Kinship in Healing
A Global Collective for Trauma, Loss, and Spiritual Growth.
Kinship in Healing
Ep.4 Heavy Metal Bob Ross with Gerard Torbitt
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In Episode 4, I am joined by Belfast Artist Gerard Torbitt. Gerard is the co-founder of CULT a Belfast based art collective, tutor on the Art In The Unconscious course at The Jung Centre Dublin, child of the 80's and all round character.
Strap in for pop-culture references, summoning your demons, art as an outlet, breakdowns, breakups and sitting in your shadow to discover yourself. Gerard is a verbal roller-coaster tipping out the contents of his mind with all it's colour, chaos, darkness and beauty!
Quotes like "I don't want to go to the chaos world, I want to stay here where there's beer and orgies" will having laughing along and constantly catching up with Gerard's pace.
In many ways this episode is light hearted and I encourage you to go check out Gerard's work via the links below. Walk Lightly;
https://www.instagram.com/gerard_torbitt/
https://www.instagram.com/cult__anartexhibition/
The art references Gerard spoke about during the episode can be found on the podcast Instagram page and within Buy Me A Coffee:-
Thank you for listening, we hope to grow a community of listeners. You are the journey and I look forward to sharing new episodes very soon. If you'd like to support the show, please visit the link to buy me a coffee. Thank you in advance:
Hello and welcome back to the circle. It's good to have you here with us again. To our regulars, thank you for being part of this growing community. It's your presence that makes this podcast possible. If you're joining us for the first time, you're so welcome here. Before we begin today's conversation, a gentle reminder. We dive deep into the real, often sensitive experiences of loss, grief, and mental health. Please take care of yourself as you listen and feel free to pause or step away whenever you need to. We're in this together and we're moving forward at your pace. He is. How could I describe Jared? Quirky? We've just been sat here and decided that actually we're not going to determine the title of this episode until the end. We're going to look back and see what craziness comes up, and I think that's um that's testament to the type of guy Jared is. Yeah, if the if the if the episode titles off the wall, then you know why. But uh sure by the end of this episode um you'll you'll get the measure of Jared. We met a few weeks back to to discuss the podcast. Uh he's a great guy, super interesting, and in the research I've done leading up to the podcast, um, I found some rather funny, quippy little things, and I think it's going to be a great episode. So just before we get into it, uh a bit of a shameless uh plug. Uh I have uh recently started an Instagram page. So if you're interested in following the community, jump over there, do all the usual things you do on Instagram, and uh also there's a buy me a coffee setup. So these podcast episodes do cost a bit to run. I know I'm I'm I'm already with the begging ball out, but uh look if you can and you value the podcast, jump over and and see what you can you can uh offer. So I'll be super grateful for that. Uh one more thing before we get going, bit of housekeeping. My voice sounds bizarre this week. I've got a strained throat. I've uh come down with a sore throat yesterday. So if it makes me sound better, let me know and I'll start smoking 40 a day. Otherwise, uh back to normal on the next episode, I hope. So without further ado, I would like to welcome Jared to the podcast. He is a Belfast artist, um, and I'm gonna let him explain a bit about his art as the episode goes on. So just to get used to his voice, first of all, welcome Jared. Hello, how dear, how are you doing? I'm doing really well apart from the sore throat, which I've just admitted to. It gives you a nice kind of Tom Witzy verb. It's a bit bluesier. Tom Waitsy, but I can't sing, I wish I could use it to get that done. Jersey you know, that raspy, you know. Um you also do this thing. I know it's the first time I met you and communicating with you ever since. You always come up with these tenuous and and and obscure references, um, and it's brilliant. I don't know where your memory bank for all these characters and events comes from, but I don't know if it's what I don't think of one of them, my direct memories or whatever.
SPEAKER_02It's just I I love pop culture and references like that as a kind of a connector. Um it's one of those things I remember chatting to an art guy, and people were like, Oh, how do you know him? That was a bit like a real riveting conversation. We're just talking about Robocop and how good Robocop was, you know. Um I think sometimes those wee analogies and those wee references are quite comforting to people, you know. So sometimes you're chatting to somebody and they're you mentioned Baker Grove and it just activates something in their head.
SPEAKER_00It has with me. That's my generation. I used to I used to have family up in the northeast. All right, and whenever I came back from summer holidays with the family or Easter holidays, I always used to have a bit of a northeastern accent, so I'd be in the playground going Howie, you know, that kind of thing. We're ganning down the shops, you know. Like, and so yeah, that that that kind of pop culture works for me, but you've you've come up with some crackers then like but you did one the other day. What was the name of that chap you came up with the other day? The Canadian Oh uh Nardwar? Yeah, Nardwar. Never heard of him. I had to go away and research.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you were saying about some of the stuff we were talking about researching, and I was like, that's Nardwar now, well, that's good, yeah.
SPEAKER_00What a reference. Yeah, it's not exactly current pop culture to be fair, but brilliant. Okay, well, look, the audience have probably got used to your your your your voice by now, so let's just let's dive right in. The whole point of this episode, um, you can be as open as you feel you need to be. I know some of the stuff we're discussing is personal to you, personal to your experiences, but that's kind of the whole point, yeah, you know, is that we we open up a little bit so it makes this kind of uh healing work, if you like, more accessible to people. It doesn't quite sound as um off the wall, perhaps as as as people might think um it is. So it's just about being as open as you're comfortable with, sharing your journey, your experience, and we'll we'll come up to a point naturally where we talk about your art and and other things that you've been doing as well.
SPEAKER_02I think by nature of my art is it is very exposing, you know. Um so the conversations are there. Uh it sort of depends on the sort of I mean your discretion of what you tell people, you know, when it comes to stuff. Sometimes details are pertinent and other times you can be maybe overloading someone with information. But as long as the kind of I think the thrust of what I'm trying to say is there, you know what I mean? Um it's sometimes I think that we're people are much better, more OFA words like trauma and things like that, that you can kind of go, well, uh traumatic experience, and people you can just kind of go that and you can kind of go, people can relate to that as a thing, yeah, as an archetype, yeah, almost um, as opposed to me going, well, this specific thing that happened to me and then this specific thing, and then immediately you're different from them, whereas it's like I think everyone has their will community more their demons, their traumas, their their everyone has whatever they want to call them. And I feel like um there's certain ways you can relate to people parallels. I think parallels is good, yeah, really important to have, you know. Um even when we were talking talking about the the one previously about like grief and stuff like that, is in there's different types of grief, you know. Absolutely, but it's if that's the subject, we're able to come at that from a couple of different angles, then it's it's focusing in the same direction, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, cool. Okay, well let's get started. The first one, Jared, you describe yourself as a chaos artist um whose work is heavily influenced by troubles and trauma. Uh before the art came to save you, what um what did that internal chaos actually look like and feel like for you?
SPEAKER_02Well, um I'm classic like boy, ADHD. I'm very sort of hyperactive, um ch talkative, you know, always got energy sort of running. So in the good way, you know, people say like something's like ADHD, or it's like a superpower, you get things done, but there was a lot of being sort of feeling too much, too excitable, getting sort of demeaned, getting you know the whole idea of kids who are hyperactive get told off like 30 times more, you know, it's things like that. So chatterbox, all that sort of stuff. Um so I always kind of felt it was good for me to have somewhere for my energy to go. Um I used to I think my favourite thing to do as a kid was playing with actually like G.I. Joe's.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because that was like your only world and you could control that.
SPEAKER_00Did you ever do that on the stairs?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_00We had a bass on the on the stairs, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So oh but depended on the on the on the scenario. Yeah, sometimes it was doofet. I I mean I could sit like literally if I had a big box of G.I.
SPEAKER_00Joes, I could just recreate that. Oh, I'll be brilliant. Kids these days will that'll go over their head completely.
SPEAKER_02Um it was like my my my daughters will play these three things now where it's like sort of doll houses on screens now, which is but I I love the kind of the tactileness of it, and I was always a kid who if I watched uh I I probably it's the first of many times I'm probably gonna mention wrestling, yeah, and I would have been oh he's my favourite wrestler, I'm gonna go and draw Adam Baum now, and I would go and then if I watched Willow and I thought, oh that character's cool, General Keel, he's cool, he's got a sculpture face, and I'd go and draw that. Okay, and it was sort of like this need to kind of always be expressed in myself and outputting. It's like a young teen sort of age. Even when I was younger, even when I was sort of seven, eight, and then my dad was kind of a quite a good artist, he never really did it, so I had this inherent belief that art was sort of something everyone did, yeah, you know. So it is one of the few things you would see me engaged and locked in, and very I would say now I've done my what's it to say your thirty or thirty thousand hours or ten thousand hours or whatever it is. Like I've been drawn my whole life and it was it's always one of those things, it's like um I sometimes use this as an analogy, it's almost like a dialysis. That energy that I have, that sort of monic energy, that constant thinking of everything, processing everything, it creates almost like when you think of exercise, like lactic energy or lactic acid, lactic acid, yeah. And it's you have to kind of isn't it you have to kind of work that away, and it's to me that I feel like there's a residue of that energy. So why would I be so reading books and watching TV and absorbing all this information and playing with and and I was going it needed to go somewhere, yeah. And the idea that I'm able then to push that energy into something became a very oh would you say it just practical way of calming myself down, you know. Um in school I was the classic stop doodling and listen. I was like, I am listening and doodling at the same time.
SPEAKER_00In fact, I'm better at listening when if I stop doodling the mind's gonna wander. Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's those things, and it's obviously kids have a lot more supporting.
SPEAKER_00Did you ever do that thing back in the day when we had telephones? Do you remember telephones that you plugged in the wall and you had a card on them and you actually press buttons to ring people? Do you remember that getting the phone bill every month?
SPEAKER_02Oh of course, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Did you ever do the thing when you're on the phone where you would fill an entire page of the phone book with doodles?
SPEAKER_02That was lovely, that was satisfying. Yeah, what I used to no one does it anymore. I used to think I've seen it on my kids' TV. It used to be like going live or something, and someone came on and they said, Everybody bring in your doodles, and this guy was analysing them. And there was people who were doing like geometric ones, and mine were always I was speaking about this the other day. I used to take a page and draw like a wiggly line and then draw a wee stick men, yeah. Like almost like worms, you know, the game of worms, yeah, yeah. And they'll have these wee stick men interacting with each other and chatting with each other's heads off. And but it was quite fun, and like a war's wally yeah thing, and I would sit and like I was doing them even like in secondary school, supposed to do my A levels, and then I would have pass it to my mate, and you'd just see his shoulders going, you know.
SPEAKER_00And it it was a little scene in front of him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just he'd be like, What do you what are you doing? You study? And I'm like, No, I'm drawing it, drawing like some sort of these we stick with. So I think I've I think now I'm older it's easy to kind of use terms and phrases, but I think that artistic temperament, artistic license, that sort of create creative what's that word process. Yeah, the pro the sort of in the process you're allowed to be a bit mad. Yeah. And I feel like it sort of suits my kind of character to kind of go to be eccentric, to be colourful, to be expressive.
SPEAKER_00But you seem totally comfortable in accepting of that, which is awesome. Some people don't don't find that, they don't find the right outlet for the type of person they are or the things they're experiencing. That's and that's awesome. Yeah, it's um and it's a sort of square peg in the round hole.
