Unfinished business

Unfinished Business (2006)

Dear art-lovers

Another entry for the Autumn Exhibition. This is a piece I started more than a year ago, when I came across a young dead frog that had been half eaten and its remains left by a stream. The sudden discovery prompted a moment or two of empathy and I went home to start this painting. I called it unfinished business because the frog itself had not finished its development and because my own journey, to buy some shrimps from the local village fishmonger (represented by the boat and pink shape in the upper-right corner), had also been interrupted. I picture the moment when the frog meets its demise. We see the tadpole-like ghostly imprint left behind as the blood flows free. The animal itself is hovering on the interface, still tethered to the ground by its mortal remains but no longer a recognisable sentient being. The picture also has a slightly unfinished feel to it, though this is a deliberate feature rather than laziness at work!

Autumn Exhibition

Dear Art Lovers

It's been a while since I was able to put my artistic brain to work. Due to recent troubles, I have had to postpone the planned summer exhibition until the Autumn. Here are three pieces of work I have managed to complete. Each one signifies a step forward in my artistic development. I have provided a short introduction to each piece as an aide to interpretation for those of you unused to my style of representation.

Snakes alive! (2006)

Awaiting the sun to set, I see many visions of where our origins lie. Sometimes, another voice hails me to come forward and experience life from the eyes of another sentient being. Should we be afraid to do this? I think not, for it is only by understanding the limited view of lesser organisms that we can begin to understand our own.

Mother and child (2006)

As you may have heard, my wife is pregnant with our third child. Here, I depict her as a fragile cage, supporting her foetus as they travel down the birth canal together. Danger lurks in front and behind, for pregnancy is never kind. And we call it an everyday miracle?

Riding the cosmic plane (2006)

Here, I depict myself as a traveller without boundaries. A supernova exploding may propel me across many universes but still I remain true to the undying essence of my beliefs. We can never be sure that we will survive such a tumultuous journey, but if we prepare ourselves beforehand, and pray to our own minds that they can fill themselves with fortitude, then maybe fortune will be kind, and after separation we can still find ourselves whole again.

J McC

Tethered

Tethered (2006)

Artists statement
The scientist is truly confined in his (or her) range of dogmatic thoughts. Each apparently new idea is literally derived from, and tethered to, every other, manifestation of earlier congitive outflow. Though the id may sit solidly in the middle, all his (or her) ideas around him (or her) are swimming in a sea of uncertain futures. We are slaves to the scientific mode, tied to our past and unsure of when the bonds will break.

This way please

This way please....(2006)

Artist's statement:
Do you ever find yourself wandering aimlessly through your thoughts? Suppose one day you happen to come across something deeply worrying. What do you do about it? Try and grasp it with both hands? Myself, I would let it pass without bothering to stop and question its motive. We may be surprised to find that in doing so our eyes open to the benevolence of our own minds.

Sensory Conflict

Conflict of the Senses (2006)

This painting was inspired by the efforts of a group of disabled dogs I witnessed being walked around Edinburgh city centre. They were variously affected, and it dawned on me that we are all in a similar situation at some point in our everyday lives. We must rely on our senses to tell us what is wrong, and how to correct the defect. But what if there is a conflict of interest in our senses and the solution becomess, blurred, equivocal? All hell breaks loose, and we have no clear direction to our lives. A cacophony of signals reverberate around our mind, cancelling here, amplifying there. We are left with nothing more than colourful splodges of cerebral confusion.

The Road

Dear Reader

A new artisitic intiative is about to be launched. Today, I am starting on a journey that will take me to hither unknown lands. I am talking about the very inner folds of my cerebellum, where my artistic self resides. To do this, I have set myself the herculaen task of producing a new piece of artwork each week. The first piece is shown below. Each piece of work will be accompanied by a free-form commentary from myself, as an aid to interpretation.

Please feel free to add your own comments to each piece. This way we shall all learn how art touches our souls in many different ways

Rabbit on the Road (2006)

Comments from the artist:

'It is several years since my first encounter with this rabbit. I was walking to my home after partaking of three tots of Scotch Whisky with an old school friend when I was suddenly startled by the afterglow of a rabbit's tail in the diminishing light. The sun was high, and yet I felt as though I was walking in the darkness of an undiscovered hinterland. The dog chased the rabbit into a graveyard, and I was left to wander the barren motorway once more. It garnered in me a feeling of stringent nostalgia that led me down a stormy path'

J. McCrumble 11/02/06

The Fantastic Paintings of Dr Joseph McCrumble

Welcome to my art gallery. I have dedicated part of my life to bringing the artistic side of scientists such as myself to a wider audience. I firmly believe that creativity is shared amongst all peoples, irrespective of profession or background. These pictures are a window to the Artist's mind, and have been specially chosen to highlight the close attention I pay to philosophical, metaphysical and existential issues. Commentary has been kindly supplied by my good friend, the avant-garde artiste, Bernadette Saupin.

Uninhibited race through the sands of Time (2001)

This startling piece of work came about after a trip to the Mohab Desert in search of a parasite that inhabits desert rats. Dr McCrumble was inspired by the sight of thousands of grains of sand being swept across the sun-drenched vista, and immediately put felt-tip pen to paper. The sketch was then transformed into a mixed-media painting on yak-skin canvas back in his holiday-loft on the isle of Mull. It is one of my personal favourites.

Penguin soldiers facing down the wrath of the sun-god (1999)

Dr McCrumble often dreams of a utopian society few of us can realise even within the relatively uninhbited corners of our mind. Here, he strikingly depicts the result of a dream where King Penguin is revealed as the arbiter of all morality, and the sun seeks revenge for being usurped as teh sole provider. This picture will be featured in a retrospective of Dr McCrumbles work to be held at the Cumbernauld Institute of Art.

Two sentinels dancing by the tree of Life (2004)

The evolution of Dr McCrumble's artistic mind is leading him to new and exciting places on a daily basis. By combining vivid colours with timeless scenarios, his excitement shines through in a collage of ideas and emotions. The two sentinels in this picture represent Yin and Yang, Dr Mccrumbles pet budgerigars (sorely missed).

The coming of my alternate reality (2001)

Many aspects of how we see the world are shaped by out experiences in the ethereal components of our existentialist metaphors. Rolling through the vistas of our minds are a million alternatives, each superceding the expectations of a myriad failures. Who knows when we shall see the light?

Too many neurons spoil the linguist (2004)

Talk is cheap, yet we all spend an inordinate amount of time and money communicating verbally. What if we could silently transmit our thoughts as discrete packets of thought-quanta? In this beautiful study, Dr McCrumble shows us his vision of a world where the new order overcomes the old guard of the physical wires. The repetetive, virtual, incoming signal of the abstract figurine is a broad genesis of playful enigmas against a alarmist background colour, warning us of the dangers of over-abstractism.

Life-blood connectivity in a catatonic atmosphere (2002)

Do you ever wish you knew where your thoughts end and reality begins? Here, Dr McCrumble has attempted to bring the notion that the hippocampal aspects of our innate biological mechanisms are intimately inter-connected with the ethereal aspects of out transient consciousness. This picture won the 'Cumbernauld Institute of Arts Special Award for Artistic Achievement by an qualified Parasitologist' in 2002.

Disaffected alien assasin provoking a backlash (2004)

This energetic piece represents, in symbolic and metaphoric terms, the eternal struggle between the scientific brain and the artistic temperament, and highlights the overwhelming odds encountered in the downward spiral that accompanies the transition from one to the other on a daily basis.