:: bruce rimell - artist statement(s) ::
(one : quick)
Bruce Rimell is a visual and graphics artist based in Leeds-Bradford in the UK, who works with visionary, archetypal, archaeological and petroglyphic motifs and themes rendered in vibrant styles and vivid colours reminiscent of Aboriginal art and Minoan frescoes. The central focus of his practice is to bring the very ancient into the modern field of experience, variously inviting or challenging the viewer to look underneath the contextual aspects of contemporary art and modern experience to view the universalities and disquieting visionary sensations common to all human cultures past and present, and which we have inherited from our ancestors.
He aims to speak to those aspects of us which operate without words – magic, the Palaeolithic and non-rational modes of experience feature strongly – and abstract commentaries or critical positions are abandoned in favour of a direct communion with the very essence of what it means to be alive as a human being: Come and see, and look within. What will you find?
(two : bio)
With an academic background in science, and a B.Sc. degree in Astrophysics, it might seem surprising that I have undertaken some fifteen years of self-teaching in the fields of art, vision, mythology, anthropology and archaeology in order to inform my work; however my approach has always been holistic and very often myths of the sky and ancient views of astronomy feature strongly in my work. Being self taught I have always been careful to ensure I have been engaged in critical processes and reviews, both in my own work and with the wider arts community.
Over the past fifteen years, I have engaged in numerous non-standard and archaic methodologies and approaches towards creating art. My main aim in producing work is to speak not to the rational mind but to the ‘watcher behind the eyes’, that universal and archetypal aspect of the psyche that we all experience and which operates largely without words; rather than to stimulate debate, my work seeks to produce what James Joyce termed ‘aesthetic arrest’ or an experience of silent contemplation. A question which plays on my mind constantly when exploring new ideas is: does this paint sparks across the soul?
(three : work)
My principial media are paint (acrylics on canvas), inks & markers (as drawings on card) and digital work on textiles. Having been in professional practice since 2007, I have taken part in numerous group and solo shows in the north of England, as well as group shows in such diverse locations as Israel, Finland, New York, France and South Africa, with work in permanent collections in Durban (South Africa) and Mitzpe Ramon (Israel).
My Digital Work has won awards on two occasions (2008 and 2010), both for single edition fabric prints exploring the interplay between the flesh that consitutes the material of the human body and the narratives which give that material its identity.
As a painter and illustrator, however, I am now almost exclusively working in series: my recent Life:Blood series (2009-10) addressed themes of inwardly-focussed visionary experience, archetypal sexuality and life/death liminality. The latter two themes are currently being developed in my upcoming series Dreams & Nightmares over the next year. Previous series include Modern Palaeolithic (2008-09), a set of drawings exploring Palaeolithic experience within the minds of modern urban observers, and Minoan Honey (2008-current), an ongoing project responding to the beginnings of European civilisation in the Bronze Age Aegean and Minoan cultures.
(four : genre)
Every artist gets labelled in some form or another (The viewers of a work of art always contribute to its emergence – Marcel Duchamp) and this is naturally part of the process of creating and selling work. But as a self-taught artist whose practice, methods and media evolved relatively holistically without reference to many of the critical and contextual discourses current in contemporary art culture, it is difficult for me to identify with such labels. For me, being an artist is essentially a function of my humanity, and it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that if I stopped being an artist, I may stop feeling human too.
This is not to say that these labels are not interesting: on the contrary, they often provide me with a springboard into a deeper understanding of my work, or open up new avenues for exploration. These, then, are some of the labels I have been honoured with in the few years that I have been in practice...
Archetypal Expressionist
Romanian artist and writer Constantin Severin first coined this term, theorising it to be a third artistic dynamic independent of the commonly-understood dipoles of 'abstract' and 'figurative' expressionism. It was he who wrote to me after seeing my work to explain the idea and to kindly inform me that he considered my work a typical expression of the paradigm.
