The first text comes from the unsuccessful grant application for
'Portraits from the edge of Berlin' (March 2000)
The second, earning bread is on grants, selling art, & giving too much away...

At thirty-five and half-way dead I blundered out of the realm of fantasy art to address the private and universal problems of REALITY. In the search for more relevant subject matter I began to separate embellishment from essential component. Preserving the decorative style whilst exploring serious themes was to disorientate the observer and invite him or her to examine more closely the ostensibly simple workings of the pictures.
The result at the end of 1999: technically successful, but overly-demanding fragments of the ELUSIVE SOLUTION.

Those fragments, or pieces of puzzle, must now be pared down, tested and reassembled.

Using only the elements considered, for the moment, solid - i.e., Van Gogh's chair, walls of a room, the natural world, a mushroom-cloud - the space needs to be constructed in which to arrange other key elements as they arise. A child's building blocks printed with symbols of increasing complexity are an obvious model.

A major obstacle in the experiment is my own excessive cynicism. The attitude 'I can do nothing to stop war' is as destructive as excessive tolerance, which adds up to the same thing. Presenting a work from the standpoint that humanity is primarily negligent, wicked and doomed (Collaborational Damage, 1999 - above) often encourages the observer to turn away, cutting off dialogue before it has begun.
Now, after producing so much stuff regarded sinister by many (inexplicably to me), I have a mind to emerge from the DARK WOODS and arrive at something of a clearing.

...When the working space within the new frame is satisfactory, i.e. real and belonging to the present, I shall bring in the figures - portraits of people living in Berlin, some of whom featured in the purely fantasy Kreuzberg murals of 1998.

earning bread


The urge to produce something less barbed and to begin portrait painting arose also from the difficulty I had selling work. The first serious art I produced since college had been the marionettes (on moving to Berlin in '92) and then the Animal Pain sculptures. The reluctant artist within me was coming around. All very thrilling; but selling, and therefore living, was another matter. It is idyllic to display your self-made wares at the art market on the 'Museum's Island', between the river Spree and the cathedral, on a glorious summer weekend. Failing to make the money to pay for the table and something to eat in the snow with holes in your shoes is something else again. I did finally shift the puppets - the ceramic animals I gave away to friends. Nor did the symbolic paintings (above) sell like hotcakes. IN 2000 they were displayed for six months at Xotic-Art, the largest gallery space in Berlin at the time and very commercial. But they were not generally appreciated among people shopping for the office for a bowl of bananas painted in ten minutes on a bit of warped hardboard. In consolation, there is always a small minority so delighted, eloquent and flattering that you want to shout ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT! NOW FOR GOD'S SAKE GET YER MONEY OUT!
During the exhibition, a couple had four COLLABORATIONAL DAMAGE paintings (top) delivered to an apartment in West Berlin so that they could decide which ones to buy. I made the mistake of visiting them and explaining the pictures over a bottle of wine. My hosts were hospitable and apparently avid collectors. The flat was neat and bright and filled with pictures and figures of cats and the like, sold to them by my old buddies at the craft markets. As I enthused through the wine I failed to notice the faces drop. The paintings were all quietly returned. Pressed on the phone, I was reluctantly told that the woman, who had loved them for their boldness and colour, had had nightmares that night. In the dark she had seen what were clearly skulls staring out at her from 'a poisoned sky' (Cherry for the Cake) - and that was that.

Since then I'm wary about giving too much away - which is sad, as I enjoy bending an ear, off-loading ideas into it like a sack of useless pebbles.

As for the grant application, it was rumoured that nobody 'new' on the scene had the slightest hope of success on the first attempt; not without an ace connection in the Culture Ministry. But I was arrogant enough to believe that the cheap colour-copies of my work and all those heart-felt words would speak for themselves. Looking now at the whole text though I suppose it alienated more judges than it impressed. I guess only I knew what I was really on about. I had started work on The Serb, an important mile stone. I felt that without moral or practical support, preferably the latter, I could hardly go further - that I would perhaps never be able to fill in the figure of Isidore (he is missing from the picture to this day). Where possible, I had always avoided portrait painting, the greatest challenge for most artists. For if the figure, the Serb, had not been perfect, I would have been worse than demoralised - I would have been crap. It's difficult to explain exactly why, but when I do start doing portraits on canvas the circumstances must be ideal, i.e., financial security and a proper studio (far from the bedroom).

The next year I applied for a similar grant with the Holy Playroom project. This time it was rumoured that there were barrels of funds waiting to be thrown at anything involving children. This was in fact the case for a while: I had benefited myself, though from a thimble-full rather than barrels. Thanks to Kerstin W., I was doing occasional hours at 'Lele', a special unit introducing youths from Berlin's 'block houses' to jobs and wider opportunities. I organised painting sessions for little groups of some fairly odd kids, some of whom had never sat still long enough to paint a picture before. They were shy at first, but soon proud to be painting with oils on canvas, although most of it went on their clothes; with acrylics we decorated all the doors. Later, at the main building (a big test for me, remembering my own terrible schooldays) we painted a pretty decent mural in the central hall. Anyway, children's art has always fascinated me - and they are excellent people to work with. So when the application was again unsuccessful and I went to collect my folder from the smart offices of the Culture Ministry, I made a typical decision. Partly based on protest, inflamed by the fact that the art-bureaucrats refused to enter into correspondence explaining where the fault had lain: I would not waste time again chasing after grants in Berlin, no matter how hard up I was - and of course I was starving, though not fully aware of it at that time.

It was accumulated frustration above all else which fuelled the Kunstmafia (Art Mafia) and Kunstfleisch (Art Meat) escapades of the following Summer. These were cynical art events, including theatrical auctions, complete with scaffold executions and a bucket of blood, mafia-style readings (bound to their chairs, guests were made to read anything from my own benefits correspondence to Poe), punk concerts and parties etc. Although they by-passed the 'establishment' they paradoxically evolved into the exhibition of international artists supposed to take place in the grounds of the German Parliament: Kunst-Botschaft. History shows that this last event never took place - if it had, it would have been a thoroughly compromised version of the idea originally in mind: effectively a siege, a giant 'sit-in' to focus creative energy and humiliate the lumps on the thrown of power (etc!). Those which did take place were lively, weird and successful on all counts bar one: financial. I intended to put on a show every month, managing to coerce plenty of good people to get involved, and I never worked harder or better myself. But in the end, running as ever on an empty stomach, I resigned; skeletal, and only a little bit wiser.

Now I've retreated to England where I'm gathering strength for a Kamikaze assault on London. But I'm wondering more and more if I shouldn't attack Paris instead, or even return to Berlin. For if art refuses to support the artist, the only consolation that ever did me any good is that kind supplied by FOREIGN WOMEN.

(December 2002)