SPEAKER_02Uh you're gonna destroy the peg too. Do you know what I mean? And it's I think we'll come to that. There was a point in my life where I was being smashed into the wrong, hammered into the wrong hole, and it was destroying me. Um and to go back to the chaos artist, it is chaotic. I currently am focusing mainly on my art and I'm kind of basically day-to-day scrabbling along, trying to do exhibitions trying to break, trying to make a break.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I thrive on that. I can't do nine to five. I can't do There was a version of me that that died a few years ago. There was a version of me that was like, I can't, this guy's gotta go. This version of me wasn't that was like a dialed down neater shirt. I'm I'm smiling.
SPEAKER_00I don't want to quit you off, I'm I'm smiling because I'm kinda going through that pr process at the moment. I got well, you I talked about it in earlier podcasts, I don't want to hijack this session with it, but I got I got made redundant and that set me off down a path which has actually led to this podcast, which is part of many things I'm I'm doing with my life to try and find I know it sounds cheesy, but my calling, my purpose, absolutely because bits of me were dying too. And you know, when you go through when you go through painful grief, you look at the world differently. Absolutely. And there are other things in your life that bring you to that point, not just grief. You know, so we talk about breakdowns, we talk about relationship separations, we talk about major life shifts, political change political view changes, things like that. They can all you know just create an awakening in you where you go, I'm not me, and I need to be me. Yeah, you know, and that's I'm kind of going through that. So I'm smiling when you tell that story because you know I can empathise with it and and it's really nice to see people who are on a the true path, whatever that you know, whatever that is for them. And I think the problem is we we've been taught from a young age that success looks a certain shape, size, and colour.
SPEAKER_02And it comes in a certain time frame as well, at a certain age.
SPEAKER_00It's rubbish. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's absolute rubbish. I mean success is defined by first of all, it's success, you define it yourself, right? What you think is success is success. So if you say, Do you know what I want to sell one paint in a month year round and do podcasts and drink German beer and you achieve those things, you you're successful by your own definition. Yeah, by your own um sort of benchmarks and the underpinning thing there is happiness. So if all of those things make you happy, you're successful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it's I kinda do. I think you could have everything lined up as it is, sort of perfect, 2.49 to 5, set that doesn't work for me. I kind of thrive on that energy of chaos. Yeah, it's like uh you're constantly solving problems, you're constantly there's an image. The Emperor when he's fallen down the big hole at the end of Return of the Jedi, spoiler alert, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um I think everyone's watched it by now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, right. So when he's fallen, I think of life as a free fall. There's a great I think I mentioned this was chatting before, uh Layenne, the French movie, yeah. And it's uh it's about it's not it's not the fall that kills you, it's a landing, and I think of life as kind of a free fall, and you can sort of steer yourself in a free fall, yeah, but there's still so much of you know gravity acting on you. Yeah. So I kind of feel like you can sometimes just there's two ways of surrendering. You can sort of surrender to the void and just quit and just throw the head up, or there's almost go with the absurdity of it, go with the momentum, go with the well I'm here, yeah. Um I'm here and no one else is doing it. Yeah. Um yeah, there's sort of a momentum that I think you need sort of, you know, you think of the time what you call it, the Robert Frost, two two roads, two roads in a you know, the the the splitting and empty wood, that kind of thing. There are points where you you do have to make those decisions, you know, you know, like you say in the free fall, do you go to the left or do you go to the right? You know, and I feel that happened. And a pro it was a process and it sort of started with a kind of uh who am I as a a family man and uh who I was as a a parent, who I was as an artist, and the ratio was all wrong. So I went to what was this four or five years ago, 2021? Um my lockdown was done, I went to Cushendal, I went to the tower, the Cushendal Tower, it was owned by Bill Drummond. I just had this notion I really wanted to go and work there as a residency, but that was the first time I'd left my sort of family, and I had went, I think I had to kind of when I was there make this decision. I'm a decent I'm a decent family man and an okay artist, but I want to be a really good artist. But there was a certain aspect of being a family man that started to go, so my my my marriage broke down, but I think I think I'm a pretty good dad and a better artist than I ever was gonna be. Yeah. This is weird, this is where I start talking my weird references is there was I I like um taro and sort of stuff for that kind of stuff, and I had a taro of demons, and there was one that popped out and it was Moloch. And Moloch was this demon, this sort of kind of brazen bowl idea that you passed your children, you sacrificed your children over this fire to Moloch, you know. And I don't know if it's a literal, it was a lit, I think it was more of a metaphor or an allegory. And to me it was this I mean, why did that pop up? You know, and it was this idea of sort of sacrificing a traditional sort of relationship with my my kids to be the best me I can be, then to come back and go look, I can be a better dad for you because I'm a better me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Um that's a really long-winded wind about it. But I had to sacrifice sort of I had to almost hand them over this through this trial this baptism of fire.
SPEAKER_00It sounds like a selfishness, but actually the the end goal is that not only do you become a better version of yourself, but you become better for them in the process.
SPEAKER_02Which creates a lovely loop of they appreciate me and I appreciate them more. Um yeah, and there's there's less of that kind of what if, what if I try being an artist? What if, what if I don't want that anymore, I don't want that looming. I I feel like one of my favourite things about working, especially if we work with a lot of queer artists. There was one of the guys and he married, you know, he goes to his husband, he had to come out to his husband as an artist.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02We thought this was a real funny thing because he'd be the guy, he he's the guy who wants everyone to come out to their parents, but he had to go to his husband and go, I'm an artist. You know, and it was what did he do for a living? Um he works in an adult chap. Right. And he thinks he's trying to break out of that, you know, and I think that sort of gives him a bit of light of fire under him, yeah. And there to go back to um a sort of a quote was thinking earlier was you let your light shine and that sort of illuminates other people. Yeah, and it is, I think, with being an artist that sometimes allows other people to be an artist, you know, to be a bit extra.
SPEAKER_01Allows other people to be a bit extra.
SPEAKER_00You know any art form is nothing without the audience. Yeah. So if you're a musician, I mean okay, we could say people like to play for their own entertainment, and that's fair enough. But generally speaking, you don't form a band and go and stand on stage unless you have an audience. Yeah. You don't necessarily paint art unless somebody's gonna observe it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know I've met people who do that actually. Yes, yeah, I'm sure. They paint for themselves, I mean it's great therapeutically, but it's a bit of a shame because it's like, oh come on, let's let's let's talk, let's dance, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know. But that's really what I think that's what art is about. It's about not only an expression of yourself and um the experiences you've had, but I think it's about sharing with other people and and you know, lifting them up and creating an experience for them. I I mean for me, music does that, right? So that's that generally that's what I associate with. Um music's got a bit more, I think.
SPEAKER_02Um it's a very immediate reward, isn't it? Yeah, you know, you say hey, hey, hey, hey, you know what I mean? Um art's not the same. I used to play in a band, but the idea of having four people to allow my creative output to happen was a nightmare. Yeah. So I went, do you just do the art? Do you just express myself through the art? It was considerably much better for me, you know. Um I do miss physically screaming. I do miss that. I do miss it. You're not just screaming at the canvas though.
SPEAKER_00Like as you paint it.
SPEAKER_02You know, I'll sing along with my music and stuff like that, but um yeah, it's not as quite as an immediate reward, you know what I mean. Painting, it is a bit of you have to spend time with it, you have to you have to do the work, you know, you do have to do that, and people will walk past it and what's this? You know what I mean? And say this and the you know, um it's not quite as immediate, but I like having that conversation with people, even if they're disgusted, even if they are disgusted, because disgust is a great emotion, it's a great starting point.
SPEAKER_00It's an emotion and it's a response. Ha ha got something. Let's let's move on to the kind of turning point a little bit. The next question here. So many people experience psychological breakdown uh as an ending, and you've spoken about your your own breakdown as a creative birth, um, and that sort of ties into where we were going in the earlier part of the conversation. Can you take us back to the moment you realised putting acrylic to a canvas was no longer just a hobby but a necessity for survival? And I know you've kind of touched on this there, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02But there's never I think with a lot of this, there's never like a definitive answer either. Yeah, um I it was again, it was like a physical. I was working in a job after my marriage broke down and I wasn't being looked after mentally. I wasn't looking after myself mentally, wasn't looking after myself physically, and I had basically a nervous breakdown and I went, I mean that's symptomatic, you know what I mean? If if if you hold your head under water, yeah, you're gonna you're gonna asphyxiate. Yeah, do you know what I'm saying? It's the same idea, absolutely. So I was drowning in whatever this was. I was I used to joke I shouldn't be working on the other side of the lagon because every day I wanted to jump off the bridge. It was and it was horrible. Um no support, and then whenever I sort of said, Look, I'm struggling, it was sort of a very gas lady response of oh, you didn't tell us this. And I remember someone be telling us that, oh, you need to compartmentalise that, and I was I was losing my mind. So I just went, um there's a great quote from Phil Anselmo. I remember watching him get an interview, and he was talking about his many people don't like poltergeist too, but it has served me well. And I always thought that's a great quote because he you know he always talks this weird sort of satanic cadence, and I always thought this is. Serving me, it doesn't serve me. Yeah, in fact, it's doing the opposite. Yeah, it's taking me destroying me. And it was like realizing that art was when I could sit in an office and do some crap job, some number crunching job, because I've got that I've got a hint of the mathism, which makes me quite good at it. Right. And you know, it's like I can do accounts, so I've no interest in it. It's just how many numbers, you know.