Genre-Baffling
When one deals with visionary sensation and experience, boundaries tend to dissolve and nowhere is this more apparent than in the form and media of my work. Simultaneously ancient and modern, making use of both long-standing archetypes and personal innovations, being described as 'Aboriginal' as equally as 'Urban', using mixed media such as acrylics and gouache with inks and markers, and bringing together methods typically employed by painters, illustrators and digital artists all together often in a single piece, I recognise that it can sometimes be difficult to classify the work that I do. It is often simply described as 'very different' and those new to my work often experience a curious reaction: the 'watcher behind the eyes' appears to recognise the archetypal forms wordlessly and warm to them but the contemporary observer struggles to find the words to express how they are responding.
Archaic Revival Artist
During a recent interview, Alexander Beiner described my work this way; it seemed quite appropriate. The Archaic Revival is a term coined by (I believe) Terence McKenna to depict the changes happening in the spiritual life of Western society at present with the steady removal of organised religion and a return to the archaic ways of seeing and experiencing the sacred as practiced in the Neolithic. In my attempts to "bring the very ancient into the modern field of experience" (qv) I am seeking in some small way to contribute to that revival: elsewhere I have said that I feel the early Aegean Bronze Age and Minoan Civilisations were 'the last time the West was truly sane', and my reasoning behind this statement is simply that although our technological advancement has brought us great material wealth, our inner lives have been skewed and schizophrenic ever since we turned away from a sense of unity with the planet and began to forge bronze-edged weapons to dominate nature by force. With the knowledge our society has today about our cosmos, our present and our past, it is time to return to a new sanity, one inspired by both technology and our place in nature.
Visionary Artist
Visionary is here meant in the old definition as 'pertaining to dreams, visions and inwardly-focussed experiences' and is currently the principal theme of my work. Visionary art is a curious genre, in that it is simultaneously conservative and progressive: it rejects many of the innovative approaches used in contemporary art, preferring painting as a principal medium of expression, but seeks, through vision, to open out new cultural avenues and paint long-term perceptual developments for society, making use of methodologies and theoretical constructs that are often at the very cutting edge of scientific progress. But for all that, there is something 'other' about my work... it is not entirely visionary in the truest sense as described by Laurence Caruana (who penned the famous First Draft Of A Manifesto of Visionary Art) in his art and writing.
Sorrowful Visionary
This is on account of the expressions of emotion, particularly depictions of tears and crying, throughout my work: most visionary artists I have encountered appear to value sacredness and wonder as principle sensations of vision. Whether it is because I began my arts journey in Japan or for another reason I cannot say, but I have always valued sorrow as a powerful indicator of the awe-inspiring nature of vision: a sorrow for an old life once enjoyable but now transformed into new meaning, or a sadness that a vision seen cannot be shared with the whole world. The tears cried by the visionaries in my work are ultimately the tears of Avalokiteshvara, who, upon entering the final realm of Enlightenment, renounced it and turned away, vowing not to step over the portal until all other sentient beings in the Universe had traversed it before him. This is the sorrow of compassion.
Visionary Illustrator
A curious term. Not even once had I considered myself an illustrator until a very astute gallery owner presented my myth work in such a narrative, illustrative light. Certainly my ink & marker work can be viewed as illustration, but over the past year I have been moving away from this into more iconic/archetypal and simultaneously more personal/idiosyncratic territory in which illustration is less important than expression, vision and even catharsis.
I Have No Idea What It Is But I Can't Stop Looking At It
I think on some level every artist waits to hear these words: I was lucky enough to hear them back in 2007 in response to Nieríka, a work which referenced some of my earliest inspirations but also pointed a way forward...
Outsider Artist
I am wary of this term: perhaps years ago I felt like an outsider, but a long process of critical and experiential engagement with the subject matter I am seeking to express has left me feeling more like a practitioner than an outsider. 'Outsider' is often a term of exclusion, but also often worn as a badge of honour or of non-conformity by artists who have been excluded - I don't really have time for either notion: both ego (bruised or not) and boundaries have no place in art. But I recognise that some will always consider my lack of formal arts education as an indicator of outsider status, but ultimately all artists are auto-didacts tracing their own untravelled path through life, responding to worlds inner and outer through their own shattered mirrors.
Bruce Rimell, June 2010
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