And She Whispered Numbers Into Me

The completed version of the sketch posted here. The numbers flow in from the right, taking the form of Japanese numerals (both traditional and modern), before trailing through the face and turning into a mixture of arabic numerals and algebraic symbols. The work is intended to communicate a sense of fast-flowing changing humners and I feel I have been partially successful in this.

Salvic Sisterhood

Salvic Sisterhood
50cm x 40cm, 2008 and 2009
Acrylics Gouache and Markers on Canvas

A piece which was a long time in the making, mainly because of other commitments. This is from my salviaspace project, an arts project exploring the twisting spaces and entheogenic visions of the Mexican herb salvia divinorum. Here we see a multiple epiphany of a female salvia spirit unenfolding from the salvic space. This is one of a long series of images and sketches, and I keep a website of the salviaspace project here.

Six Epiphanies

Six Epiphanies - 30cm x 30cm each
Acrylics, Gouache, Inks & Markers, 2009

After creating Honey For The Mistress Of the Labyrinth, I started to become inspired by images of the Minoan epiphany found on ring seals and on small-scale statuary, particularly those found at peak sanctuaries throughout Crete. I consider that these images are suggestive of a different cultural mandala than the transformative labyrinthine dance depicted in Honey..., one which is often called the epiphany. These six pieces, now exhibiting at the Cupola Gallery in Sheffield, take their colours from Minoan frescoes but depict embodiments of archaic womanhood which were anciently current across the European Neolithic and Bronze Age. I intend to follow these up with works expressing such womanhood in a more integrated form; also a series on archaic manhood as evidenced by Minoan statuary is also forthcoming.

A limited edition booklet will soon be available, containing images, sketches and thoughts on Honey... and these six epiphany images.

Migraine Sketch (untitled as yet)

Digital sketch, 2009

In 2008 I produced two migraine-related works entitled The Way To Lightning Mountain Is The Way Into Me and Vision Of Unity Across 20000 Years. This sketch continues that series and is the result of a recent decision I have made regarding the direction of my arts practice for the next few years.

The Way To Lightning Mountain Is the Way Into Me, 2008
(a work which refers less directly to the mgiraine experience)

Following some positive feedback from visionary artist Laurence Caruana, a man who quite literally wrote the book on Visionary Art, I have resolved to express a deeper visionary intent in my work which exposes more of my soul in the work: being brave and not referring obliquely to the (sometimes) disturbing aspects of the work, but being direct about them, is key here. I have also decided to produce a series of works about migraines and the disorientating, visionary and jarring experiences I have when I suffer them. I have had them since I was a child, so it's important to express their fractured imagery face on.

Opening Event at Artmazia, Massy, France

Pays de Bray panorama during a misty morning, June 2009

Just come back from a weekend jaunt to Massy in the Pays de Bray, Normandy, France to attend the opening event of the Labyrinth group exhibition where my piece Honey For The Mistress Of the Labyrinth is showing until the end of October 2009. It was a long voyage, ten hours each way and 900 miles in total but it was worth it. I've had work featured in international shows before: New York, Finland, Sweden: but I've never been able to travel to go see it. Normandy was close enough to give it a try, and happily my partner was willing to drive.

It was definitely worth it. Artmazia is situated in a beautiful part of France, and owned and run by Englishman Geoff Troll who made us both feel very welcome. Consisting of two large exhibition spaces and a four hectare plot of land, Artmazia is a sight to behold - there are sculptures of all kinds dotted around the gardens along with a maze a stone circle and a viewpoint. Some of the sculptures you have to properly hunt around for and are often situated in quite intimate spaces within the gardens.

Geoff seemed quite pleased to have some English artists present at the opening: here he is giving a short speech to welcome everyone to the vernissage (opening event) and to thank the artists for coming. He gave a special mention to my work, which he said reminded him of Aboriginal Art which was a thrill for me to hear - Geoff has a huge collection of Aboriginal Art and in a few spare moments he showed me some of the smaller pieces. Really beautiful, eye-opening stuff. As always in France, the event included a lot of food and drink, and I can definitely recommend both the local Neufchatel cheese and the Normandy cider!

Here's me grinning in front of my work. It was very fulfilling to see it, and it had been hung very well: I was a bit worried since 15 square-foot panels can't have been easy to hang, but they did a fine job.

