Art and Symbols

I was chatting to a friend the other day who said he doesn't like some of my newer artwork. He explained that, though he can appreciate the skill in it, he just couldn't 'get' it; he appreciates artwork that is more representational of the thing the artist observes...portraits, a drawing of a dog with a lead etc.

I explained to him why I produce my work. I was puzzled because he has plenty of symbolic tattoos that have long since become detached from their meanings over his body. They are decorative tribal patterns and celtic designs. I couldn't understand why someone with such an appreciation of symbolism didn't appreciate an image that had a conceptual/symbolic groundwork, after all he has those symbols permanently etched into his skin. What followed was quite a brief but interesting discussion from symbols to contemporary art and I am going to attempt to explore that a little.



The above picture is one of the pieces I completed last year at Vermont Studio Centre - go there if you ever get the chance! Anyway, it's called "Faucet" and is an example of one of the drawings that my friend can't stand. Let me explain what I was thinking about when I was making such an oddity!

I find that those drawings I produce always end up looking womb like. I know, it seems deliberate, but I was actually trying to draw cloud formations with a sense of depth that you could almost be a part of; look into John Martin's work on wikipedia to see what I was trying to do. I tend to get caught up in the sensuality of my materials and it always ends up looking organic; womb or vagina like. The reason I want to draw cloud formations is because, when I was a young lad, I used to stare at cloud formations and imagine different shapes in them; they gave me a sense of my own vulnerability or reminded me of Constable paintings.

Once I thought I was finished my drawing, I realized it looked like a vagina rather than having the sense of the sublime that I was after. Now, this probably says a lot about me psychologically and I do find it vaguely embarrassing. In fact, when I was at the Vermont Studio Centre I was feeling a bit low and self-effacing, so when I was talking about my work I called my drawings, "Vagiscapes", well the term kind of stuck!

In my desire to hide the blatantly psychosexual nature of my work I tried to subvert it. In other words I decided to make a visual joke out of the sexual symbolism. The chap in the drawing is painted onto the charcoal background with black and white paint, he's a workman who is about to open a faucet. There are a couple of visual cues there too; what will the effect of opening the faucet have on the background? And, if you look closely at the ladder the labourer is on, you'll notice there is a rung missing, this is suggestive of his impending doom.

Well, I've just explained away most of the visual cues behind one of my latest pieces of work. The reason I did this was to make a point about contemporary art and symbolism. Even Tracy Emin's unmade bed, that was shortlisted for the Turner prize, was symbolic or had a concept behind it. Emin's bed was symbolic of her sexually traumatized past, there are visual cues in the work if you look for them and investigate the artist's past a little. If you ignore those cues then the artwork becomes either about Emin's laziness as an artist or the viewer's laziness as a consumer of art.

Coming back to tattoos. Above is a pic of a tattoo that I put together for my friend. Now, if you look at the pattern then it is purely decorative because, hopefully, it's pleasing to the eye. If you know a little about flags and symbols then the image becomes symbolic of the saltire, St Andrew and his history. It also stands for Scotland and its celtic past. Perhaps it stands for Scottish independence or national pride.

My point is that symbols and the stories that they represent are linked to contemporary and conceptual art. If you don't investigate the visual cues then the work becomes entirely two-dimensional. For example, the symbols of dogs on pictish stones become simple decorative carvings rather than representations of the pictish leader, Connvar and his war dog, 'Brahan'.

Likewise, if you look at my drawings and see simple 'vagiscapes', then perhaps you need to delve a little bit deeper. If you don't want to delve deeper then that is symbolic of your laziness as a consumer of the visual world. Question what you see. Pictures still tell stories, and yes…they also lie.

You can view more examples of my work at http://www.barryallanscott.com/

Scratching an itch

The drawing above was completed while I was taking a stream of calls in a call centre. Most of those calls were complaints. I did enjoy the job, well...not the job but the people I worked with. I don't know what I was thinking about when I was drawing, I was just letting my mind wander while getting shouted at really. Drawing this added meaning to my work, it made me feel as though I was doing something productive.

I recently read an article on the bbc news website about meaningful work.

The article reminded me of the book, "Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art" by Ananda Coomaraswamy; industry without art is brutality. I used to have to talk about that book a lot for theory classes. It's ironic really, I got to hate talking about that book and it was my job. Coomaraswamy talks about taking pride in something and being who you are to the best of your ability; the right making of the thing to be made.

By drawing in the call centre I managed to make my job feel a little more meaningful and productive. I really enjoy my new job but there's not a lot of time for doodling, and that gets me to the reason I created this blog.

This place is meant to be cathartic, a place to air thoughts and meanderings that may usually go unnoticed or unsaid. Scratch that itch or sit down with a cup of tea, chocolate digestive and a sketchbook...put the world to rights for a little while. Here we can be ourselves again.