Page 56 - Demo

When I was 24 years old, I discovered I suffer mental illness: depression! What a truly stupid name for this illness. At its worse, one can become completely nonfunctioning save for swallowing food through a tube, and crapping in a napkin. Lucky for me, my particular form of depression stopped short of this severity, but did slow down my thinking significantly and repress overall awareness. I have since suffered with bouts of clinical depression for most of my life. Nothing external really causes these bouts except for a little anxiety, often about insignificant things. It%u2019s genetic. Why mention this? I notice many models suffer from depressive bouts, or problems with self-esteem. Maybe, like me, the act of being involved with artistic endeavour helps to suffer the pains of life? Anyway, for me, taking up oil painting in 1976 led to a recovery%u2014or, possibly, coincided with a natural recovery. Either way, it began a journey for me which has led to the last ten years of my life and the creation of images of so many women. I also believe that living through long periods, often many months, and still having to negotiate my way through a world which suddenly becomes frightening and alien, has enabled me to leave the thought comfort-zone afforded by people who do not suffer mental disorders. In fact, maybe I am just mad, but I firmly believe the reality we exist in is no more than a false construction, like a computer program or a dream of someone else, rather than the absolute reality our true entities inhabit. Why do I think this? Because it all seems too absurd. For the last 2000 years, most of human activity has involved war and conflict, where%u2014like mad people%u2014we have hacked, tortured, bombed, gassed, and butchered one another to death for a variety of %u2018reasons%u2019, instead of co-operating to improve our lives. We still do it. As I write, war rages in several countries around the world; newspapers tell daily of people murdered in our streets often for no more than a vocal insult or because someone thought it would be fun to do! Even without this, life is absurd. We live approximately 70 years and then all we have learned, and everything we have experienced, is suddenly lost in the moment our lives are extinguished by death. If we are fortunate, we leave behind children to carry on like us%u2014generation after generation%u2014all experiencing life and then fading away into the abyss. Maybe then, the reason for people like me to create images, and the reason for certain women to present themselves to pose for the work, is a common one shared by artist and mode: to create something which survives their mortal lives. It should be understood by all then, especially you the