SPEAKER_01Um I'd do nothing for it, make money for some other yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um you didn't even have the sense of that one. Um yeah, and I just went, nah. And where I was getting love and attention and respect was Jesus, about a month before. I think it might have contributed to to the breakdown was I took on a solo exhibition on my own, paid for it in my own pocket. Yeah, and um it was very hard. Like I remember having to get the bus into town to Belfast to run on my lunch break because they wouldn't give me even like 15 minutes grace to go in to bring canvases around, and it was and I just went, then people were coming and they were going, This is great, this art's great, you're a great painter, you got an exhibition, brilliant, you deserve that. Well done. You know, and it was like I don't get that for for crunching numbers for some person, yeah. Um was weird as I if you asked me to describe some of these people, I thought I couldn't physically describe them. My brain has completely blacked them out, right? It's interesting, but uh I always say some two and a half years breakdown free. I used to have struggled a lot with suicide ideation. I remember feeling completely worthless during that period for a long time, and I think at that point was a very, very when you're when you feel worthless, you feel like you're just like human detritus. You just you just feel like what am I? Just another there's a great movie by Phil Tippett Um on it's an animated Statmus movie called Mad God. Right. Brilliant movie, really sort of very quite young, actually, it's quite good. Um and it's got this scene with these wee men that look like they're made out of like belly button fluff and they're just like wee worker drones and like the wee stick men I used to draw, you know. And it's quite a playful scene, but it's so grim, and they're just getting smashed and crushed and burnt and flattened and run over and you know, just ground in the gears of industry, yeah. Just you know horror. That's horror, that's a horror to me. Yeah, like I there's the oh that's a nightmare. I mean, even the fact that you look at horror movies now, and a lot of the horror movies are like imagine we worked in an office and everyone was mad, and you go, God, that sounds that sounds horrific. You know what I mean? It's um and someone like me who does dabble with dark stuff, um, extreme stuff, because I am a I'm a I'm a what's that, a sensation. I love I love sensations, I'm a sensory seeker, I love a thrill, I love a horror movie, you know, I love a roller coaster, things like that. I was sitting the other day, we were in a an old place we used to work in, in a real dingy background, and I went, Oh, do you remember how scarred you used to get when you were a kid at somewhere like this? You're like, oh, something's proper, I'm gonna jump out in me. You know, so it was I I love feeling alive, I love stuff that makes me feel excited and alive, and painting made me feel that way. Yeah, painting made me feel I had control, I had power, I had you know, I can lean into all my magic analogies, we'll probably come to that later, but I I felt like I was like a wizard. I was in my I was in my I was getafix from asterisk and I was in with my big cauldron just stirring it up and doing whatever I wanted. Um so we'll we'll probably imagine her again, uh Laura Patterson who was on previously. We call her Mrs. P, I call her Mrs. P. And she went to the show, and it was if I want to pinpoint a moment of what I how important what I was doing was was she she's quite expressive, and I looked at her and she looked at one of my patents and recoiled. And the only way I think about it, movie reference number 20 here, but you just remember the Dead Souls room, yeah, and there's that window. And if you actually look that looks kind of like my art, that kind of glowy, twisted neon. And I remember that really freaked me out as a kid. That stuck on me, that sort of zombie floating Tim Burton, yeah, ambient, yeah, yeah, yeah. That sort of spooky, almost ethereal. Yeah, and I imagine sort of that was almost like like Laura had just flicked uh a curtain up on this thing, and she saw she saw into the crystal ball, she saw into the scrammer. Yeah, she went, what was happening here? And I went and I sort of dated it, and I went, clearly my relationship was my my just feeling I was struggling to work, I was struggling to get work. I felt it was failing as a parent. Everything was there, everything was written there, everything was like on that one painting On every painting. Okay, and then I started to realise you could be You didn't know this. No, I did not. I I found I painted better when I'd had an argument. I was I was really annoyed. I would go into my garage, we're working studio, and I could sort of work through the anger. Yeah, and I realised that anger uh think of like an ectoplasm. Yeah, it sort of was taking a physical form and taking a shape, yeah, you know. So that's where I get my conjuring, sort of you know, my summoning ideas. There was one that I couldn't think of a name, and it was literally if you want, I'll try and find it and send you if you want to attach it for the people, you know, that's if that would be pertinent, and it's it was like a skull, just it's almost like drowning in a whirlpool of teeth. Right, dude. It sounds like a weird dream. It was do you know what it was called? It was called You Are the Stress Dream. It was literally the sheer stress I was having, yeah, manifested as this painting that looked like a just a skull floating in a in a jacuzzi of teeth. Definitely get me an image of that.
SPEAKER_00It's ming. People are gonna want to see that. Yeah, it's minging. Yeah, it's minging. I'll put the ming-in picture up and let people oh no, this is what we do.
SPEAKER_02Um in uh when I we do a course, uh, me and Laura Paterson do a course together, and we use my images for people to practice um art analysis on it. Yeah, so they sort of project their stuff and try and decide, and yeah, some people have actually said I don't like these, and you're like, you're not meant to like them. Yeah. Um yeah, we'll go back to that, but yeah. Uh that stress dream was I was struggling so bad with stress dreams. Um, these recurring dreams of what annoyed me again, referencing Phil and Selmo Down. I remember it was they had something on a t-shirt, it was Brotherhood of Eternal Sleep, and I went, That's funny. It was like because them guys were always kind of like a stunner band. Okay. The idea they're always kind of a bit sleeped out, yeah. And I thought it was quite interesting this idea that when I am painting, I'm almost in a trance, a dream state, a flow state. Yeah, and I felt like my dreams, my subconscious, I kind of felt like one of those kids with their heart outside their chest. Yeah, you know what I mean? That's sort of it felt like that. I felt like my dreams were outside of me. And then whenever I went to bed to have a dream, I was having these dreams about missing buses and carrying bags. And why did if I knew I was going on holiday, why did I bring my cat and an Xbox? Yeah, and it was always me and my own, struggling to drive my ex-wife's car, yeah, struggling to catch a bus from a turn, and it was these weird recurring dreams, and then going to what's what's these and she there were they were anxious dreams and and stressed. Stress dreams, yeah. And it was funny, so that wasn't as clear an indicator of the actual how my brain was processing, the paintings were, yeah, and I went, There's something important here, something in your subconscious, it's definitely screaming at you. Yeah, one of the things you'll notice in myself is teeth. Teeth is in a basic it's anxiety, isn't it? You know, I recently went to the dentist because I broke two teeth um uh out of stress. I literally sucked, I broke a tooth and till it till it cracked, wow, and then pulled a cap off, just literally out of pure stress. And I do think some people carry their stress in different places. So mine's is skulls, teeth, bones, spines, yeah, you know, that's where I feel mine. Yeah it's again some of those things where am I painting me? Am I painting a subject? Am I painting you? Am I painting a a skeleton kind of I like I like skulls? I always find sometimes there's a nice memento morai vibe to them, artistically speaking, but it it's a blank canvas, it's a blank slate. You know, you can tilt it. I have a skull in the house called Victoria, given it, don't the last word it came from, but um and uh you can tilt that and angle it and it can grin or it can scowl or you know, a skeletor, you know, looking at you. And I I kind of I always find that sort of skull, that idea of like this is this is all of us at its core. There's a sort of a yeah, I think that's a cool I meet too, you know. I do like bones or like teeth, I think it's the bones of the conversation. Let's get down, let's get down, pass the meat into the bones.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely into the book we say that, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We move on a little bit, just trying to keep us on track. So your solo exhibition was titled Bring Your Own Ghosts, right? Um what were the specific ghosts or personal demons you were painting out of your system during the darkest periods?
SPEAKER_02Like stress, anger, um, inadequacy, disconnection, all these feelings that while they're not exactly I'm not talking, it's not medical waste per se. I've used to I remember using a dialysis analogy. Well while they're they're not exactly um fun things for people to address or speak about or witness or talk about, God, it's better out than in, isn't it? You don't want that in you. I I I feel like like I only recently figured out what there was is it cortisol, isn't it the stress? Stress all the I didn't realise it stays in you, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I'm going, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02So physically speaking, on a pure basic, mindful level, yeah, um, painting is quite relaxing, it's quite good for you. It's lovely, it's f it's nice, it's tactile, it's fun, the colours calmly down. It is if you can actually paint. Oh, everybody can paint. Oh, that's my oh yeah, that's my uh what's that one? Berserk button. Yeah, I that's where you can set me off. Everybody can paint. We uh on the course, I one of my things is there's a wee triangle that I always use to bind people up now. It's like, well, on the course we figure the course is called Art and the Art and the Unconscious. Yes, yeah. Um I think we're gonna touch on it actually, but I uh would say, look, we study babies, we study cavemen and the insane, yeah, and all three of those can produce art. Yeah, but yeah, the sort of the outsider art and stuff like that. Um and it is one of those things where you can say to people and they're gonna go, caveman and a baby, you can do it like you know if you can make a mark, you're uh you're entering into a whole or they love that really excites.
SPEAKER_00I think again it comes back to and and I've just checked myself actually because it comes back to that preconceived idea of what art is. So like I was terrible at art at school, like art class, I hated it because I would be sitting there with 20 other lads, you know.
SPEAKER_02Boys by their nature being competitive as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and five or six of them were like on point, you know, these guys were doing like you know, life scale drawings. Where I remember we had an example, we had to draw a trainer, to pick a train. Oh, it's a bloody trainer. I know, but like what a nightmare as well to get the the the aspect right on it and the you know the the perspective for the depth and the shading, all this kind of stuff. And technically I was crap at it, right? So you then tell yourself, Oh I can't do art because I did school, and school said you got a D in art, right? Or an E or whatever, whatever it was.
SPEAKER_02I got I got a DNA level art, so right. I was uh I don't even ask. It was I don't I've that's my other berserk button is uh how art's taught. Yeah, it's taught. I feel I feel like everyone should go back to first year and we should start like day one of first year, William Blake. Yeah, and maybe what you're going, we're learning about William Blake and and how to paint, okay? It's like I I just feel there's certain elements that make people better painters. One of the things, one of the exercises we do, we do the Rorschach thing, make your own Rorschach tests, you know the Rorschach thing, yeah. And another thing we do is sigils, sigil work. Um I'll probably mention them a bunch of times, is uh Austin Osman Spar or the comic artist uh Grant Morrison, he'll talk about it a lot. And sigils are basically a sort of like a wee psychological trick that crosses into the occult. And I would say if you want to try, try I've I've heard the term art magic, I quite like that. Yeah, yeah. Um it's a bit more occult, sounds like ceremonial magic, but uh think of it as a wish that you can write, you can smoosh the wish down, yeah, if you phrase it right, into a sort of symbol, and you can kind of blast that symbol into your subconscious, and it works almost like a kind of little bit of a maybe like a game genie. You can al you can sort of alter, alter sort of subconsciously your coding with these things, and um it is this tiny bit of magic and a tiny bit of art and a tiny bit of um willpower, and it's quite a mindful thing to do as well. What do I want and how would I ask for it?
SPEAKER_00It reminds me strongly of um runes, actually, Nordic runes. So that's exactly how they would have been used, you know, very powerful meanings, they would have been tattooed, people would have put them in, you know, carved them into wood, have them over the homes, the boats, the you know, even when you think you think about um we talk about this as well, uh the high sigils are almost like you think of corporate logos, McDonald's, M, um Toyota, the Toyota logo is kind of a sigil, yeah, and all stuff like that there.
SPEAKER_02Um when you imbue an image with meaning, and it carries meaning, yeah. It's it's a so it's a real basic sort of stick man starting point, you know.
SPEAKER_00Actually, the Toyota symbol does like a kind of yoga pose if you think about it. Something like that. So look, we'll move on then. Um you you found out later through conversations with a psychologist uh that your art oh, is that psychologist? The illustrious Mrs. P, yeah. It was Mrs. P.
SPEAKER_02Uh that your art any other psychologist don't touch me. She's the only one she's the only one uh qualified enough.
SPEAKER_00So with a psychologist that your art was literally mapping out your subconscious. Um, how did it feel to discover that symbols you drew randomly actually had a deep psychological meaning? I mean, there must have been a point where you learned that.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely revelatory, a real, real weird feeling. I'm trying to think of I got an image in my head there of like, you know, like in a movie, I sort of imagine like a Gene Wilder or something. I don't know if I'm picturing, and you know, where someone's had a breakthrough, a Eureka moment, yeah, and they're running up the street and they're going, I've got it, I've got it, I've figured it out. And I had this amazing weird. This is where people go, Oh no, your man's too much for me.
SPEAKER_00When we were doing the course, I go, we'll just we'll just put a quick warning in. Jared might be a bit much for you. This might be a bit much. Take away your breath.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Go on.
