that the work we make does not use up any unnecessary energy or bring into the world new objects that use up the worlds limited supply of resources. To make full use of renewable sources of energy: and to move to a more sustainable way of operating as an artist. To include these issues in any proposals for future artworks and to use renewables whenever possible within art practices. Recycle, rebuild and repair whenever possible.
Renewables are sometimes ideas, rather than materials. Never discount an old idea, it is always possible to renew the way we approach our familiarity with things.

6. Produce No Waste
Moving towards a zero waste lifestyle means looking at all the artwork we make and eliminating any associated waste. We can do this by reducing the amount we buy, by buying wisely, by reusing or recycling wherever possible the materials we use to make our art. To look at waste throughout the entire life-cycle of all the products that we use we can reconsider what we make our artworks from. Are there possibilities for recycling when making work, how can the idea of recycling be embedded into the conceptual development of an artwork? Does an artist need to make anything? Do we need to move away from making objects and work towards the freeing of art from a material framework?

7. Design from Patterns to Details
Whether designing a new vegetable garden, or an entire new sustainable way of life, we have to look at the big picture before we get bogged down in the little things. Thinking holistically, about all areas of our lives, can help us move forwards in a positive direction. By being aware of the bigger picture we can develop a much more robust framework within which to work. Many artists historically have developed manifestos for practice, permaculture principles could be the pattern for the development of these. Are there other ecologically sound frameworks that could be used as models for art practice? Do the details of your work reflect the shape of the overall concept?

8. Integrate Don’t Segregate
Think about collaboration in all its forms. Collaborate with other artists, with non artists and with non humans. Work with the land, work with the air and the sea. Create work from a number of perspectives and use a variety of ways of making and thinking. Think of how to exhibit diverse forms together in the same space. Think about how your art practice can be integrated into and with others. Check on how your work effects others, and then bring all stakeholders into the fold of your practice. Explore who and what you could cooperate with. Value the hybrid and the clone.

9. Use Small, Slow Solutions
That scrap of paper with a sketched out concept might be as powerful as a huge sculpture. Begin small and gradually grow your ideas in conjunction with sustainable thinking. Work slowly, savour the process of the gradual growth of a concept as it moves from one stage to another. Take your time. Work with complicated ideas that take a while to ferment. Don't expect instant gratification. Big is rarely better. Work at the pace of the Earth.

10. Use and Value Diversity
Diversity is vital to how you communicate your ideas. Who's culture are you celebrating? Who's aesthetics are you working with? Does your work communicate beyond your subgroup preoccupation? Who are you talking to and how do you value others? Try to work through as many media as possible when trying out ideas. Allow other points of view to enter the development process of your ideas. Above all remember to value the culture of others, not just other humans, but other creatures too.

11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal
Use of all the resources that you have at your disposal, not just the ones within easy reach. Whether we’re talking about land use, materials, ideas, work places, art or society in general, making use of all we have involves valuing fringes and fringe elements. This might be as simple as using a neglected corner of your outside space to grow more food, or something more abstract, like thinking outside the box. Artists have traditionally been able to operate within and around the edges of society. Can this position be fostered and strengthened so that you are actively working to bring ideas from the edge of society into its centre? Artists have traditionally been the people that see things that others don't, can we can use this principle as a way to develop value in the marginalised?

12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change
Finally, change is an inevitable part of life. It’s important to remember that permaculture isn’t just about now, but about the future. We design for change, understanding that things will alter over time. The changing seasons, changing attitudes, our changing climate. How we respond to these changes will shape sustainable progress in the years to come. These principles are a starting point for an understanding of a permaculture influenced approach to art making, and can begin to give us an idea of how we can translate thought into action, an action that in itself might help in the transition to a more ethical – and truly sustainable – way of life. We should make art to discover our future, not to sustain the past. Many of our approaches to art making are rooted in models that are now outmoded. We don't need to make art for museums, we need to make it to survive.

If not we are simply waiting for the barbarians. 

