Drawing

Saturday, 14 June 2025

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.

Sunday, 8 June 2025

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.

Monday, 2 June 2025

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.