SPEAKER_02So um I had done a giant triptych, and this was done, I think, during lockdown, and it was just when I was in a good flow. Lockdown was good for me because I was able to paint, you know what I mean? And I painted this giant sort of three-piece thing. One side of it was kind of almost it looked a bit like uh Virgin Mary and sort of a crucifixion scene, and then there was sort of like a uh pyramids, and then like a sort of bird demon sort of thing. I'll I'll post it up, what did I call it? Oh, I can't even remember the name of it now. But I g I gave it to Laura Patterson as a wee sort of a wee gift, it's a big gift, it's huge. Because in it we discovered that I this sounds mental. This sound, I didn't say I had basically channelled the iconography of an Egyptian goddess that I had no knowledge of. Okay, and it was too many coincidences, did not notice. Yeah, yeah. The whole that thought actually, I can remember specifically having a dream when I was 31. This is weird, and I had this dream, and in the dream I can remember someone saying to me, it was like almost like this ritual, this initiation ritual, almost quite uh Masonic feeling, right? I know nothing about Masonic, I'm Catholic, I know nothing about that, you know. Ten years later, I was like, why did that dream keep saying to me you're 33, you're 33? It wasn't my age, 33 is Masonic, 33. And I'm going, What my my subconscious was speaking to me 10 years ago about stuff I didn't know yet. So to me, I have always been open to how I think um there's a sense that the subconscious doesn't understand time, it sort of exists out of time, you know how dreams can be, and sort of absolutely and I this this thing I I I I painted, I think she's called Meretzeger. Meretzeger, she's a a healing goddess. Okay, the sort of idea like Kali is in the goddess of birth and death, yeah, as in those who can poison also know the anecdote. Yeah. Oh the antidote, the anecdote. And I've got a good story about that. Um so she has the healer, and there's the stereotype of sort of the wounded healer, yeah, which I really resonated with, and so uh we kind of sort of went, Oh, that is kind of maybe my heart I want to use to help other people. Yeah, and we noticed that this this this powerful female energy had been in my paintings at a time where I didn't realise it was there. Now, this is very, very esoteric to talk about, but I can't not I can't lie. Yeah, when you talk about chaos and you talk about chaos magic, a lot of people call it results-based magic, and to me there was a result in it in something that was quite magical. I was freaked out. I remember I was in I was working with Flora putting the course together, and we realized what it was, and she went, we've got to talk about this. Yeah, yeah. So we started to look out for other archetypes, other symbols, and the painting that made her recoil and reflex. When I first started making notes for us to do the course and stuff we wanted to cover, I came up with I'm very interested in Baphomet, the image of Baphomet, but also the image of a Braxis, which is a Gnostic sort of god, Danny God sort of thing. Gnostic to do with, you know, kind of knowledge. Yes, yeah. Um and I had wrote, Oh, I need to talk about a Braxis, but it never made its way into the course. And the last one we did the one, uh the painting, I called it an occident est something. It's a quote from like a broken sword game. To the west lies the rest of the world or something, and she was obsessed with she said, That's send so much. Well, I looked and looked and looked at it. And if you look at the symbolism of a Braxis, a Braxis is the head of a chicken with a breastplate and carries a whip and a shield, but the shield is like a sun.
SPEAKER_00The most threatening image that the chicken had.
SPEAKER_02It's quite bizarre looking, it's that sort of thing of when you think about the visual reference point of people back in the day. You know, I think if you put it in the uh one of those AI things, you'd probably get some cool looking, you know, Mortal Kombat character of them. Snakes for legs, it's supposed to be kind of hermaphroditic and okay, sort of um connected with you know m Mercury and stuff like that. It's all very uh what's the word? Passing knowledge from the gods to us. And we noticed that this painting had everything, it had the sort of the beak of a a bird, it had a shield, it had a flail, yeah, it had a weird sort of flaccid sexuality hidden in it that said a lot. Okay, there was snake symbols, and it was like there's a Braxis there.
SPEAKER_00So and this again, this has come up prior to you having outward knowledge of these figures.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, as in you maybe have a passing knowledge. I don't think I I maybe I I wouldn't say I've sat and watched a documentary about a brax and forgot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you didn't go into this at a conscious level. No, so this image has come up through your own automatic painting for want of a better explanation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because when you think of archetypes, um the basic archetypes to me are colour and shape. Every colour and every shape has a meaning, every brushstroke has a meaning. Um, and sort of doing this thing, something made me go, well, maybe it needs a bake, maybe it needs this, maybe something needs to be cut here. There's a great Francis Bacon's my favourite, probably my favourite painter, Francis Bacon Frank Off Wolf. And there's one with his syringe, right? And is the syringe meant to symbolize uh a drug addict? And he went, No, I just needed something to kind of pen it down. Right as simple as that, yeah. But you know, rightly, you cannot get away from the secondary image. Um, we talk about in art analysis, you have your own personal mythology, but there's also the collective conscious. So when I see a fish, fish mean certain things, but I also personally don't like um I think fish are quite gross, they're quite love crafty in that sense. There's something about fish, it's just so inhuman to me. Right. Their eyes and their gills and their frogs that don't like frogs, do you know? So that I have my own personal opinions on that. Yes. But also people well, fish symbolise Jesus and fish symbolise childbirth, and fish symbolise it, and I go, fish symbolise, eh, get away from me. So I have a double meaning. Yeah, okay. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00So that could come out in how you portray a fish if you were pet.
SPEAKER_02Would you paint fish? Yeah, like sometimes I've done stuff and it's I've given them like deliberately fishy eyes or stuff that disgusts me to kind of play you, oh dude, that's manging. Yeah. I I did one before I sold it. This is weird, this is again my my subconscious working brilliantly. We did an exhibition in Brayhead, just to take Glasgow, and I I I mean, I was I was a nervous me on the boat to Glasgow with seven pounds in my pocket, won up for one IPA, got over and sold two paintings, and it was like, you know, my I remember getting off the boat with nothing going home with 400 quid. Um like an origin story, yeah, yeah. And I actually thought it's something like a grumpy old man. I was on that boat and I could barely afford a beer, you shut up. There's people didn't even show up, did their own show, you know. Um and I uh painted this thing and I called it uh a Selkie? Is it a Selky? The Kelpie, the big water horse.
SPEAKER_05Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it looked like Scotland, it sort of had this thing because I'm sort of commuting back between not commuting, but going back and forth between Scotland and here. I thought that's weird. And everybody was like, Oh, look, it's a lovely big horse. It's not, it looked like some sort of big Minging shrimp. Yeah. It kind of looked a bit like a horse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people saw the silhouette. Oh, that's quite lovely, the horse, and you went, look close at it, it's awful. Mingin? Yeah, and it was me trying to play with my own discomfort too, of going, you remember Flash Gordon and they put their hand into that hole in the in the tree, and there's the thing.
SPEAKER_00You alluded to this a little bit earlier on demons and chaos magic. You alluded lightly to it. So so your work explicit explicitly references chaos magic. Um and you've run workshops entitled Let's Summon Demons. Uh should I be worried? Yes. If you're not paying attention, yeah. To to to a traditional mental health audience, that does sound intense, perhaps even Oh yeah. And I think you're aware of that just by virtue of your last answer when you said this is where the audience might think I'm a bit out there. What does summoning a demon mean in a therapeutic or artistic context? I can remember someone mentioning to me shadow working.
SPEAKER_02What was that? And they went, You don't like work on your shadow. And I went, Oh. It was what's that? The shadow self. Yeah, and I just went, Oh, is that a thing you can do? That's what I do, that's what I'm into. And it sort of gave me agency to go, you can do this. George shadow stuff is a whole thing. So the idea of the shadow, like noob cybot, you know, this sort of black shadow silhouette of yourself. It's like, well, there's an interest. There's an image straight away. Yeah. You know, I work in images. You say to me, Have you ever worked with your shadow? I go, Oh, imagine that. Like me looking at a you know, like a black silhouette of myself. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And then it worked more with, I think I went into ghosts. I was working with ghosts, and ghosts to me symbolize sort of trauma. And I remember describing Belfast as being it's like thick with ghosts. Thick with them.
SPEAKER_00From from the past experiences and trauma and madness, you know. Yeah, so it's yeah, I know what you mean. There's like a residual energy of what once was that's never quite left. Yeah. Which is really what we think of as a ghost anyway. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, so that's where I like that metaphor. I like the metaphor of a shadow becomes an image, a ghost becomes an image. The demon thing I would say, don't be worried because I'm a big fan of the great Almer. He's the I think he's the smartest writer that's uh we have. He's he's amazing. And he wrote a book called Jerusalem that really changed my life. I mean, physically changed my life. Um it mentioned Bill Drummond. Then I it mentioned Chaos Magic and Bill Drummond, I think, on off the cuff. Then John Higgs interviewed um Alan Moore and Alan and uh mentioned it was talking about Chaos Magic or something, and I looked up the book Chaos Magic and I couldn't find anything, but I found a book called Chaos Comma Magic and the KLF, and it was a John Higgs book. And in this book they dug down more into Bill Drummond owning the tower and cushion doll. And I went, This is my this is something here is making me I need to do this. So John Higgs, I masturbate John Higgs is a brilliant English writer, very, very nice guy, and he said speak to Selena Garden, she's a London-based uh writer, she's a uh GM, I over the bitch she's great. And she was really oh, I stayed in the tower and I wrote my book in the tower. Speak, try and see if you can get speaking just to Bill Drummond. So I got to speaking to Bill Drummond, which was one of the scariest experiences of my life, you know, the KLF that burnt a million quid and the bread awards with the machine gun and all. And he said, Hello, he's just this nice old kind of granddad, you know, on the phone. And they're like, Oh the fuck, Bill Drummond's on the fuck, you know, and he says, No, you can go down and stay, and it all felt very nice. I was listening to her audiobook on the cliff where she describes a scene of her character, and I'm like, Whoa! And I'm right there, and I'm playing it in the dungeon of the tower through my wee speaker, and I was her voice of her book that she wrote there was reverberating through, so I felt like it was doing something, you know. Um, I went home to Bala Money, I was living in Bala Money at the time, and I was listening to the rest of the book and my headphones, and it mentioned about a girl who disappeared, a girl called Inga who disappeared, and she mentioned Bala Money, and I'm like, ah!
SPEAKER_01She's following me home.
