Drugs have held very little appeal for me. But there was a phase in my mid-20s, when I fell in with a group of louche painters, that I suddenly became...
Drugs have held very little appeal for me. But there was a phase in my mid-20s, when I fell in with a group of louche painters, that I suddenly became curious and tried a few different sorts: LSD, ecstacy, speed, cocaine, and of course all shades of dope. None of it was for me.
A time in an Amsterdam cafe. A day that started out lovely with friends, with dope and beer and a game of chess. The music being played was Booker T and the MGs. Everything was nice. Then someone changed the record and put on The Prodigy…”you got the poison…I got the remedy” and it all went wrong. I had to get out and before I knew it I was lost somewhere in the back lanes of the city, alone and paranoid. The sun had set. A greasy yellow light pervaded everything. Dodgy people seemed to come out from the shadows. In re-arranging this day visually I find myself putting things on the table more interesting to me now: a bowl of Mussels, chips, brie, a lovely pint of Hoegarden… I leave a token joint…for old times sake.
I find it somehow easier sometimes to accept distortions in space and architecture than with the figure, so I allow buildings to stretch and tilt. ( if you’re not the owner subsidence can be so pleasing to the eye). Thinking of those wonderful twisted buildings in silent German films, in the Lubeck of Nosferatu, and the full blown artifice of Dr Caligari. I sometimes think of two tendencies in us visually - towards the geometric or the higgledy-piggledy. This is played out in Flemish art, in The Netherlands and Belgium: On the one side - Vermeer, de Hooch, Mondrian and de stjil, and on the other Bosch, Brueghel, Van Gogh, Cobra.. Is it a protestant and catholic thing?…mess and order?
I think of Holland being a kind of more organised Scotland.
The figure I based on someone I met in a cafe in Parney Street, Glasgow. I think he was possibly homeless but had great style nevertheless.I might characterise it as Klondyke pimp. A travelling medicine man, a purveyor of rare herbs. Not everyone can carry off a fur jacket and bowler hat.