Dreams can be hard to catch, especially when you are trying to do it every day like I have. Sometimes an epic movie plot unspools and leaves a mountain of tangled celluloid on the floor. This image, Twin Moons, was more like a cryptic postcard from the other side. No writing, just a stamp and somehow addressed to me.
Even if I did have an explanation of who it was from or what it meant, I would not share it with you. Not to be a complete bastard, but because the moment I pin a meaning to it and say it out loud that meaning starts to evaporate. Your meaning is your meaning, and if it says something completely different to you then that is fine by me. That is the nature of dreams. If someone handed me a professional dream interpretation of this image I would probably say yeah, nah. The moment you declare a thing to be one thing you quietly remove the possibility of it being something else.
Art works the same way. It is a visual language that can mean many things to many people, but somewhere in that exchange it reminds us what it is like to be human, with all the strange thoughts and emotions rattling around inside our heads.
Which is only half crazy when you consider that at least half of this piece, notice I said ‘piece’ and not art, was created with artificial intelligence. Meat and bones intelligence meeting electricity and diodes, or whatever the hell artificial intelligence actually is under the bonnet. Somewhere along the line though I have started feeling the pull back toward the meat and bones side of things. Not abandoning electricity and diodes, just balancing it out by getting more physically hands on with my art. A bit like gardening with your hands in the soil. I am talking about getting messy. Ink on the fingers. Rolling around in paint.
Where would you go on a shopping spree?
So if someone handed me a credit card and said go on a shopping spree I would not be heading to some shiny lifestyle shop selling scented candles and regret. I would be hunting down a proper old school art supply place that still respects tools and craft. Somewhere stacked with lino blocks, decent gouges that do not snap the first time you push them, sturdy screen printing frames, good inks, and shelves full of felting needles and wool tools built for people who actually plan on using them.
There is a strange comfort in that direction. The world seems determined to turn everything into fast disposable convenience. Meanwhile I am over here thinking about carving blocks of lino and stabbing wool for hours like some cheerful bush goblin. Twin moons in the sky. Ink on the hands. Wool from our own sheep turning into something real.
It might not make much sense to the efficiency experts, but it feels like the right sort of future to wander toward.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 