SPEAKER_02And there's a when you get a line of synchronicities and significant events, yeah, um, yeah, it just feels like they're usually pointing you out there when you get there's something there, you know. Um so I got really interested in like this Alan Moore's uh Jerusalem, and he mentions in it um if you hear of King Solomon and the demons, he was given a ring by St. Michael, I think. And the idea is in in in the afterlife in in Mansoul, the angels take the demons and make them into floor tiles, basically, take away a dimension and make them basically like a sort of a what do you call that dude? Esher Asher, MC Esher, like an Assurian, you know, the black and white, the shapes that all fit in and the upside-down staircases and all that. Yeah, yeah. So the idea is that heaven is tailed with two-dimensional demons, okay, and they've taken their a dimension away from them, so they're just a form or an idea, but beyond that they're nothing else. They're not four-dimensional or three-dimensional, there's two that are trapped in the second dimension, which is a it's like that's an interesting way of looking at it. Yeah, and I thought about looking back at how my work was capturing things. You know, you think of Slimer. There's a great Francis Bacon, he talks about how a snail leaves a trail. He his portrait looks like a slow exposure of someone moving their head, you know, like the Jacob's ladder thing. Yeah, and I think of like Slimer going through the wall and Ghostbusters, and he hit he leaves the green slang. Yes, yeah, yeah, and that's the actoplots, the residue. So I went, I am, I'm sort of. And some of these things were happening where those symbols were coming. We'll go back to the chicken head, yeah, the body of a monkey and the feet of a cock, you know, all this kind of thing. We would think of the you go back to the Goetic stuff, the Goethe, um, Solomon, all those grimoires and stuff like that. I know it's not the thrust of it, but you think of the visual language of a guy who says, Oh, I summoned a demon, and he had the head of a frog and the wing of a bat and the foot of a chicken. And I went, they just don't have the visual image, yeah, the visual reference point that we have. Now, how many times have I said, Oh, it was like the Goonies? Oh, it was like Back to the Future, we've got a very good visual acuity. And you look at medieval paintings, and the people couldn't even draw a cat properly because you'd be like, 'Oh, I've seen a cat about four years ago, but I can't remember.' And they're trying to paint it with a quill on a tapestry, you know. So you look back at some of these sort of demons, and you know, this one, if you work with him, he'll give you forbidden knowledge. Um, Alan Moore talks about speaking to Asmodeus Asmode, and he says he felt he summoned him, and he says you could sense him, you could see him. Alan Moore is this way of going, I don't know why, but I believe him when he says these things. And I went, the image he described a demon as a field of living information. Yeah. And I might thought, oh imagine sort of harvesting that field. So is that what I'm doing when I'm working with my demons, with my shadows, with my daughter said, with occult imagery, occult meaning hidden. Yeah. What's more hidden than our shadow? What's more hidden away and buried in our deepest you know things? So I've had people cry at these things, I've had people go, dirty, I don't want to ever look at that again. I'm glad I've done it. But I've just painted there was a guy we knew and he was so incredibly sexually frustrated, it was hilarious. And I looked at the picture and I just seen this snake phallic sort of dragon tail thing, and I was like, What's in your mind? You know, and then we've had people do stuff. I've had a girl just start crying and leave, and I was like, Are you okay?
SPEAKER_00And she went, No, it's just in the is this in the art and the unconscious in the demon summoning one.
SPEAKER_02So the demon summoning would be I would I kind of play play it like a sort of a pretend sort of a play on a seance, you know. Okay, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here, kind of thing, you know. And it's we're allowing a seance, a place for our demons to play around and come out. And I usually I should be painting, but I like talking and narrating it almost like almost like kind of an interactive podcast. Yeah, you know, where like I kind of talk along, I get like a people used to say George like heavy metal Bob Ross. Because I used to chat and paint along, you know. Um you know, it's it's what do you want to do? You want to put a little smashed open skull right there. There's the podcast title.
SPEAKER_00Heavy metal Bob Ross.
SPEAKER_02As I think we're definitely getting there, you get some of that liquid white on there. Yeah, I like that.
SPEAKER_00Heavy metal Bob Ross. I wish I'd have introduced you as that now. Sorry, I didn't mean to set you off.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. But I used to I used to paint a big influence was Bob Ross. Yeah, yeah. I used to paint to Bob Ross, and he'd be like, It's your world, you know. You want to put a little tree there, you do that. And I ain't going, it is my world. Yeah. And hi, Bob. Lovely, lovely Bob. Who a man who I can relate to, who who he was in the army says he shout a lot. And I do I hate shouting. I lose my camper, I shout a lot. Yeah, hate it. One of my bad, it's my bad. Rah rah rah rah, never lift my hand to anybody, but I love a good shout.
SPEAKER_00But not the energy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And Bob, and I know he used to be an army guy and he used to be, you know, real angry. And so I'm sitting painting, listening to Bob Ross, and he sort of, it's your world. And I go, It is mine, it is my world, and it's how I see things. When I started to work with other artists, I was it felt like we were um all visiting the same dream Pottsworth and company, remember the kids who all went to the dream zone. It felt like we were all dipping from the same well. We were logging into what do you call it, World of Warcraft or something?
SPEAKER_00You know, everybody logs in on the server in a realm together.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like uh I'm I'm playing Skyrim, and next thing Phil Danders in and Danny Davies Danders in, and you're like, what are you doing here? Do you think that that speaks to the collective conscious consciousness? I think I like to dress it up because of sort of the the character I am um the demon thing, the heavy metal twist works because then I can pull that back down. Yeah, but I am a stance of beast, it is the collective conscious. It's a lot of stuff that remember we said earlier about how you like to refer to nostalgic things, and you see people light up when you mention the shoe people or nightmare. Do you know what I mean? It's um sometimes people want to be spoken to in a more academic way, yeah, but I think speaking in my way is something that against my words, how I do it, yeah, and just no one off does it my way. And that's what I that's what I pride myself on. Yeah, I'm not a very prideful dude, but there's stuff where I go, dude, I've put the work in, yeah, and I I believe in what I do. There's a quote it keeps coming up with me and Laura Patterson, and it's uh the difference I can't remember where it's from. The difference between the magician and the charlatan is the will. And it's that thing where me and her know when we're working together whether we think, oh, that wasn't the best, we people aren't really engaged, or we haven't got many people on this course as I did last time. Even if it was us speaking to one person in an empty room, we know everything we're saying is legit, yeah, is researched, it comes from a good, helpful place, yeah, hopeful place, yeah, educated place, experienced. And it's one of those things where I know what I do and I believe in what I do. So I can sort of play with the kind of how I package it, how I yeah, I can't dress it up as a heavy metal demon summoning kind of thing. Yeah, it kinda it could be both serious and playful. Yeah, it adds a nice, a nice element to it. But yeah, you can if you really do want to, like I I do, but there's a lot of archetypes and symbolism in the stuff that you could go, oh that says a lot more. You can keep go deeper, deeper, deeper, you can keep going deeper in every every every paint.
SPEAKER_00I I I like to write. So sometimes I do a bit of poetry, sometimes I just write stuff. It's amazing what can come up when you just kind of get into it. Yeah. But what you're talking about with the art, I I can't picture myself Bob Ross style with a needle and a paintbrush and a palette. I can't picture myself staring at a canvas and turning that into some Do you want a word? A phrase, is a good one?
SPEAKER_02There's a word for it, it's called horror vacuum. The fear of ambliness. That sort of fear of a weighted card blanche. When you have a white page, you know, where do you start? That's that to me, there's actually a word for that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's only with that I can't see myself transferring that into something from my inner self. I can if I put pen to paper and start writing. Or I think about maybe trying to create lyrics for a song, for example. Would you consider poetry?
SPEAKER_02Well, would you consider um like active imagination? So we do, of course, we do active imagination and there's there's some nice humans digging, like digging a hole or going into like a cave on a mountain and finding a room and what's in the room, and it's sort of we we do the guided sort of coming on with that. That's how my mind works anyway. So to me, it's I I think because sometimes the way I talk is quite abstract or quite visual, sometimes you just have to paint the picture for the people. Yeah. And you go, I used to say people go, charger stuff's a bit weird and violent. You go, it's me. I'm from I'm from the Falls Road in Belfast. It's gonna be weird and violent, it's generally part of my nature. I'm I'm an Eries child with a whole lot of trauma, and my stuff's gonna be weird and violent, and people look at the stuff and go, Oh, yeah, it is, yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you're aware of that side of yourself that you know the the the trauma side, the the the violent side. Because I've had the set with it. But I mean I've only known you for a short period of time, but you don't strike me as a violent man.
SPEAKER_02I've I've I think over time we've had I think it's anger, and I do lash out at my paintings. I love that, and it's I think growing up.
SPEAKER_00But that's that's a stereotypical outlet. Yeah, that's literally I mean, we can go as deep as we need to about the other stuff.
SPEAKER_02Well, if I don't punch a pillow, I don't have a punch back.
SPEAKER_00Right, so dudes go sometimes the canvases go down to the gym and they do boxing training, and some people go and do cross-training, cross cross fit or whatever, and and you know, um yeah, people have different ways to deal with find find different outlets, and that's that is a stereotypical outlet for you, but it's it's doing a lot more than just releasing the anger and frustration. It's everything we've talked about in this in this episode so far proves that there's so much more depth to your art than just taking it out on the canvas, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, I mean at the end of the day, I do like to paint a nice painting, but I do feel um I think we all have to sit with our less redeeming qualities, our laziness or yeah, insecurity, the imposter syndrome. By the way, I have a new service. I'm just gonna do this as a saying. If anyone has imposter syndrome, phone me, sent me a tener on PayPal, and I'll tell you you don't. Brilliant, brilliant, secured. Anyway, it's quite cheap, quite cheap as well.
SPEAKER_00Would you do two for 15 quid? I don't worry.
SPEAKER_02Um I'll get the address of it. But yeah, that's a that that's kind of I think we do have to sit with that. We do have to, I don't think repressing it's okay to bottle up your emotions, but make sure you go back to the bottle. Yeah, you know, don't lose your temper in front of you know your your auntie. You know what I mean? Yeah. Keep that for later. But I think you have to sit with your emotions, you have to sit with your shame, your guilt, your your anger, your disappointment. And that that's all okay because it's what makes you human. I don't really entirely trust someone who can paint like a bowl of fruit and go, Oh, I'm really satisfied by that. But you said about the trainer, yeah. My problem wasn't the technical skill. I I've just naturally because I've always painted, I just have a bit more of the technical skill. That's learned, that's absolutely learned. Yeah, you know what you can't teach is that feeling that empty hollow feeling of I couldn't give one monkeys about this shoe. Yeah, and that bothered me a lot. But I'll I've I've come back to that. I used to do comic cons and do uh just stalls and sell uh Game of Thrones or Doctor Who or you know, do like you know commercial stuff, yeah, just pictures the sold 15 quid a print, or I'll do you a commission or whatever. But it wasn't um satisfying, yeah. But the stuff that I did find myself drawn to when it came to fan art to draw on, it was always helmets, it was always Jason, it was always leatherface, it was always masks, it was always uh Boba the fat. Yeah, yeah, like anything. I've got that a really good booba fet, actually. Yeah, stuff that's that sort of when you think about it, it's m informed my visual thing without me realising. Yeah, um, I love like the idea of leatherface, the face isn't it's not a face, it looks like a face, but it's not a face, so it has its whole different rules. I remember painting Michael Jackson for somebody and Dolly Parton, and I remember going the I'm fascinated by what plastic surgery does to the process of painting uh portrait because there's new angles and stuff happening there, so there you need to get something out of it, otherwise I just don't do it. And I found if I was just painting on my own, I was getting an energy loop of instant gratification of what I was doing. Yeah. Feeling yes, that's it out, that's it out, that's a drain, that's it, it's out there, and it's what's the metallica until it sleeps, no longer can you hurt anyone, make it go on. That one, you know, he's uh and he's I I says the other day, that's one of my favourite metallic, that's my favourite lyrics. You know, uh it's like no longer can you hurt anyone, it's like it's you've took the demon out and you've put it there, and people can then come and you can take the most deadly Damon Hearst for the shark in a cage, the physical impossibility, death in the mind of someone living, a great quote. You can go to the most deadly scorpion, shark, snake in a cage in a museum, and you can sit there and you can imagine, geez, how many people did this thing eat? Yeah, it's not gonna eat me though. It's in a cage, it's it's it's it's taxidermate, yeah. And that's very important for me. So when I say about the demons don't come home, yeah, it's they're sort of trapped trapped in their two-dimensional two-dimensionality, which is that's that's kind of yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm saying that differently now you're saying that. Yeah, it's because now you're you're not only you're not only journeying down into the shadow and seeing these things, you're bringing them up.
