I feel that the time has come for me to move around the hierarchical and pyramid like structures of art and cultural establishments and present works directly to the public via the internet .I’m now a pensioner.
I’ve discovered that a certain type of human memory is the psychological secret to any important creativity. Authentic art transcends estrangement through the medium of reflection, memory and action as filtered by the personality and the humanisation processes, via prodigious skills and actions. Without this vital base there is no chance of even glimpsing aesthetic universality. This may not be obtainable, in the Age of the Problematic but it’s an important quest at which to aim.
I have increasingly asked if holistic ontological presences can be detected and named in art and culture by way of the cross over of multi cultural personas in the life I have lived..
I have known many communities and their milieu of resilient strangers and of friends. I have met so many interesting, unique and committed people on my travels, artists and musicians, writers, film makers, sculptors and all manner of cultural workers, left wing and right wing intellectuals, scientists whom I respected, political activists, trade unionists, fishermen and farmers, feminists and gays, old bullock drivers from the Wadigan mountains, battlers of all types, prospectors, miners, wharfies, shearers, people from the building trades. Senators, legal eagles, Aboriginals, Asians, (Chou en Lai’s beautiful Russian speaking secretary from Chengdu, who personally looked after my two blond children in China in the 80’s). I have enjoyed the company of all manner of eccentrics and ecology campaigners of every hue and all kinds of workaday people from country hippies and Oxford St hermaphrodites. I met a committed Australian Communist who was the only air force flier historically to make a stated protest at the firebombing of Dresden in WW II and the mass killing of innocents. Who in this case were the terrorists? I also met many New Age star gazers and long haired apothecaries. Anaemic and ascetic Buddhists and big bottomed businessmen, who always take the short cut to everything and know the price of all things but not its value. There was also a thin lipped policemen one of whom won the lottery. Starry eyed revolutionaries and many different types of sellers of consolation. Nurses who were like midnights angels. Hundreds of chalkies and dozens of chippies. Lecturers and lechers. Estranged actors who are always seeking sanctuary. Spies from ASIO. Vegans and vegetarians and wine makers. And journo's - all of the later, whom seemed to be fated to end up as alcoholics or drug addicts. Rednecks with high blood pressure and Greenies who clothes always smell of Gunja. Merry and bold raconteurs and other therapeutic winsome warblers. More bizarre personalities than you could push a stick at. Many different types of people some brilliant, others hum drum some roly poly and still others who were ill and self suffering with bodies as thin as pencils. I have known many ebullient souls empowered with an awesome life force, other depressed and stumbling from one shadowy death wish to another. Some wiseacres, wise arses and wisecracks and many silent and self indulgent victims. Idealists and pragmatists, dreamers and the despotic individuals trying to be king or queen of their little, petty middle class ant heap. There were also lovers who promised that love would last forever which was a very long time in anyone’s book (or chronicle). All this alone is fairly wide slice of the human comedy. But most importantly, I have taught thousands of tertiary students in their young, fresh, shimmering idealistic and flora abundant years. Someday, I will write about them and many others in a full length Chronicle or Ricordanza if there is time. Many of whom helped create social and political and cultural movements that have changed whole cultures.
All this is a background sketch for a chronicle, ricordi, or old- fashioned feudal ‘calendar of the seasons’ has taken a tremendous amount of creative effort and courage and theoretical strategies to survive.
To now survive. I must sell selected and prized artistic works from my studio from five decades of creativity.
I have purposely existed outside of the mainstream gallery system and have survived by teaching in the provinces and from the private sale of my works. I have done this, because I love real art. .
For me to live so long in semi poverty committed to militant creative quests, has required life long resilience and courage and a very, very, very tough sense of intelligent Australian/Celtic humour.
I have also concluded that this artistic wayfarer on his journey must value each daily aspect of his journey, as well as that of the penultimate destination, that is usually ideal and has something of the quality of a dream about it. The close and the far must be kept in appreciative focus. Precious moments in the history of the world are passing close by and one should attempt to name them if you can.
Everything matters!
The real coal face that authentic artists and writers and other cultural workers dig away at daily is the vast mystery of life itself. Unfortunately this quintessential truth needs to be stated over and over again. The unique energies of life are non-repeatable and exquisitely awesome and that’s what we have to attempt to name in our creative acts. As simple as that really. If you don’t fight for a better future in some way, then you also become part of the problem. To speak through the magical mask of art, then one must attempt to leave nothing important unsaid.
In the end art and culture is only as limited as the human imagination
Thus spoke the departing wayfarer with a hesitant smile, which could only just be glimpsed through the light amber tones of the falling light.
Richard Cornish
Jan 2011.
All written and visual material is subjected to copyright © Richard Cornish 2010.
