AllanRenshaw, Image-maker

Remembering the human psyche is an integral part of the greater psyche of nature has laid the ground in my painting for an exploration of origins and a connection to remnants of original aboriginal nature embedded in all our psychic foundations. I believe our original psyche operated with the inherent possession of an ecologically attuned sense of self in the world and that this remains latent in our psychological make-up. This ecological attunement of early peoples was absolutely necessary to live and prosper – it was a natural part of life. My painting has driven a connectedness and orientation that enables a very particular psychic attunement to nature and provides me with a distinct purpose as a painter.

Other beings in nature - trees, rivers, mountains, animals… like humans are, for me, both spirit and organic entities. They provide vital symbolic relationships and a landscape for the human mind that nurtures ecological attunement to nature. My psychic attunement to the essence of wild natural environment and our ancestral human presence within it takes hold of my work and has a governing life of its own. This ‘taking hold’ is akin to 'an altered psychic state' allowing me to transmit primal elements of nature and deeper layers of historical presence of place without me being fully in control of the image making. This enhances the attunement of my work to the significance of the greater psyche of nature and provides a primordial context for my art.

Through this orientation, I experience a particular reverence for the natural world - a working reverence that enables a change in perception and an ability to mine psychic strata, to commune with the primal spirit in the life around me and allow me the presence of mind to honor it. This process of reconnection to core identity allows my painting to reflect primal spirit presence.

This connectedness to origins allows me to be a conduit for the psychic world of nature and its ancestral spirit presence - a medium between worlds. These invisible energies are accessible and available to be made visible in the consciousness of humans. I am not inventing images but instead projecting ‘after-images’ of what is already present within the essence of nature. These ‘after images’ are the reconstitution of my exposure and symbolic alignment to primal essence imbibed from within nature. This exposure is aligned with an internal image of the soul, a soul landscape that provides innate images and colours, the accessibility of which allows me to perform the role of artist. This exposure is psychically ‘transposed’ in the mind’s eye and then finally ‘fixed’ in paint.  I have learnt that everything is gestating, waiting to be brought forth and that painting is an excellent medium for fixing images.

This very particular way of working began to emerge more fully and consolidate when I lived on the Conwy estuary in North Wales. The tidal movements continually created remnant landscapes which stimulated an archaeological mind-set and were initially manifest in my paintings as parallel remnant landscapes. I realised that these paintings communicated primal messages and this led onto a series that I named ‘Sea & Sky Henge’. My paintings were drawing me into the prehistoric world without my conscious intention. They continued the intrinsic association with nature in my painting and are a juxtaposition of simple geometric imagery, seemingly hard-wired into the human brain and fluid motifs placed together to recall what is not immediately obvious or easily seen. They recall essence rather than being representational and while being in the present they also reach back in time connecting to origins and therefore providing a more complete picture.

'PAINTING IS A RETURN TO THE ORIGINS' ~ ANTONI TAPIES

My geometric imagery manifests as arrangements of apertures - this has evolved over time, from the early stages of my work. I have referred to them previously as Graves and Henges - they have in some recent paintings become a grid-like structure floating in the primordial ground of the painting, providing a synchronous superstructure of apertures. They bring to my mind the grid-like formality of military graveyards and might be described as archetypal force fields, comparable to a gravitational field spreading across time. For me they also have echoes of the dense formations of the Carnac Stones in Brittany, France (see Google link to images of Carnac Stones from space) - thought to be constructed in the transitional period at the end of the mesolithic and beginning of the neolithic periods. Apertures emerged spontaneously in my early work and are now an integral part of the design of certain paintings but nevertheless manifest themselves as a conscious imperative.

My ‘wall’ paintings with their ascending large oblong masses are effectively larger apertures. Originally inspired by sheer mountain faces in the Snowdonian Range in North Wales and first painted between 2010-2013, they manifest the face of primal psychic power. They consequently have ritual presence, both in the act of painting and as an object of respect and attunement. This provides ground for enhancing change in my psychic state. These oblong masses have, over time, transposed, becoming permeable apertures and planes of after-images and ancestral stories.

