'The Mellitus Management', oil on board, 2011.
'Prophet Ron', oil on board 2014.
While making these two paintings, my sweet water condition tried to ruin all my hard work, but the hypoglycemic episodes actually became a part of the making process, although this wasn't intended, it kinda helped, but held up the whole process somewhat.
In painting 'the mellitus management' the hypo's were totally unforgivable, because the painting's about my type 1 diabetes. I did a whole set of paintings based on photo's of myself as a child. My Mum's always saying that I was such a perfect baby & child & thinks that when I moved to Glasgow to attend art school, 'the rot set in', I hung around with mental people who weren't dirt poor & took all the drugs I could get my hands on because of what she views must have been peer pressure, so I tried to explain to her (& myself) in these paintings of the doomed golden child, applying the new learnings to the framework of these "family classic" photo's. 'The Mellitus Management' is based on a photograph taken by a professional who came round to the first house my Mum & I lived in after she escaped her parents when I was 4 to 'an awful council estate in Chichester'. It was weird, she was up before noon that day & I had to wear these clothes that I was shriekily informed were very nice & smart, but despised. A sympathetic neighbour told me to 'do whatever it takes to make her happy' during the short trip to get my appeasement juice from the one stop opposite us, so I did. This is showmance & people don't like the truth, the 4 year old me realised, but not quite so eloquently. "Auntie" Elsie May fucked me up for life by being basic enough to inform me of that. Get them young. 'Smile' she said. 'Bums' I said, before being whisked away.
So, all dressed up in smart clothes that I couldn't be my real feral self in, couldn't draw or play with cars in, the photographer arrived late & set up his background stand & lights & I'd been having a shit time in this outfit for what seemed like hours. Hated that clip on tie. All dressed up like a functional, as fully aware as a 4 year old can be that it was farce. Should've been a ceo of some shit by now if I hadn't had that bad first reaction to dressing up for show, which made me take like a duck to water as a brown tight wearing rat in the school production of Pied Piper of Hamlyn a year later. We were left with the photograph that formed the basis of this painting (& several more), which on this, I painted a sad close up of a pancreas fucking me up because of sweets, cheap food, my largely unknown father's dna & agenda 21.
I'm a very slow "fast" painter. Normally the process takes months, sometimes years, but there's always this instinct that faster is better, partly because it's got to be sustainable, no-one's REALLY going to pay attention & folk are largely morons anyway. So, in what should've been the last session on 'The Mellitus Management', after about the 14th hour, the hallucinations started. It was amazing & I went along with them, unaware my blood sugar was dangerously low. I was drooling (hypersalivation is a symptom of hypoglycemia) on rags & gently mopping & dabbing at the painting for what must've been hours, after starting the session with "proper" painting. You can see elements of this in the face. Suddenly, there was all this noise (the CD of Ministry's 'land of rape & honey' album had finished ages ago), & Sophie, Jayne & Tim arrived back at unity studios. By this point I was wearing a cooking pot with filthy turps on my head, but the painting was really starting to sing to my soul. Sugary water drinking attempt & paramedics. Shit, not again. My face & scalp were stinging from the chemical mixture on my skin, I felt like I was dissolving into elements & was at one with the universe. It felt beautiful. The sugar, shots, shouting & stinging brought me back. I had to put my head in the sink for about half an hour. Went for a cigarette outside with Jayne & Sophie. Went back the next day, got a fat masonry brush & dragged it through my childish face. Life is cheap & not here long. A bit of tidying up & the painting was done. That seemed quite poetic & functional & helped, despite the obvious health risk. The enormous dandruff from the turps headwash was a hellish reminder.
'Prophet Ron' is based on the back cover photograph of the author of '2008; God's final witness', looking all serious. Check out Ronald Weinland. It's terrifying, like the news is terrifying, but scarier because there's real money behind him in order to freely circulate these books. Much like the news with crisis actors for the agenda. God spoke to him in 1997 & now he's out to save all the souls he can. Or something. But, you wouldn't look like that on the back cover of your book if that was your intent, surely..? Hence this painting. There's never enough space to properly paint on this expensive wee fuckin' island, especially if you're 6'8", need to go 'expanded field' to see all you need to properly perform the task in hand & broke, so at my old studio, I used other people's spaces because they were never there. Ever. I'd just discovered 'oiling in' with boiled linseed oil. Greasy.
Anyway, having nearly got this painting finished in my former studio in Govan, propped up on someone else's desk, while working on 3 more at the same time with all these curtains & crap walls in the way, after a really long successful session, I tried to move something, then had to save the curtain falling into wet paint, went to prevent this accident, Prophet Ron fell on his greasy face on the filthy studio floor. The bloodsugar must've been dangerously low, and I comically demolished the whole studio. Shit. Bad scene.
This jolt made me aware of the on-coming coma. I was dissolving into conscious particles again & I could hear murmurings from another dimension directing me toward the kitchen sink, sugar & Taxi bars. I was a meat puppet doing something I didn't fully understands bidding. It really felt alien/God like, or rather, a greater will. It wasn't consciously my will. I've always had this theory that agenda 21 & the NWO are a bit like Jack Nicholson's Joker in the 1989 Batman film, with his evil plot at axis chemicals plant. There's internet, phone, gamma waves & rays in the air & we're full of soft & heavy metals if you're on 2 kinds of insulin & various pills, so some people (like me) are probably more attuned to this shit, can probably be manipulated easier. This episode (& others) made me feel like a meat puppet of something else's will. I tidied up as best as I could & nothing was terminal, but I got a cheaper studio, not quite so far out, then Verge closed down. I finished the painting at my current studio at green city studios in dennistoun & again feel that this hypoglycemic episode helped connect me in a deeper way with what I was after with the work. I really do. It was good to drag greasy Ron through the dirt, then patch him up. It makes it a more honest portrait. No more, though.
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