See also:

Drawing and the 12 principles of Permaculture
Sustainability resources 

Object orientated ontology 

Sustainability

The pencil and sustainability 

Human plant hybrids

Human plant hybrids

Carvings found in Wakefield cathedral. 

Because of the work I have been undertaking with patients at Pinderfields hospital, I have been going to Wakefield on a fairly regular basis and one day decided to pop into the cathedral. The carvings that surround the choir stalls particularly fascinated me, because they represent a much older form of spiritual awareness than the Cathedral itself. The carvings are of human plant hybrids, what are often called green men and they were made approximately 500 years ago. Christian churches were often built on sites of previously spiritual significance for the local population and I suspect the site at Wakefield was similar and that for one reason or another a local tradition of some sort of vegetation/tree spirit inhabiting perhaps shaman type figures, was still hanging on when the carvings were made. 

The suppression of local beliefs associated with Christianity continues, its missionary tradition going alongside often political oppression. Barthélémy Toguo, in his image “Homo Planta I” (2018), suggests that in effect Christians crucify the Gods and spirits they find, in the name of Jesus. 

Barthélémy Toguo, “Homo Planta I” (2018)

Barthélémy Toguo’s fluid ink drawing “Homo Planta I” also reflects on Cameroon’s history. The people were often forced to labour in plantations in order to support an international trade in vegetable products, such as cacao, rubber, palm oil, and bananas.  Toguo creates an image of a human forced into a crucified posture, punctuated by nails. Unlike traditional Christian crucifixions the sap from the trees still flows and is exchanged with the blood of the body, a transferal of energies from plant into human. It is if an older tradition is reasserting itself, the original crucifixion, it reminds us, was itself an echo of a previous religion, whereby humans were sacrificed and their blood cast onto the soil, so that plant life would grow. Toguo is also aware that Cameroon’s rainforest is also threatened by non-indiginous plantations, it is in effect being crucified too.  

Take a green breath: Lithograph

Toguo has studios Paris and Bandjoun in Cameroon and in 2009 he set in place Bandjoun Station, an artist colony and coffee plantation. Home-grown coffee is sold in packets wrapped in the artist’s lithographs, highlighting the value of Africa’s natural resources. Toguo stated at the time, “We consider that it is not up to the West to fix the prices of our raw materials,” 

The animal plant hybrid is a form I often return to, it reminds me of how we are inextricably interwoven into the matrix of materials, other animals and plant lives that consist of the earth we live on. To see ourselves fused with vegetation is a timely reminder that we cannot exist on our own and that it is plants that do all the hard work in terms of capturing energy from the sun's rays and converting it into an energy source that we can digest. 

A memory of little weed

Many years ago when I was a child, I watched the animated children's program Bill and Ben, the titled leads were themselves as 'flowerpot men', inanimate objects given anthropomorphic form and their friend and all seeing neighbour was 'little weed', another vegetable/human hybrid. This experience I suspect, set into my early mind a predilection to see animist possibilities in non-human forms, something many ancient cultures were prone to believe in.  

In my current work as an artist I feel that I need to re-establish a return to types of thinking that reconnect us to the world and to help us to have some sort of dialogue with a fast disappearing natural landscape, a dialogue that would see us listening to nature's needs, rather than demanding of it, "what can you give me?" 

I have spent most of today walking the landscape of West Wittering and simply drawing the vegetation around me. If you begin your philosophy by stressing the importance of looking at a leaf and drawing it, that philosophy will of course argue for a close relationship between humans and nature. This was where John Ruskin began his philosophic journey and who am I to argue with him. 