I completed a series of paintings at my studios in Kingston, Ontario and North Hatley, Quebec, Canada between 2013 - 2015. They significantly developed my projection of after-images and ancestral stories. The First Nations, Abenaki people call this area of Southern Quebec ‘Dawnland' (The Land of the Rising Sun). These paintings were from the start imbued with a strong primal presence and their emergent names, ‘Ghostlands’, ‘Spirit Wall’, ‘Songlands’ and ‘Blood-lines’ exemplify this. I developed an affinity with Quebec over many years and from the beginning was struck by its immense nature, diverse aboriginal peoples as well as the character of its recent settlers over the last 400 years. I made a strong connection to the soul of this land. While painting there I was vividly aware of the presence of the spirit of the indigenous peoples whose psychic influence is still alive in the landscape. I was able to commune with its nature and history through my paintings, beyond and behind the current cultural level. These paintings and their explorations fostered a great respect, within me, for the First Nations people, their attunement to nature, ecological consciousness and their ancestral heritage. Whilst I did not meet or have direct contact with First Nations people while in Canada during this period, I was painfully aware of their status as dispossessed, often despised and forgotten people whose land has suffered significant ecological change. This remembering is of course influential psychically in my work.

This painting experience fostered a further development in my connectedness to aboriginal consciousness in my work. It also drove the context of my painting, deeper into ancient history. This stimulated an exploration of paleo-indian and paleolithic history that is now contextualising my painting and allowing me to sustain a depth connection to origins.

I returned to live in Scotland at the end of 2015 and now have a studio close to the river Tweed on the edge of the Merse - a fertile alluvial plain in the Eastern Scottish Borders, over-looked by the Cheviot Hills and graced by the river Tweed. Through the modern landscape with its beautiful trees, wild river and abundant wildlife, I have been quickly drawn into an exploration of the ancient trees and wildwoods and the hunter-gatherers who populated these lowlands after the last ice age retreated and trees again colonised the whole land. This exploration is connected and influenced by my work in Quebec and the corresponding insights into nature and the balance of humans in nature. The present needs its connection to origins to be complete.

There is a strong resonance for me, as a painter, with rock wall painting - some of which were painted over 40,000 years ago. These ancient paintings - both figurative and nonfigurative are thought to have been used for religious and ritual purpose, often connected with hunting. It is speculated that some of these paintings were made by paleolithic Shamans, as well as other gifted individuals, with the intention of drawing images and power out of the walls themselves.

It would seem that for certain ancient peoples rock wall faces were not just surfaces but were seen as screens suspended between worlds - perceived spirit worlds interacting with the human and animal world and providing gateways/apertures. These painted gateways allowed for transmission of supernatural intelligence, including spiritual revelation and solution to human problems. They connected the living and the dead, both human and animal providing a working interface between materiality and spirituality. These transmissions helped to make relationships with important animals and ancestors more profoundly symbolic and concrete and provided the living with the possibility of optimal psychic functioning and healthy ecological balance.  

This ‘drawing out of image and power’ and the consciousness that a painting can act as a screen suspended between worlds - the known and unknown and the consequent transmission of intelligence, powerfully underpins my purpose as a painter. 

A highly significant example of rock wall painting, for me, is Nawarla Gabarnmung (see link to Jawoyn Association article on sites of significance) which lies in a remote location on the traditional lands of the Jewoyn people in Arhem Land, Northern Territories, Australia, it dates back more than 40,000 years. This archaic art site shows a remembering and a connectedness to nature with generations of painters partaking in its development. For these people the paintings are psychic and spiritual manifestation of attunement to nature and their spirit home. They provide practical and spiritual mapping and purpose in the present, encouraging continual human rejuvenation.

In this era of serious ecological crisis with its huge loss of creatures, trees, habitat and air and water quality, the separation from reverence for nature and the widespread misunderstanding of its spirit life is catastrophic for so many life forces - including so many humans.

Our long-time cultural conditioning with its roots in the transition into larger scale farming when humans became full-time farmers rather than being sustained within nature, splits human psyche from nature and now makes it extremely difficult for our modern mind to cross the threshold to an attuned relationship with nature - to be completely part of nature. The high levels of stress, trauma, social conflict and ecological dysfunction in our modern human world are a direct result of our psychic split from nature. This condition severely limits our potential for leaps in evolutionary development, our neurological and physiological adaptations in nature and our attunement to origins.

Evolutionary mature humanity depends on us communing not just with domestic human settings but with multi-species environments. Only by returning to a balanced relationship with nature can we further fully develop - not just technologically.

I believe art that is attuned to the natural world and our ancestral heritage, without romanticising or defiling it, can act as a conduit to origins and wild nature with its attendant transmission of ecological and spirit intelligence. This is intrinsic to our current human quest and my quest as a painter.

'Ancient, long forgotten things are preserved within us, continue to work upon us - often without our realising it - and then, suddenly, they come to the surface and speak to us like...shadows.' ~ The Necessity of Art - Ernst Fischer

Allan Renshaw. January 2017. Scotland.