SPEAKER_02So as you said shadow there, yeah. What's this the sort of one of the sort of collective shadow fear? Is the shadow man people always talk about the banadrill, the people who take uh Nike will the Americans that's sleeping meds, and they say you take that and you see him in the corner of your room. Yeah, and then go and they go, but he's always worn a hat. So I'm going, let's go, let's dig deeper. It's is it he? Why the hat? What's this? You know, is it and it's it is it's you're sitting with so we sit with Shadow Man today on the podcast. We have From your worst waking nightmares and sleep apnea episodes.
SPEAKER_00The Shadow Man, please demand him next week. Slender Man's gonna be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, do you know what I mean? If we get Slender Man, he'll phone in and all. I knew him. I went to school with him. It's that so let's let you see what we just did there. Yeah, I I took him and personified him. Yeah, everything has a personal, everything can be personified. Um, what's that word? Where everything gets imbued with personality, colour does. I'll be sitting painting going, oh, what's sitting beside this wee bit of red, wee bit of green to be your friend. Hello, and the green and the red are my friends, and they're having a wee fizzy party in my eyes. Yeah, you know, um when I was a kid, I used to love the Bangladesh flag. You ever look at the Bangladesh flag? Yeah, makes your eyes go funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I just noticed that you um you camped it up a little bit when you started talking about colours.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you didn't notice you'd done that, but because I get I get like I feel like a real like a like a wee like a wee jolly fat man when it comes to colours. Oh yeah. Did you ever hear there's a Ken Nordeen album? Ken Ken Norden, he's got a good voice, and he would have been like a jazz word jazz, and he's got some colours Burgundy is fat. And it's so you listen to that when you're painting, yeah, yeah. Um audio velvet, it's great, and each song has you know, it would be you'd be like pews, what's the use of puce? Um and the way I do colours excite me. I remember someone saying the most pure people love colour, yeah. And I am genuine, I don't do small talk, but I will ask you what's your favourite colour, what's your favourite dinosaur, and do you believe in ghosts? Yeah, and if you can answer them three, we're friends.
SPEAKER_00You're on to a good start.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what's your favourite movie from the 80s? Yeah, because everyone's favourite movie.
SPEAKER_00You can't have one favourite movie from the 80s.
SPEAKER_02Aliens, it's the Citizen Kane of movies.
SPEAKER_00I would I would struggle. There was so much good stuff in the 80s and so much bad good stuff. Do you remember the what was the Jean-Claude Van Damme one? Kickboxing and uh Universal Soldier. Do you remember Universal Soldier?
SPEAKER_02Terrible, brilliant, fantastic bomb on him with Jean-Claude brilliant. See, it wasn't it wasn't as camp when I talked about Jean-Claude's bomb.
SPEAKER_00No, you meant that, I can see it in your eyes. You definitely you definitely have a bit of a thing for Jean-Claude's bomb. I thought we all do.
SPEAKER_02Um I thought we all did. Um that's how we all that's how we all bond. Yeah, yeah. But um, see, funny talking about sort of camp, my favourite colours isn't pink, magenta. See that name magenta, pink, you know, like a fluorescent ultimate warrior, Bret Hart, pink. But that's it's it's like my friends.
SPEAKER_00It's almost aggressive that colour, as well as being beautiful. Do you know do you know what I mean by that? Like like getting eating two woman bars at once and choking on them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I I've so it's funny that I use the little little fat boy eating food, but I feel synesthesia. So synesthesia is the best neurodiversion neurotype ever. Yeah, it's opposite colour blindness. I love it when people think about autism, or radius, these are superpower. This is actually really good, it makes me good at maths. Yeah, taught myself guitar by using colours, okay, things like that. So colour is very, very important to me.
SPEAKER_00Are you sure that was guitar and not guitar hero? No, no, that's that's the best way to explain it. But that's how you did it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because in my head, so one, two, three. So if I was looking at say a Metallica song or you know, six, five, so not six, five, so not black, six and five are orange and green, like earthy orange and green, and then like a seven's kind of a gold, like a seven on a fruit.
SPEAKER_00You're actually remembering these though, you're not just giving it a little bit more. Oh, that's exactly how it is.
SPEAKER_02Would you hear this? Now this is this is really funny because I've noticed anytime synesthesia comes up, people go, what? as if they've never heard of it. Yeah, and it feels like because I'm used to it. I did this one course one time, and it was remember I told you I did a 45 minute podcast about biscuits with this one. So zeros, zero's black. Makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah. Because if there's if you're thinking binary, there's black off, white is one on, right? So it's two, two's blue, it makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah. Because two, do you know it doesn't logic and black and white made perfect sense to me. Two to me, two seems a clean, even there's a blueness to it. There's not an a reason for each one, it's a much more abstract reason. My favourite number's three. Yeah. My favorite colour's red. So three's are red. Four, I'm not too sure, it's kind of a purpley mauve. Okay. Five, green, six, orange, but it's a similar orange to the red. Right. Nine is a lighter orange yet. Seven's yellow goals like an Obergene, black almost.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh eight, sorry. Um, ten, then you get black and white. Then you get eleven, that's white and white. And I start to get these colour codes, and that's how I was good at accounts. So each colour, in the same way, if you've a keyboard, I remember someone showing me this how to do movie. Soundtracks. And if you go press one key and one key, you get suspenseful. One key and one key get spooky. You know, each combination. Yeah, the combination gives you the different I think gay and warlike. C major was gay and warlike, and I was like, that sounds fantastic. But um this sort of idea. So my colour, so when a a red sits against a yellow, it creates a conversation between those two colours. It creates a there's a great one again to back to Alan Moore. He talks about it's about writing. Um I'll send you the link, it's a great clip, and it he says about how each word in a sentence informs the next, you know, how the sentence grows. Yeah. And because I'm words and words and images are identical to me, the there's something there. Yeah. The red. Oh, there's something there of a redness. Yeah. The red sun. Okay. We've got a red sun now. There we go. Yeah. The red sun, I think he says hung or floated, I think it's one of those in the blue sky. And he says, every word in that creates the image, sort of unfolds, like a map, yeah. Unfolding. And that to me is like you can do that with your real abstract art, it's a block of colour. Yeah. You know, but I I I'm I'm very literal. If I want to paint a nightmare, I'll show you a nightmare, you know?
SPEAKER_00Fish eyes and teeth. Yeah, it's all right. Let's what are we doing for time? Okay, good about an hour and ten in, so we're we're doing okay. So uh the cult collective. You co-founded Cult, uh, an art exhibition. Why did you feel the need to build a collective community around this dark alternative aesthetic instead of just remaining a solo artist?
SPEAKER_02Um because you are still a solo artist, ostensibly. Yeah, of course. Do you know what I mean? Um it's a bit of a but I'm bolstered. I the way the image I thought about it is I've got a kind of a padding, a warding around me of people who are like me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02One of the most important things about cult which I got was being around people who were diagnosed neurodiverse, and they were all asking me, What have you got? And I went, I've not got nothing. Yeah, and I only recently realized it's it's the autism and ADHD, and nobody was surprised. Yeah, um you were the last to find out. Yeah, it was like nobody tell me before, you know. Um and it was being around people who were, you know, were very keen on different, you know, genders, different sexualities, different neurotypes, because I think a lot of those people do kind of miss out. Yeah, sometimes, like someone like myself, there's a lot of people who were in who are like, I've got my day excavation, I've got work.
SPEAKER_01And you're like, I'm going work, man. No, don't don't go to work, take a week off, trust me.
SPEAKER_00It's gonna cripple your soul, this is gonna fill you up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and there's um you know the Batman thing of all Batman's um enemies or him in a different form, yes, yeah, you know, and it's like if but if Joker's basically the Batman if he just went full mental and the character, and I look at some of my mates, I look at some artists that I absolutely am in awe of how good they are, and they've got this looming architecture of life, sort of hanging, like unnecessary stage dressing. Do you know what I mean? It's like I can remember playing with bands, and the bands showed up and had to leave because one of them had to go to work, and I was like, it was just something so yeah ugly, prosaic about it. It was too grey, too concrete, too bricks and mortimer. Yeah, bricks and mortar bricks and mortar smiths. That's her title bricks and mortar and like cement and that greyness. Yeah, and yeah, I I I just know what you mean. I I want that colour, I want that excitement, I want I want people like there's one of the artists that comes up to me and she goes, Oh, I used your colours for this one, Jared. You know what I mean? It's like my colours, you know, it's like things like that, or um, someone will look at a certain type of paint and go, Well, that's a very jarred blue, there, and yeah, like that's giving me making me feel so part of that world that if it makes me feel like I always say, Don't worry, I'm the worst of them. Um to the rest of like, don't worry, like we're all good, we're all friends here, we're all looking after each other. Um if I can go and feel like an artist and feel respected and feel appreciated and feel elevated, I love the word elevated, yeah. Um then you get you'll get that straight back. You absolutely do. That's how I feel because everyone in the group has a certain skill set as well that they can do, and the joke with cult was you know, sort of a play on sort of Manson family and Crowley, yeah. As in just when you just admit it's a cult, at least that's got half a yeah, um, so they've got certain rules, certain sort of everybody needs to pitch in, everybody needs to be a certain mindset, yeah. So it's not so much gatekeeping, the gates open, but only come in if if you think it's your sort of thing, yeah. You know, don't come in with a bowl of fruit and go, cult ones didn't want my art, and you're going, you know. Um it's I I really like it, but artists are like herding cats, but again, what I get out of them is brilliant. Um some days you're feeling really bad, and someone will be like, um, I painted a picture and I just named it after you because I felt like I was challenging your art, and you're like, dude, that's that's lovely, that's really, really nice. Yeah, um, me and me and Phil, um hysterious, she uh I've never really painted with someone, and what do you call it? Body doubling. And we painted for a while together, and I felt like we'd passed like two ghosts through each other. Yeah, because next thing I'm painting with sort of landscapes and her style, and next thing she's going to my style, and I went, Oh, that was interesting. Yeah, it was like we sort of threw all our G.I. Joe's on the floor, and we just kind of grabbed what was there, you know. And I thought that's interesting. It's almost like channeling in a way. The create-oh, channeling's a big thing. The creator I mentioned you earlier, the creative um when you talk about colours, um, colours will have sort of certain things to them, and the colour is sort of like a peachy pink, like my the pink pipeline monster. I love that sort of pinky Ghostbusters slime colour. Yeah, and we went to the first cult. This is weird, it's gonna tie a lot of stuff in. I perceived all the artists and all the energy together, and I perceived like a pink Ghostbusters like mist. Yeah, you know, almost like I wasn't seeing it, but I was perceiving it, and I don't know if it was uh what it was, but I could just sense your mind's eye vision. My mind's eye interpreted the feeling, like edited it in, yeah, you know, and it was this lovely feeling. And see when I say to you, you know, about the food of a chicken and uh you know the bait the bake of a crow or whatever and that kind of weird stuff. Nobody had a brief for the first cult, yeah. So everybody like, oh yeah, cult sort of be sort of darker stuff, but cult hint, it's you know um everybody showed up and there was this weird, weird, weird conversation that happened between the art. Everyone showed up from uh England, Scotland, Ireland, um, Northern Ireland, you know.
SPEAKER_01So there was a bunch of us there, and we're all unwrapping our stuff. It's eyeballs. You've done eyeballs? I said, Yeah, yeah, I did eyeballs.