See also:

An earlier post on Barthélémy Toguo's work

Hybridity and permeability

John Ruskin

Seeing and feeling

That pain awareness that emerges after an operation whilst you are still on the painkillers

One of the most interesting things about our senses is that how they are configured is not necessarily fixed in terms of how we sense the world outside us. For instance if we look at how our bodies make themselves aware of changes in their experience of the electromagnetic spectrum, there is the strange case of infra-red. We use our eyes to detect visible light, which spans wavelengths between 380 and 700 nanometers and includes the colours we were told to remember when children as, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. However we use heat sensors in our skin to detect the infra-red wavelengths, those in the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths longer than red light, extending from 780 nanometers to 1 millimeter. This region is further divided into near-infrared (NIR), mid-infrared (MIR), and far-infrared (FIR). Infra-red is also known as thermal radiation or heat radiation and although invisible to the human eye, it can be felt as heat. We sense heat through specialised sensory receptors in the skin called thermoreceptors, which detect changes in temperature. These receptors convert temperature information into nerve impulses, which are then transmitted to the brain for processing, in a similar way that visual receptors, our rods and cones, except that they convert light energy into electrical signals that trigger nerve impulses that our brain can interpret. Both systems are converting electro-magnetic energy waves into nerve impulses, that we then process and understand as certain types of information. But visual information seems very different to how we understand heat, these information sources seem to belong to totally different worlds of sensation.
However, we now know that several non-human animal species have evolved the ability to perceive infrared radiation."Infrared vision" allows them to detect heat from a great distance. Certain species of snakes, fish, insects and mammals have developed this type of perceptual ability, so in evolutionary terms it is a possibility open to most animals. Recent developments also mean that us humans can now see infrared light, researchers having made the first contact lenses for infrared vision. I have not used them and can only speculate as to what you see, but the elephant in the room is of course, that sight and heat receptor types are collecting the same data but understanding it very differently. My feeling tone in relation to sensing the sun's heat coming from touching a warmed up rock on a hot day, is totally different to seeing it. Vision tends to distance me from things, but touch is the opposite, I have to be in direct contact with the world to experience it. A snake with infrared vision, would see a mouse as a warm thing, that it could then separate out from a cold environment, such as a sandstone rock. We would on the other hand have to catch the mouse and hold it to get any heat information from it.
The point being that the brain invents stuff in relation to what comes in as nerve impulses, or as 'qualia'. Qualia are not objective facts, they are the way things feel to a conscious being. They are personal and subjective and are the fundamental units of subjective consciousness, such as the taste of a lemon, the colour of an orange or the feeling of being tickled. This subjectivity is vital to my understanding of what I'm trying to do in visualising interoceptual experiences. If an experience such as that of heat, can be either something that feels like 'touch' or something that looks like 'colour', depending on how receptors work in a particular species, then I can be at liberty to attempt a further translation. I can translate an emotional feeling into a shape or colour, just as a snake may translate an awareness of heat into a visual image. 

We use emotions to coordinate our behaviour and physiological states during fright or flight, as well as pleasurable experiences. There has now been developed a tool to visually monitor the topography of emotion-triggered bodily sensations and this has further reinforced my belief that there could be a use for the research I'm undertaking. Nummenmaa, Glerean, Hari and Hietanen, (2014) developed a way to visualise where emotion resides in the body, using the setup below to collect information from people about their feelings.

Nummenmaa, Glerean, Hari and Hietanen, (2014) 

The results of their research were then made public using the body images as set out below. At first sight they look somewhat like superhero figures from DC or Marvel comic books, but they clearly give visual form to a usually invisible set of feelings, which is something I have been trying to do for a while. 

In a later article this research team assessed the representational similarity between the measured features of subjective experience. 

Nummenmaa, Hari, Hietanen and Glerean (2018) Maps of subjective feelings

My subjective visual response to these issues is to try to break out from the standard human body form. I am attempting to visualise a complexity of feelings that are constantly in motion and at the same time, are mixed in with memories and reflections. Therefore I try to use a much wider range of visual language in order to communicate my ideas, including differences in material handling, colour saturation, texture, shape and tonality. My images being more like a stirred broth of feelings, than a symmetrically balanced person in a superhero costume. I do though feel as if there is a very close relationship between what Nummenmaa, Hari, Hietanen and Glerean were doing and what I'm attempting to do.

