So I feel like the art comes to me, or rather through me from, from beyond. Like I step across a threshold into this space, which is further away from the cultural norms and convention. Over a period of time, since I was like, 13 years old, I found that I have a proclivity to, to go into a space of trance, which enables me to see slightly further beyond the world.

I found that a very interesting process to learn to step into my places that allow me to be creative and to envisage this connection. This overturn has led me more and more into my artwork. My deeper interest is in animation and creating visuals for, or as doorways, but my work in this has led me back to making paintings and graphic design knows that using Photoshop, but also various other tools and drawing on a large body of work of hand painting material in the studio.

I step between sketching, painting with acrylics and inks and Photoshop platform, which allows me to manipulate the colours and the layers of texture to create images. Actually I think would be difficult to recreate in another medium. My inspirations come from an early age. As a child I was able to meet with very interesting artists and free thinkers through my dad’s work. These people would include Suzanne Vega and her Cubist work with the Yoruba people at Oshogbo. I was also lucky to have connection through the family to to various artists working at the Glasgow Print Studio during the late 80s, and had quite a lot of encouragement there. From about 15 I was, I was able to see and be invited to exhibitions and openings of very current artists of the time. The inspiration that I had from these experiences coupled with my interest in drawing and painting already led me to enter local exhibitions and selling a whole series of miniature watercolours for a local city-centre cafe.

I went on to paint during the 90s largely club decor and flyer design in Edinburgh and for local festivals.

My inspiration comes from my journey over the last 30 years into the world of hallucinogens.

I spent possibly all of that time trying to find a way to integrate, and understand my experiences with LSD, mushrooms, and a whole host of other psychoactive products. One of the things that I found in those spaces is a level of information that is culturally not available to us. And yet, comes from an intelligence that is far beyond our cultural learning.

I find this space very interesting and stimulating and I’m fairly convinced that actually there is an intelligence, beyond the three dimensional level of this world, which is actually asking for us to step into and find a way to communicate with it. To me, I’ve become fairly convinced that actually there’s a corridor through which a dialogue can be opened ourselves and the “Other”. In the presence of this “Other” we look at level of information that is bewildering and yet, is also highly pertinent to our struggle to understand ourselves and our position on this planet.

I believe that it is the job of the artists, the visionary and the shaman to step beyond the cultural bounds and enter into these
Other, often extremely alien spaces, in order to bring back parts of the information that is there, and to do it in such a way that it’s accessible to those who are seeking seeking the healing and understanding.

We’re at a very delicate point in our in our collective cultural history where actually, we are witnessing a transition into a state of awareness that is hugely detrimental to not only our own nature but also to the planet herself. And somewhere it is important that we actually address this.

To me the role of the artist is to step into these spaces and to bring back answers; to bring back ideas from the mechanism of this higher mind; the overmind of this planet. The tribal peoples who we see as primitive actually have mastered this technology and have kept this technology alive for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years.

And we are the younger brothers. We are trying to relearn something that was culturally damaged almost to the point of destruction during the witch hunts. My understanding of of the witchcraft and the fairy-faith magic mushroom cults of the Middle Ages was that these people actually had access to these other places and, therefore, were much closer connected to the planet Herself and to the to the rhythms of the earth: how we live in a relative harmony with with the planet around us. We were burned for it!!!

This is a part of history that we’re not actually taught this is, this is a part of history that is actually brushed brushed under the carpet. Yes, we’re taught how to look at the kings and queens and the economic models of this period of time, but we’re not into a world of the folk belief. As I see it, the damage that has been created by the church interms of the destruction of our indigenous understanding and connection to the to the Earth has gone largely unseen during the last 2000yrs of dominator culture.

In terms of our history, if we step into the myth-models of cultural heritage as seen in the stories of the early Celtic world that are kept alive in the Irish tradition, then, actually, we see the seasons of the years turning we see the, the gods and the goddesses making pact with the earth around them. It has been said that history is the fashionable reportage of the times.

So I have spent the last 20-odd years trying to find a mechanism to bring back the patterns; the fractal-mathematical model of information that is available in the inside the psychedelics, and to bring this into a space where the information is available to to everybody.

Doing this with video is actually relatively easy, doing this with with traditional painting and graphics is actually not so easy at all.
In terms of what Levi Strauss talked about there is the code, and the role the “langue” and the “parole”. Parole ( speech) is the moment of history, or moment of culture as seen in a slice section in the present moments, whereas the langue (language), is the cultural code through time: a longer patterns that play outs.

Within this I see that the use of video as a means of explaining fractal and mathematical models of the universe is actually much easier than trying to find a piece of parole. I used to think of my pen and ink work like this too, as the window for the work was very limited in comparison to painting oils.

My work is also inspired by the fact that I live in the mountains. I live in the middle of the forest; there’s something like the size of Greater London around me and there’s about 3000 people live here year round.

I live with nature. I live in in in a forest, that is, you know, several hundred thousand hectares, with streams and mountains, and my little garden is perched on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere.

I am afforded such a gift! I step out into the night and the night is dark. I step out into the night and the night is alive; alive with the murmur of trees and the sound of animals and with the fractal-sparkling of moonlight between the leaves and the space between the spaces becomes very much something that we are; that we become aware of in this in this solitude, in this in this quiet.

I sit and I watched the forest I’ve watched the forest for 15 years now, and I see my trees changing I see them. You know: the leaves moving and talking to each other, I witness the trees growing and trees dying and, and the world going on in a very prime primal way. And I find this hugely encouraging to my art to my, my sense of well being; to the peace in my soul and my very existence.

And it comes back in the art. It comes back in my learning to understand the patterns that we have around us that more and more we have let go of in the West. More and more we’ve moved away from, and forgotten that this is nature and that we are that (Tat Tvam Asi – that which thou art) That nature is arts.

It’s not a moment too soon that we come back to a point where we start listening to the earth around us.
It’s time to actually open these channels again, and to begin to decode the information to understand humbly our place in this world and to stop trying to dominate and challenge something that we, as a culture have actually neglected.