SPEAKER_02And then someone has a bit of a yellow sort of electric circuit board, and I'm looking at going, look, there's electric yellow wires on mine. It felt like we'd all went to the same shop for the formal and would all show up going, did you go to that you know, same suit shop as me? We everyone came resplendent in these images, specific details of yeah, crazy. There was like one of the one of the things had a claw, like a foot, and I went, He that's basically this guy, Don, Don Gold, he he's a great guy. He um was painting with smoke, sort of, and then automatically working out of the smoke, you know, fine details, and he he was divining, he was channeling. Um he does a lot of stuff, he did a lot of stuff with you know his mind palace, and he was very into that psychological painting your dreams, painting your um the hyp hypno hypnogogic state, hypnagogic state, you know, when you're waking up or going to sleep, that's the half dreams. He's very into all that, and I was like, So am I. I didn't even know that. We just picked you because you seem your art seemed cool, you know. So there was something really alarmingly real about the connections. It was almost like um, you know, like in the summer when we were kids and everybody came back from the holidays and all the girls had um like a braid in their hair, and it was like, Oh, you did you all go to Portugal? Did you all go to the Algarve? You know, yeah. It felt like that. It felt like we'd all came in and we went, Did we all go to the same place for these? It was very interesting. Um yeah. A creative energy was just you get palpable, you know, you could cut it with a knife.
SPEAKER_00Um you once humorously described your hang on. Do you know at the beginning when I said try and stay still?
SPEAKER_02And I've just pulled myself away from the mic, so that had a kind of kind of cool um sort of Dave Stewart kind of vibe.
SPEAKER_00Like as if you were leaning back for a cigarette and supposed game. Yeah, but it sounded crap on the fucking.
SPEAKER_02Or Dave Allen, sorry.
SPEAKER_00Dave Allen. Uh you once humorously described your art style on Instagram as the artistic equivalent of a portly goth trauma dumping on you outside the limelight.
SPEAKER_01Nard war.
SPEAKER_00This is this is the the worryingly well researched question that I was driving. I just it just made me laugh when I read it. It really did. I'm gonna read that again. The artistic equivalent of a portly goth trauma dumping on you outside the limelight. Humour aside, how does breaking the polite boundaries of mental health talk help people open up faster?
SPEAKER_02I think it I think my way of saying that was like, my mum always says me, Jordan, be a good listener, you know. I think I do look like someone who is a good listener, but some people come over and just hit you with their hello, hello, how are you? Um and they start telling you stuff as sort of pre-context before they've even told you their name. Yeah. And they're going, Oh, I must just and you sort of like attracts like I find people who are maybe ADHD or whatever autistic tend to come be more comfortable around me, which is a thing, but the nature of that is people do, you know, people used to say you attract weirdos at the bus stop. Yeah, but then you sort of go, Why do I do that? You know, and people do come up and they do sort of I think they want to work something out with you that they couldn't work out with anyone else. What's what's a weirdo? Like, um, I would say a weirdo to me would be the point where it's like you know, like a like an old crazy drunk who's not making any there's no narrative. But like sometimes you get like a wee weird man, uh you know, the wee eccentric dude being in the shopping bags or something, and he'll be like super intelligent, real learned wee dude, and you wouldn't expect to speak to him, you know. And I think that's a good way of it, you know. It's like the idea that people go, Oh, there's weirdos coming up and they're talking to me about stuff. You're going to go back to Alan Nurse Jerusalem. I love people's stories. Now I don't like sometimes how they're delivered.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02As in you could be a bit more I remember someone flaxing that they knew that their relative was the reason that toy guns had a plastic orange tip on them. And I went, could you not just flirt with me? Like, yeah. What do you think what's what's I was at the start of you know what I mean? So I know my art's quite extreme, but um if you don't like it, you can turn away. But it's a lot of people go, What's what's this about, dude? You know what I mean? Um and yeah, it's it's some conversations aren't easy to have, but you can sort of crack the back of them. I you know, you can sort of you break the back of it and get kind of uh like uh what do you call it? Like a like a like what you call them, glow sticks, you know. Yeah, yeah. And you get an arrow go give it a shake now and see what we can shake up. And say Alamor's Jerusalem has this idea of the William Blake thing of did those feet in ancient times, walking England's pastures green. And it's not did Jesus come to England, which is again an overly on-the-surface interpretation, it's allegorical, and the idea that where you live can be the holy land, and so he has this theory that everything important that ever happened went through Northampton, right? And um it's just a it's a it's a fantastic sort of thing, and he he says nearly everything, and it's true, it's just layered, so you'll get a chapter about a monk who brings a cross to from Jerusalem to there because he had a to Northampton because he had a vision of an angel, or you'll have just loads of things through time that stack up, and then the middle chapter is everyone's in the afterlife, yeah, so everyone's mixed together, and then it goes back to Northampton. And this idea that if you sit, you know, what was the wean's word, they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, you sit with two people who have a good story, you will then start to create a web that kind of that fabric ties your world together, yeah, and it means that you're you can be at the centre of this fascinating web of you know stories and interesting connections and coincidences and synchronicities. That's my thing. It's a big important I love a big important one. And sometimes the problem is in the you think of think of it like trawling. Sometimes people do dump. Um I use this uh metaphor with uh Laura Patterson. Sometimes the the the canvas is a container. I sometimes think of it as a trawler, and you just dump all the fish on the trawler, and then we'll sort what goes back in the sea, what's good catch, and you know what I mean? Yeah, so sometimes it's worth just dumping it all out and then sorting through it. But some people maybe if they're out for a night out, don't come over to them and go, Well, that's why I can't speak to my uncle anymore. You know what I mean? You go, geez, you know. Um I love the audacity of some people by the way. You're sitting playing pool and they just come over and start telling you about why why they hate their ma.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you're like, do I only a pint deep? At least buy me a pint if you're gonna waste it. Yeah, 20, you know. So I think truck talking about heavy things can be approached really in a fun way and a funny way. I have a mate who both of us make some of the darkest jokes about um our struggles, and you wouldn't make those jokes in front of other people, but he comes out with some stuff, and and you go, like I had a mate who who died in uh a few years ago, and I always get annoyed because I think he would have really liked the new static X stuff. Yeah, and I was always even on that level, you've missed it, you know what I mean? Um it seems so trite to say, like, oh static acts, like you know, a person's dead, and you go, Oh no, but you really like them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. But that's but that's also how we memorialise people too, by you know, by remembering the things they enjoyed, they would have loved, and it it keeps them alive in some way, yeah, absolutely with us, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um I think as well, not even just in people who've passed as well, people who've inspired you and moments that have inspired you too are nice to sit with. Yeah, one of the hardest things about I think the grief of losing like my my wife to my divorce was that she kind of was still there, yeah, which was very strange. You know, it would be nice to I mean there's the mindfulness techniques of you know you put the people in the sphere and you roll them down the hill, and good luck to you. Yeah, there's that there's a it's a strange, different flavour of grief that I never knew existed. I always say, Do you ever find your emotions stack? So when you're 10, you get sad, yeah, you get happy. Then when you're 20s, you can be sort of like a different type, you can get different ones. Like I can remember when my dad passed, I remember laughing because I was relieved, not laughing at it, you know, but like the relief of oh my god, yeah. And whenever my first daughter was born, crying, and you're going, oh these are weird. We've got new third level emotions here, yeah. And your emotions by the time you're in four you get really complex emotions, and um I do think as a dude, some dude, some guys don't like talking about that stuff, some guys No, well emotion, yeah, just kind of the happy, just generally happy stuff. I wait that's why I think in a way it's nice that I can open a conversation with my art. Um you see some people light up sometimes. I'll be like, Yeah, I struggle with my mental health, and you can just see people going, Cool, I can talk to you about this. Safe. And they're they're like, Yeah, it's kind of the same as like someone who's you say like an LGBT ally, yeah. And you can see I remember going out one night and there was a three trans kid just following me around, I think, just because of how he's dead on, you know. Um, and it was that sort of thing of like I think people can I like people can feel safe around me in that sense. I was you were talking about I don't seem like an angry dude or a violent dude, but I'm violently defensive and protective of people in that sense, yeah, and of themselves too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02One of my is it idols? Is it idols or one of those bonds? I said, if you if someone spoke to you the way that you speak to you, I'd kick your teeth through. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? And I've said that to people. I've I I I have a meeting and I deliberately used to love bomb him.
SPEAKER_00He can't deal with compliments, so I would just tell him how lovely he was and how great he was, and it was as a wind-up art to try and retrain his brain.
SPEAKER_02But above, yeah, but above, yeah. It was funny, like um I like I like that, I like that connection with people. I love sometimes it is, yeah, go back to the healing thing, but some people do want to talk to you.
SPEAKER_00You're right. Do you ever see people and it's almost heartbreaking to see the things they say about themselves? Yeah, you know, and you go, I don't think you realise you don't look like that to the rest of the world. Yeah, you only look like that to you. Oh, that imposter syndrome's a nightmare. We all do it, by the way.
SPEAKER_02I I think I'm the only person who doesn't.
SPEAKER_00I think I want to go around and tell everybody imposter syndrome's not real. It's not, and you've got to you do have to learn it, but I mean at some point in our lives we we will all we will all do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, we all have like whenever I do a group exhibition, because I'm used to my art when it comes out, I'm like, oh I'm the shit one, I'm the one who I'm the bad artist here. Yeah, they're all the good artists, yeah. So yeah, I do get that to some degree, but I yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I had a I started doing a bit of bushcraft teaching, so I went from just being a student, I guess, and an enthusiast to sort of teaching a bit, and it was low-level stuff, we're not like you know, we're not like teaching the SAS or anything, but it was you know like low-level teaching, and I had imposter syndrome right over stuff that I knew fine rightly, I was super capable of doing, and I was actually really capable of teaching it too, because all the students were having success. So I was obviously teaching them right, and uh it it sat with me for ages, I'm just not good enough. I need to come get some qualifications, I need to, you know, I need to prove to myself that I deserve to be doing this, and uh, you just come to a point where you have to have a word with yourself, um really and go do you know what before society reached a certain point, there was no such thing as an education, there was no such thing as certificates, there's no such thing as awards. It's a vocation almost. Well, but we just did stuff, right? Well, you talk about cavemen earlier on, right? So how did how did cavemen make leather? They just figured it out. They didn't go do a course, right? They didn't have a certificate, they didn't have a qualification, they didn't have a degree, they just figured out how to make leather. They figured out how to make tools.