Somatic portrait of pain caused by earache

In order to do the work I am doing with other people I had to come up with a more complex pain measurement tool, which simply by its existence points to limitations in the Nummenmaa, Hari, Hietanen and Glerean images. 

Chart designed for pain measurement

My recent work with patients in a spinal injuries unit has been about trying to visualise pain, anxiety, and trauma, things that I have been trying to communicate through coloured drawings, as part of a process of learning how to feel or be more aware of interoceptual experiences.

Recent discoveries in neuroscience suggest that a greater awareness of and ability to feel or sense the events happening inside us, help us to learn how to manage intense feelings. It has also been argued that att the same time, as people develop this skill, they begin feeling less pain and anxiety. Being more sensitive to interoceptual experiences, may therefore be a key to becoming less sensitive to pain. However I think this awareness needs to be coupled with a state of awe or wonder at the amazing thing that our bodies are. I attempt to build into the process of conversation that the drawings develop from,  narratives that help to achieve this, then hopefully, if someone becomes drawn into a more uplifting story about the body, an awareness of the mythic possibilities of the engagement, might lead to their body's release of some feel good hormones.  

I have also developed some images that are being designed to be coloured in, as a type of mindfulness exercise. These images are yet to be finalised in conjunction with patients and are just simplified examples of the coloured images already produced. My earlier experience with the history of painting by numbers, has made me very aware that these things take some careful designing if they are to work. Once finished and printed off, people can use them to create their own ideas as to which colours express their feelings. Hopefully this provides more agency over the process and at the same time the action of colouring, should develop a focused attention that can help reduce stress, improve concentration and help to regulate emotions.  Well that is the idea anyway. 

Draft versions of pain awareness colouring in images

References

Gibney, E. (2025) These contact lenses give people infrared vision — even with their eyes shut: Sci-fi-style technology uses nanoparticles to convert infrared light into visible light that humans can see. Nature: News 22 May Accessed from: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01630-x

Holt, N.J. (2024). Colouring for Well-Being: Evidence and Applications. In: Crawford, P., Kadetz, P. (eds) Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26825-1_17-1

Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R. and Hietanen, J.K., 2014. Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(2), pp.646-651.

Nummenmaa, L., Hari, R., Hietanen, J.K. and Glerean, E., 2018. Maps of subjective feelings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), pp.9198-9203.

Schuman-Olivier Z, Trombka M, Lovas DA, Brewer JA, Vago DR, Gawande R, Dunne JP, Lazar SW, Loucks EB, Fulwiler C. Mindfulness and Behavior Change. Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2020 Nov/Dec;28(6):371-394. doi: 10.1097/HRP.0000000000000277. PMID: 33156156; PMCID: PMC7647439.

See also:

Maps made by our nervous systems

Minjeong An: Drawing with a computer

Drawing and healing traditions

Ibrahim el Salahi: Pain relief drawings

Drawings as aesthetic transducers

Painting by numbers

Drawing and mindfulness 

Monkey, pig, dog, rabbit and horse

Ideas for tranculments

Some animals crop up over and over again in my work. They are old friends and they allow me to work with animist ideas, as well as tell stories. They are conceptually embedded into the narrative grounds out of which they grew and each one has a specific set of attributes that are understood by no one else but myself. They often come in the form of ideas for 'tranclements' or 'nic-nacs', ideas I have for objects that I could imagine on shelves in my parents house. This is how I see working class sculpture; our house and the houses of relatives, were full of small ceramic and brass objects, many of which like Staffordshire flat backed ceramic scenes, told mini stories. 

Staffordshire spill vase

Spills were still used to transfer flames and help light fires when I was a boy, and I like to still make 'spill vases' using the Staffordshire form, not that they have any practical use any more, but they remind me of how time moves on and of how outdated forms gradually acquire new meanings. Working in the way I do is also 'old fashioned' but then again anyone over 70 is indeed 'old fashioned', my ideas partly a product of my 1950s upbringing. 