In the morning, we went for another walk around the gardens and found the stone circle (my partner pictured). I also captured the misty Normandy morning in the panorama at the top of this post. Pictured above, too, is the cottage we stayed the night in (again on the Artmazia land) all wooden and beautifully rustic.

All in all, a fantastic trip and wish it could have been longer than a single weekend. If you're ever in Normandy or the Pays de Bray, Massy and Artmazia are definitely worth a visit and I'm hoping that either this autumn or next spring we'll be able to go back for a much longer stay...

The Night I Discovered My Bones

10cm x 30cm sketch

The last post for today, I promise. With new blogs I always feel I have to get up to speed with all the current projects going on. Anyway, this is the first sketch for a new series of works (as yet untitled) which will be showcased in an exhibition in April 2010. Long way to go yet. The sketch here recalls an experience some nine years ago when stood in the corner of a room, held my arms aloft and watched my skin peel away to reveal bones. One of the first times I felt the presence of my own organic body-ness. The final piece is intended to be 60cm x 180cm, as are the whole series of works.

Human Download

Human Download - A short art film
Now showing at Holy Trinity Church, Boar Lane, Leeds
as part of the ArtsMix* sponsored BORN exhibition

An approximately 8-minute film which expands upon my recent digital piece ‘And You Cannot Know Me By My Flesh Alone’ (pictured below), seeking to use a succession of rapidly changing images of drawings, photographs and excerpts from the digital piece to define and explore the totality of human experience in the shortest amount of time. Each image is suffused with red, suggestive of the colour of blood which is sometimes seen as the essence of humanity.

Over 500 images have been produced for this film as well as several animations and these proceed rapidly enough (still images change every 0.9 seconds) that the film is to a certain extent perceived more unconsciously than consciously. My first foray into short films, and an attempt to bring the genres of visionary drawing and moving image together.

Limited edition DVDs are on sale at the exhibition until June 19th, after which they will be available through my website. I will try to upload an excerpt of the film on here when I can…

Coming Up - The Great Derbyshire Palaeolithic Hunt

The Great Derbyshire Palaeolithic Hunt
A site-specific contemporary arts project from Bruce Rimell

The Great Derbyshire Palaeolithic Hunt is a site-specific contemporary art project created by artist Bruce Rimell which takes art based on engravings and artefacts found at the Palaeolithic site of Creswell Crags out to the wider world of Derbyshire in the UK. Over seventy 'art packs' containing transparent perspex art objects have been scattered around the county, and the call is for participants to go out and hunt for them in the same way that our Palaeolithic ancestors once hunted this landscape for their food.

In taking the site of the caves at Creswell Crags and mirroring the ancient experiences and engraved artistic expressions of that site across the whole of Derbyshire, I am attempting to turn the whole county into a Palaeolithic Hunt for the participants. More importantly, by engaging in a hunt for objects whose form strongly resonates with such imagery as bison, mammoths and flintheads, across a landscape where we know Palaeolithic hunters once roamed, the participants relive a profound archetypal experience of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The Great Derbyshire Palaeolithic Hunt has been generously supported with a bursary from the re:place project, funded by Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Arts Development Group, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Arts Council England. On a personal note I am truly excited about this project, which ahs already led me to some profound and unique experiences, among them a private tour of the UK’s only known Palaeolithic Art engravings in Church Hole Cave at Creswell Crags.

This project opens in Autumn 2009 and is expected to run for two years. Further information can be found at the project’s website.

Coming Up - Modern Palaeolithic

'The Mind In the Cave'
42cm x 59cm : Inks & markers on card
Modern Palaeolithic - An Exhibition by Bruce Rimell
Leeds College of Art & Design, Nov-Dec 2009

Modern Palaeolithic is an ongoing series of works which springs from a long-standing personal interest in Palaeolithic imagery and draws upon insights into the archetypal hunter-gatherer mode of life which forms the majority time-period of human evolution. This series is to be exhibited at Leeds College of Art & Design, Leeds, UK, throughout the months of November and December 2009.

Drawing from archaeological data, the findings of specialists such as Lewis-Williams and Henshilwood, and from personal visits to Palaeolithic sites such as Altamira, Ekain and Creswell Crags, this exhibition explores the experiential, mythical and cosmogonical motifs thought to have been understood by the cultures of the Upper Palaeolithic from the Atlantic coast of Western Europe to Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia. The work in this project is intended to evoke an ancient sense of the hunter gatherer in the mind of the modern viewer, seeking to resonate with an evocative remembrance through a body of work in a variety of media, aiming not so much to stimulate discussion but to bring about a quiet commemoration of what has passed and to make a connection with the earliest human expressions.

