+34West Cork artist John Kingerlee has had close to one hundred exhibitions all over the world, and his latest exhibition, Kingerlee at 90...
I like Jack Yeats, of course. I admire his work. The looseness of the colour. Becoming a Muslim, finding a basic meaning to life, getting free of the feeling of guilt.
I went to a catholic boarding school when I was growing up, so becoming free from that. One story I’m thinking of is of a friend of mine who came to see us years ago and brought this young man with him whom I’ve never met before. And I had my pictures hanging up all around the kitchen, where we were having a cup of tea.
And he said, rather, almost angry or resentful, “You know, what are these things supposed to mean? ” And I said, “What do you see? I don’t wanna affect what you see, I know what I see, and you just have to see what you see. ” And that suddenly changed everything.
And later my friend told me, “You had a convert there. ” Straight away, the friend went all around the kitchen looking at the pictures and said, “These things are bloody marvellous. ” It was because he didn’t have his arms screwed up in his back, expecting to see a meaning when he couldn’t see one. And then I told him, “You know, just enjoy what you’re looking at.
”That it enables you to largely stand back from the current system. And that, for some people, is a great blessing. The freedom of that. Because life is so different with so many people around you.
There are so many challenges everywhere. We’re being forced into a kind of subhuman situation. But it’s important to have things like art to actually make some sense of us, at least. It reflects the inner state of humanity now.
Just get your head down and keep on working and read intelligent stuff. Just work and try to surround yourself with intelligent, stimulating company. And keep away from negative people. Don’t take any notice of people who laugh at you.
Little Jeremy in the kitchen this morning. She’s just one, just learning to walk. And my walking’s very bad, and we’re both alike in a sense. She puts her arm there to keep her balance, and so do I. There’s this huge connection between people who just come into the world and those who are about to go out of it.
Going for walks all over the place. Contemplating the paint chips back in Skibbereen Main Street, to review the colours underneath, cracks in the pavement, whatever it is. And then, of course, is the direct creation all around us. You sit and look at it.
It’s wonderful. And as I get older, the more I find the creation around me more and more wonderful. The song I listen to to get in the zone is… Something by Boccherini. Very heartening, very lovely.
Also Caruso; I love the old Caruso recordings. And John Cage’s piano music. Things that I’m engaged with right under my nose, as we speak. I’ve become, as it were, part of the artwork.
And I emerge at the other end, intact. But for that, whatever length of time it was, I wasn’t there… and wasn’t that wonderful, not to be in my own head? Totally happy and concentrated. That makes it like meditation, actually.
In the early stage of meditation, you just try to calm the mind. Picture it on one thing, and painting is like that. It fixes the mind onto itself. That’s why I like the pictures to speak for themselves, as it were.
The art that means the most to me is… I’d say straight away, it’s cave art. And after that, Cubism. The rules of painting changed with Cubism. McClellan points out that they’re related in some way with the arrival of the movie.
But for some reason, the artist painted things from all angles in the same picture. I haven’t quite delved into it, but I do believe that a new technology changes our sensorium. I think people now appreciate texture in a painting like they didn’t for hundreds of years. But now people are thrilled by texture.
All those great classical Italian pictures look extraordinarily flat now. That’s one of the benefits of cave painting in painting on the rock and around the corner of the rock. And there’s plenty of texture there. To have the courage to let go and to follow the lead you’re being given if you’ve arrived at that point.
Not to impose your own ego, as it were. Paintings nowadays are often best when the artist has disappeared, but the painting arrived. Giving a release from that bombardment of modern life. Increasing one’s appreciation of the creation of the world.
It’s just an immediate thrill that’s rare and it’s a kind of instant freedom. It might, for instance, release you momentarily from inward burdens. I’ve had people say that they’re having a hard time and they went to the Tate Gallery or somewhere. And suddenly, their problems abated, and they knew which direction to take.
Simply a release from the problems of modern living, given to them by the paintings.
John Kingerlee My Life In Culture
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