'Art'

 

When I was younger I used to think a lot of so-called ‘ART’ was a waste of time and very pretentious. I was irritated that people weren't all doing useful, 'good', important work in this world of injustice and poverty.

 

I thought art should be about useful things like pottery and the design of practical objects - and crafts - or at least it should celebrate nature how it is, un-buggered about by human greed or pretence – or it should simply give you pleasure and make you feel better! But even these latter, I felt were a waste of resources, energy and focus that we owed to starving and waterless peoples who hadn't a sou for bread never mind a painting or a sculpture.

 

Then I was lucky enough to get exposed to the very best of Art at the Royal Academy's special exhibitions in 2000 and 2001, and subsequently to understand the had-to-be-hidden messages in paintings - from reading 'The Expected One' by Kathleen McGowan…

 

But I hated most of the Apocalypse exhibition works as they were violent, sadistic  and bloody, like the giant fish tanks full of bleeding mutilated bodies. They were dark, negative and backward looking, like the reconstructed bus stop from outside Auschwitz - that filled a whole room of course. They were slick, fashionable or trite, and didn't soothe my soul - rather the opposite, and didn't make me feel good, and it took me a lot of head-bending to get how important it all was. I was angry that the Royal academy was exposing us to Apocalyptic imagery and the next year to instruments of torture and Aztec flayed skins. Perhaps the aims/funding of the 'Royal' Academy had that intention - to make me angry and fill me with fear?!

 

I eventually realized that truly good, cutting edge ‘Art’ - and I don't mean pretty flower paintings at the card shop - is the truest representation of what's actually going on in society. It’s like the canary in the mine and the best artists are really sensitive and truthful social commentators and eye openers to a blinkered, navel and TV contemplating public. The discriminating thing is to recognize the great artists from the copyists and mere fashion idols. Art is not necessarily about pleasure, in fact these days because of our state, very rarely about pleasure!! - and it took me a long time to understand that.

 

If I love and value my own gift of life, and care about my fellow humans and their future in this beautiful Gaian planetary system, I have a responsibility to look at it with intuition and discrimination, and use those warning signals to take action to turn and direct things in an intelligent and loving way, to create my own art that raises awareness and helps that paradisical evolution - and also to hold a paradisical safe-haven balance in one slice or frame of the streaming of creation. Then - when you have chosen to be born in a turbulent and terrifying time-frame - you can at least astral travel home to this slice-of-paradise Gaian health spa for a holiday!