And She Whispered Numbers Into Me

30cm x 10cm Sketch

A new sketch based on an early morning dream which was only fragmentarily remembered a few days later on reading the phrase 'she whispered some numbers to me'. It immediately reminded me of a very similar salvia divinorum experience some years ago in which numbers were physically inserted into me through the power of speech. A surreal thought, and a positive one for the creation of this artwork, which has already been marked out on 90cm x 30cm canvas. I intend the background to be mostly dark, and the skin colours to be partially-obscured by arrays of numbers. The long lines are to be bright blue to create a hopefully electric visionary intent...

Honey For The Mistress Of The Labyrinth

150cm x 90cm in 15 panels
Acrylics, Gouache, Inks & Markers on Canvas

Inspired by the vibrant frescoes and images of vitality found throughout Minoan archaeology, this multi-panel work explores the original Minoan conception of the labyrinth as a transformative spiral dance, as outlined in my recent essay Minoan Honey: The Bull, The Mushroom And The Mistress Of the Dance. We see here the central figure of Mistress Ariadne as the initiator, participant and ultimate truth of the dance, unwinding for us a mandala of an anti-clockwise spiral which passes by an image of Glaucos as a sea deity before confronting the famous bull-leaper. As the spiral rolls out above Ariadne's head we move from the realm of life to that of death and greet a gorgon mask and an owl before arriving at our final point: an image of Minos-Asterion as transcendent grandfather and grandson followed by the drowned Glaucos in the honey mushroom pot.

This work brings together ideas from diverse thinkers as Cretan archaeologist Nikolaos Platon and psychedelic theorist Terence McKenna, and is exhibiting in ArtMazia Gallery in Massy, France throughout much of 2009. A limited edition commentary booklet which explores this transcendental mandala in detail is currently in production and should be available from my website www.biroz.net very soon.

Categories/Labels

Posts to this blog will fall under several categories. If you like Visionary Art but aren't so bothered about Palaeolithic experience, then this will ease your viewing pleasure!

General - Intros, blurbs and meta-posts like this one. Miscellaneous stuff.
Artwork - Original artworks or piece in completed form.
Exhibition - News or updates on a forthcoming exhibition, or images from a previous one.
Sketch - Sketches of intended future work, or of finished works to show the progression from inception to completion.
WIP - Work In Progress. Somewhere between 'Sketch' and 'Artwork'.
Project - Part of a larger project, either funded (eg, the Derbyshire project) or self-set in response to an exhibition opportunity.
Film - Post describing or showing a short art film, a burgeoning aspect of my arts practice.
Series - Part or all of a series of art works.
Visionary Art - Work in the visionary art genre.
Rock Art - Work inspired by rock art and petroglyphs.
Palaeolithic - Work inspired by Palaeolithic experience.
Neolithic - Work inspired by Neolithic experience.
Minoan - Work inspired by the Cretan Bronze Age, an increasing strand in my work.
Archetype - Work inspired by archetypal inner experience.
Entheogen - Work inspired by entheogenic experience.

More categories will be added as and when, but for now this will do.

New Blog...

I am a visual and graphics artist based in Leeds-Bradford, UK, working with themes of visionary experience, rock art imagery and Palaeolithic and Neolithic archaeology. My work is in a variety of media from inks and markers on card through acrylics on canvas as well as digital vector art printed on textiles; my techniques include both instinctive and more controlled styles of painting, but the central element throughout all my work is drawing. I am also beginning to move into short film.

I aim in my work to bridge the vast gaps (whether stylistic, social, spiritual or experiential) between the very ancient and the very modern, and a key point of my work is that the archetypal sensations of our ancestors are alive and present within every human being today. From works of visionary art to organic landscapes and mythological narratives, my work has been described as genre-baffling, as a typical example of archetypal expressionism or as an eye-opening depiction of inner visionary experience.

My website is at www.biroz.net. Please visit there for more information and imagery. All images, sketches, thoughts, musings and rants are, unless otherwise stated, Copyright (c) Bruce Rimell.