The monkey belongs to grandad Freeman, my mother's father. He used to tell me stories of his time in India, where he was posted during the First World War. His pet monkey was obviously of great comfort to him when posted far away from home, in a very foreign environment. He must have tailored his stories for a young boy, because in my mind grandad's monkey was a sort of simian Black Bob; a clever aid to my grandad, who would get involved in all sorts of adventures, as grandad negotiated Indian life. He never mentioned any fighting, but lots of stories about getting food, whereby his monkey would steal fruit or entertain others while grandad managed to help himself to what he wanted. He told me his monkey was a good listener, who would come into his tent at night and share food, whilst grandad told it all about life in England and it told him all about life in India. His monkey was cheeky and would annoy officers by making rude gestures and stealing things from them, or so grandad said. Back in the 1950s somewhere in Pensnett there used to be a pub that kept monkeys in a cage, I cant place it on a map; but in my memory we walked quite a long way to get there, through rough ground and fields. We only went in summer, grandad and I; we would go out together walking and talking about life, the universe and everything. When we got to the pub we would get a seat at an outside table near to the monkey cage and grandad would retell his monkey stories, pointing out differences between his semi-wild cheeky pet and these locked up, sad specimens. He was obviously not allowed to bring his monkey back home to Pensnett, and it must have been a difficult moment of separation for him, but the monkey lived on in his mind, as a powerful spirit that held on to grandad's wartime experiences. That monkey is still cheeky, still anti-authoritarian and it loves to be included in stories.

Drawing for monkey spill vase

Because my surname is Barker, I've had a long time association with dogs. My nickname at school was 'hylax', the latin for a barking dog, which in turn was derived from the Greek word hylax (ὑλάκτης), meaning "barker" or "watchdog". I liked the idea that as an artist I could operate as a watchdog. But as I'm also prone to be my own worst enemy, and end up going in circles, I was also a dog that bites its own tail.

The dog that bites its own tail

The dog is also a fusion of two real dogs, Scamp and Sam. Scamp was my boyhood dog who went with me as I played within the pitted post-war landscapes of Himley Road in Dudley. From the smoking underground fires of Russell's Hall, via the slag heaps that formed the background landscape to where we lived, Scamp would be with me. Sometimes he would get covered in grey clay as we played in a local stream and I would get a spanking and real telling off for getting him so dirty and at other times he was my saviour, barking at boys who wanted to fight me. Scamp was my Black Bob; we had all sorts of in my mind adventures, as we wondered the scarred landscape of bomb craters and burnt out factories. We were together reliving cowboy and Indian stories, tales of ancient Arthurian England and the New Adventures of Flash Gordon. Sam was the dog we had when the children were young. My daughter was for a while a keen horse rider, and so we would on a weekend walk to the stables, and while she was there I would take Sam out past the ring road, following Meanwood Beck. In such a quiet place I could walk with Sam off the lead, she would paddle in the stream and run around, chasing after any sticks thrown, giddy with excitement. I would be lost in my own world, imagining things, constructing worlds in my mind as we walked, happy in my own company. Sam kept me sane during those years when I would sometimes lose all track of what I was supposed to be doing. 

Black Bob

The rabbit belongs to someone outside of the family, and yet it is also Br'er Rabbit, the stories of whom, retold by Enid Blyton, I read to the children many times.

Br'er Rabbit is a trickster, a little like the spider Anansi; originally emerging out of Africa alongside the slave trade and then migrating into the minds of children all over the world as the stories were retold and resold in Westernised versions.

The rabbit was also a creature from a story told to me by a migrant who had crossed the Mediterranean Sea. Whenever danger threatened he would look out into the swell surrounding the boat and if he could spot his rabbit swimming beneath the surface of the water all would be well. The rabbit was a sort of invisible/visible angel that accompanied the man on dangerous journeys, a spirit form that could morph into its surroundings and which took care of the man and protected him from harm. 