SPEAKER_02Well that see when you say that it relates back to the caveman thing we were saying earlier. One of the things that blew my mind you know what I mean, like you always say, trying to hold on to the lovely thoughts, the lovely the the the the jewels in your crown, yeah, was uh when you think about cavemen and you think about what they were, again, it's like uh going back to that great Alan Moore quote, and he said, Anytime you've ever painted a horse, and you go, Do the legs do the front legs go like that, or do they go like that? Or everyone who's ever done that, and the first man that ever painted a horse on a cave wall or uh buffalo had the ex So you're part of a lineage of that whole thing. Yeah, and I was like, That's interesting. Also, I would be the guy painted these on the wall, yeah. And in some beliefs, they say, were these for luck, were these kind of like this is what you'll do tomorrow, you will hunt three bison, yeah, and you shall fire arrows at them, and this one guy could draw this, or was it training? Was it like uh like a whiteboard in a kind of training room? You know, then like you fire an hour with that, and I went, that's who I would have been, yeah. You know, in the kind of global village, yeah, you know, you sort of think I think I would serve the world better as this sort of artistic sort of I want to be I don't want to say guru, that's horrible. An inspiration, at least to people, yeah. Um to kind of let my light shine too on that on them, let that their light then shine. That's nice, you know. Um someone said to me, George, don't hide your light under a bushel. That's not a good light. I love an old bibley sound one that sounds good, and I thought that's good. And it's like as I as I let my light is it the Mandela, the Mandela inauguration speech. I think I quoted a sort of semi-quoted it earlier, and he says, As you let your light shine, it illuminates others. Yes, who are you to think you're not beautiful, not talented, yeah, you know, and you sort of go, you know what? No I don't know what I believe, but if you go, we've only got one crack at this, yeah. As far as I know, um and I go, Do you know what? I think I'd rather have done this and tried and failed, yeah, than have just been another of the wee belly button fluff drones, yeah, just getting crushed by the gears of industry and inevitable.
SPEAKER_00I I believe there's a place in this world for everyone. Somebody once said that. Where you thrive, where you aren't just uh walls, you're you're you're being used to your maximum capacity. But I think some people are here to be corporate cogs now in this life. That that's just and it's it suits who they are, but I think there's many people that are trapped in the wrong in the wrong life because they don't realise you can make whatever you want. I I can remember people saying to me, Oh, look at that, your doodles are very good.
SPEAKER_01You should be an artist.
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, if you pay me 200, 300 quid a week, it would be. Well, this was the this is the problem with me. I'm trying to think, how can I do what I want to do? Right. Heal my own grief and grief experiences, become a better person. So personal growth's really important to me on that journey. Open up to the more spiritual side of myself. How can I do all that whilst I help other people? Yeah. And let's be real, you know, a podcast like this is not gonna earn me a salary. salary that I can live off, right? But there's many ways you can do things that help other people that are true to you and can create an income of some sort.
SPEAKER_02I've yeah see when you say that I I absolutely agree. I've I've said it um talks and stuff it's one of the few things that makes me tear up a wee bit is if I you know yeah if I reach one person yeah one person and it's one of those things that sounds so so so such such a a platitude such it's such so trait.
SPEAKER_00It sounds like something because it's a cliche isn't it is it a cliche that's people say that people say that so it does sound like I already said that about this.
SPEAKER_02It really does you get you get rewards out of it that money you know 100% yeah absolutely and there's a great there's a great uh it was a podcast I think turning in animated show called the Midnight Gospel don't have you ever seen it it was Duncan Duncan Trussell you know that guy he's always on Joe Rogan's got a couple of yeah yeah yeah yeah another guy he's good he's he's good at sort of the people interviews and the interviews my fave uh a guy called Damian Accles a brilliant brilliant guy sort of like he don't think he knows this but he's like kind of my sort of teacher you know him and him and Sean Fallen are kind of I've taken a lot from okay and he's in it as a uh a captain of a a pirate ship full of cats and he's a robot with a fish bowl for a head and he says um they added the sort of podcast into the cartoon it's quite it's quite fun so it works in a kind of ADHD way of both bits of your brain are stimulant and he says approach divinity as closely as you can and disseminate the rays back out to the rest of the world that's that's that's deep and now that's that's where I'm going why does that speak to me so I in the dream the 33 dream yeah in the initiation they shouted at me they they they chanted Mercury Mercury and I went Mercury what have you ever seen there's a guy called John Martin he was kind of like a Doray style painter and he's this and it's called Satan Satan or Lucifer on his throne and he's in a giant black and white colise I think ghosts used it as an artwork you know yeah and I can remember this place like a Masonic churchy lodge robes being walked down some steps or up some steps which is important in subconscious I think up the steps almost like a sacristy in a church and I thought and I could hear them as if I was being initiated you know give the brother the light almost you know Mercury Mercury Mercury kept coming back and the 33 I never figured out so I hid references to that and I kept coming back like keeping it in my pocket so we started talking about um when we were doing the course looking at Jung we were looking at Maria von France and we were looking at Peter Burkhauser who was a sort of a subject of I think von France and Jung I think worked with him a bit and he was an artist who basically had a basically done what I did he went he painted one picture that just set him on this road yeah and one of the recurring characters was um a split faced man right and this split face hideous looking it's quite you would see if you watch it youtube this spooky underrated artist that painted nightmares very very good stuff very oh speaks to you it's almost got a kind of a European illustrative reminds you those cool animated weird RD movies and he said the split face and uh me and Laura P were but they were dissecting these images and going through them. And uh we know the split face man had a blue eye and a green eye and this term come up it's called the Mercurious or Mercurial duplex Mercurious duplex the idea that Mercury was the only god who came between us okay who had his fate in both worlds and now again bear with me because if I'm talking gods if I'm talking demons you can take it entirely as metaphor or you can take it as literally as you want. So what I was doing probably should let it uh Laura Parson said she's never painted see no he paints quite as schizophrenic as me but is able to pull it back okay as in schizophrenic and I'm I'm sort of losing myself in it and she says that's a that's a fantastic skill to have because what I now have is I can take a step into the waters of the unconscious I can step into the heavens I can step into into the the the you know the the ballroom of the gods where the golden apple Caliste was thrown I can step in have a joke around and come back and go guys you know what I've seen you know yeah like imagine trying to play that playing mist on the the PC when you were a kid and then trying to describe mist to your mates in school yeah yeah you know but there's something visible at the end of it though that that you know um Freddie you know Freddie Kruger when you're in a dream and the grab him and then the way they got on his hat they've got his hat. Yeah yeah I'm like wow that would be cool you've been into the dream you've been in the a memento back a visual reference so if I've sort of cast my mind into this sort of void of flow of creative flow yeah the things that then come back through the portal that's interesting to me that's your okay you can get very satiric with that you can get you've opened a kind of uh a window into the machinery of the workings of the universe you can have a look at what's ticking and there there could be a second episode in that but we are actually we're up that's yeah and there's so much there's so much that we could have covered you can get the Doom of Peter Beardsley impression.
SPEAKER_00You do it now if you want just to do it. No it'll probably sound offensive do want to finish with a couple of things though I know we've gone a little bit over but that's that's fine.
SPEAKER_02How can uh the listeners connect with you or get involved in your community work your teachings so the cult group has an art exhibition called Cult an art exhibition exactly what it says on the tin it is we're doing our Belfast exhibition 24th to the 28th of June at Vault um Bankmore Bankmore Square down by World Weather. A week away in Belfast yeah um it's a slightly smaller one this time and I think because some of us have done it a few times we're gonna maybe have a few more pieces you know just just to fill it up because it's it's a slightly bigger space than we had before cool um and it's a it's a nice mix um sort of your darker more weird outdoor art and we have workshops we have courses and stuff going on you can come down and you can learn how to we're doing a death drawing which is painting like uh you know dead dead animal specimens you know things like that um I'm doing a demon summoning um we're doing a dot work workshop you know there's loads of there's loads of things happening that'll be we can people who are local or get there yeah and can they just turn up or yeah just yeah you can come in you can hang out usually we're sponsored by Haney Beer we usually get a free ton of beer when you get in cap that as well we represent quite nice beer actually yeah good beer and they're very good to us and the support is so we yeah we're on Instagram we're very active uh Philippa she's the social media boss she's yeah so what would you say to her shelf shoot me over all the links yeah I'll make sure we go in the show notes I'm on Instagram occasionally yeah um it works well for me as a portfolio but I don't I can't really cope with social media yeah I'm the same and and you know I've like started this Instagram page to to support the podcast and give people somewhere to go and I feel I feel very hollow like this is a page all about me doing nothing whereas if it's you've got a vehicle it's a vehicle it makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah I mean I think for me I just you know there's there's I can share clips like I'll be sharing clips from this episode I can steer people towards something maybe they need in my life at that time that's and that's great but you know I found myself struggling to post things for the sake of posting them yeah so I've just stopped posting. I'm not gonna get drawn into that it's more it's genuine that way but feel that if they are following the Instagram page for the podcast I follow you so they'll they'll naturally be able to post it last thing just to finish up on then I like to ask every guest to finish with a message of hope so in your own or in your own style really like you know you can't you can't give a message of hope in the same way as Mrs P did but what what would be your message of hope for our listeners the wee part of you that you know when you're kidding the first time you see Star Wars and look he's the new hope isn't he and I always thought that's lovely.
SPEAKER_02It's like words like chaos always stood out to me in my life and I there's certain words like when I hear hope what does it mean to you and you think you know the Princess Leia in the Rogue One I I think you know think of it in a Star Wars where there's a galaxy out there of possibilities worlds where you you could be nothing on Tatooine but you could be the bit the the best man in the world and blow up the Death Star if you're in the right place at the right time. So hope to me is like always find you've got a place in the universe even the most mundane place you know there's there was a wee guy and he was a security guard wee Jerry and he just loved sitting in his wee security hut and watching videos and he was so happy he was content the world yeah and it was his wee place in the world and it's if you haven't found your place it's fine keep moving keep keep going but there's too many there's too many good albums coming out too many good computer games too many good movies too many good beers you know too much too much world to explore yeah it was a great I was watching the new Mortal Kombat one the other day and Keno was like I don't want to go to the chaos world I want to come back here where there's beer and orgies you know and it's like something you know stay stay around and find your place because like George Carlin says you don't want to walk out too early into a movie you know I didn't like the new Frankenstein first hour of it was crap. Yeah loved the second half right and I was about to give up on it you know so it's it's that's a good metaphor for life yeah isn't it yeah if the first half can't be shitty you know especially when you're our age as well yeah you've gone over the you think of the best bits but you start getting wisdom at our age coming out at the seams things are starting to rip yeah yeah you do you get a sort of strange you know I mean even as a guy who loved horror movies and all your mortality is is is there you know you don't get the same thrill of watching Jason Verhee slaughter slaughtering innocent victims you go what's a bit that's a bit not all it's a bit uncouth you know you sort of you know like I said you don't get that fear of walking down the stairs in the dark anymore you know you've got different fears when you're an adult yeah but you just gotta face things you have to fear you're not gonna make it to the toilet my thing is now if I get halfway up the stairs and I see the toilet it starts the process and I'm like I'm not in the bathroom yet it's terrible not that old Jared yet yeah right listen thank you so much just so the listeners know you've made a trek up here you've gone out your way to make the time to do this it's not like I'm just round the corner I really appreciate that I really appreciate you giving your time to the podcast I hope you know I hope that what you've talked about today gives people something to think about they maybe see some of the darkness in themselves in a different way it might give them the opportunity to think about outlets that they they haven't already had and it might get them looking at art too which is not a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00Thanks Jared it's been a it's been a wonderful episode thank you all for joining us don't forget to do all the usual sharing and things I'm super grateful that um you've given up your time to listen to the podcast and I hope it's given something to you remember to take care of yourself and walk lightly and we'll see you in the next one. Bye for now we've covered a lot of ground today and if any of the topics we discussed have stayed with you or brought up difficult feelings please don't sit with them alone. You'll find a list of support resources and helplines in the show notes of this episode. They are there for you whenever you're ready. Thank you for sharing this podcast and for being part of this journey I truly appreciate you. Until next time walk lightly be kind to yourself and take care of
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