Horses are forever associated with my grandmother. She could talk to them. When she was a girl her parents lived above the steelwork's stables, where her father worked as a groom. Before motorised transport horses were the only way to move around heavy materials and metal is very heavy. The horses had to be kept healthy and my gran used to often sleep with them when she was a girl, and would be expected to alert her father to any issues that might be arising, such as if any horse had a fever or cold. She used to take me to visit the local blacksmiths in Pensnett and would talk to a horse while it was being shod, keeping it calm and reassured. Sometimes a horse would be tethered on a scrap of local wasteland and gran would go over and talk to it. She ran her fingers through its ears as she did and scratched its head and neck, I don't know what she said or what the horse replied, but their heads would touch and I knew something special was going on between them, nan sometimes breathing out heavily right up their noses. They were like relatives to her, all part of her mystery, an extension of her tealeaf reading powers and activities as the village healer. Horses are for myself because of my gran's activities, almost human, often morphing between states, they are the warning voice of the animal kingdom, too big to be controlled by us and only allowing us to ride them after a proper negotiation. 

I have one image in my mind of a horse I will never forget; one day my wife Pam and myself were out for a walk with Ruth and William. Of the two children, Ruth always loved to engage with animals, no matter how big or small. We eventually came across a field with horses in it and Ruth wanted to feed one of them with a handful of grass. All seemed fine, until the horse dipped its head over the fence and grabbed hold of the hood of Ruth's coat with its teeth and hauled her up into the air, as if she was a bag of oats. For one horrid moment we thought we had lost her, but I was able to grab her back from whatever fate the horse had decided for her. It was a reminder of how powerful horses are and that if they wanted to, they could easily overpower any human. Nature has a dangerous edge and we forget that, being surrounded by the safety of cities. 

The pig is often cruel or indifferent, able to read books and disengage when life around it is tragic, as in the drawing below. It is also an animal that has suffered greatly in the hands of human beings, an animal that waits its turn in the pecking order, as foreseen by George Orwell.

The pig was an animal that people still kept in back garden stys in the Black Country when I was growing up in the 1950s. At the time they felt like huge, primeval beasts and I was often sent to feed them left-over food scraps, such as potato skin peelings, every time being terrified that they would somehow get out of their enclosures and eat me. There were many tales told to me by adults of their cunning and ferocity, probably to stop me getting too close to them, but you knew as soon as you were next them and they looked at you, how intelligent they were and of how they could totally destroy you if they ever had the chance. 

My primary school entrance was directly opposite to the local abattoir and I knew a boy who's father worked there, so we would often go inside, mainly to use the big floor sinks to play in, as they were places you could sail a boat in and have adventures. Surrounding us were lines of hanging dead pigs. We heard them from the playground when they were driven in for killing, they often squealed as they were dispatched, but we never really thought about what was happening; it was death on our doorstep, but so familiar that the enormity didn't really register until years later, when I began having dreams of standing in those sinks full of blood. 

I have many versions of these animals in my head, some of which exist as puppets and others as characters in drawings or they take part in small ceramic scenes. The puppets are probably closest to how they appear in my head.

Dog, horse, monkey, pig and rabbit puppet designs

It is though the tranculments that it would seem people engage with most easily. When I make a 'tranclement' I hope that someone will put it on their mantlepiece or wherever else in their house they need a little story, my simple contribution to their lives. 

The dog finally catches the rabbit: A tranculment in place in a home

The rabbit captured: Spill vase

Spill vases on a mantlepiece

Tranclements

These animals have allowed me to tell stories, much like the animals in Aesop's Fables, but I never wanted them to teach any moral lessons, they are creatures of my dreams, having material lives of their own, becoming another form for my externalised mind; brothers and sisters of Sooty, the frog, teddy and that stuffed octopus I used to sleep with seventy years ago. 

See also:

Why draw animals?

What is it to be human?

Arvak A fable

Drawing elephants and other animals

Drawing in pen and ink