kate finn's stream of art consciousness

I was frustrated when I made this piece. Angry about a certain persons passive aggressive behaviour towards me. The target of my anger will never ever know how much they pissed me off. I wanted to let rip, speak my truth, but I held it all in and focused on all the drama and the consequences that would ensue if I did react. So I let it go and I took the higher road of silence. One that in my opinion is a pissy pot holed road which when taken often leaves you feeling bitter, grumpy and wanting to smash things.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that in this instance their manipulative, jealous, behaviour stuck in my craw. So I sat down, got my glue and scissors out, picked up a book on communist buildings and created this piece.

All I can say is, that it brings a smile to my face when I imagine the Brutalist architectural concrete that cuts through the centre of the work, shoved up their condescending arse.

The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race. There, I feel better.
― Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

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Señor Zorro is an artist. He paints portraits in pixels of light, capturing the true colour of his subjects through the lens of his camera. He loves what he does and you feel that passion when he talks about his experiences taking photos and how he gets lost in the process.

When I showed him this work it didn’t have a title. He said it made him think of Sir John Everett Millais’s Pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia. Who am I to argue with feedback like that.

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It was a place where an ancient tree grew surrounded by the offerings from those in search of a cure for their woes and protection from their foes.

I drove a single toxic copper coin into its bark, a ritual to ask the universe to absorb all of my disease and to provide a solution to the what ifs and why nots of my existence.
I’m still waiting.

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This work scares the bejesus out of me. I made it, named it and walked away from it. Buried it with no analysis, no description, case closed. Why?…because it is the steely freeze before an action that I need to make. The type that generate a deep seated anxiety no matter how much I try and rationalise with her, the primal child.
She is trapped on a sandbank too scared of the menacing shadows in the water to risk crossing the short distance of open water to reach the shore. These shark shadows are every event in her life which have left her feeling belittled and crushed.

This is what fear looks like.

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I believe there is some truth when people say that you only remember the good moments in life because my brain harbours a large cow pat used to fill a certain hole left over from my past.
I have no solid visual memories of the time I spent as a married woman. I know this is some sort of conscious choice, but I can’t even remember what my ex husband looked like. However, when I attempt to really focus on my memories of our life together, all I experience is a dull physical feeling of being trapped under a heavy blanket. The only moments I can recall as a couple, are those where he did something that was stupid, and I laughed at him. In short, If I played a chronological film in my head of these years, he’s not in it.

This piece is like the final act of a play where the word marriage has become a biased tidy single polaroid picture. One that is safely tinted to resemble an old photo, echoing my desire to control how I want to remember this period of my life. It personifies a life I can’t believe I ever lived.

By making this experience of marriage into a piece of art, I have removed the cow pat, given my forgotten years substance and put any emotional residue that escaped my convenient amnesia, a structure. Although, I have to admit that it made me laugh out loud, when my brain metamorphosed something as complex and messy as a bad relationship, into a gold paper cup, some glitter, a rock and some plastic swords.

I would be married, but I’d have no wife. I would be married to a single life.
-Charles Bukowski.

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I have always been able to visualise myself living on the set of the 1976 film, Logan’s Run. I’m not a fan of the films plot because everyone over the age of 30 is culled and that is a monstrous dystopian idea. However, my dislike of the storyline bypasses any genocide outrage and actually stems from knowing that I simply wouldn’t cope very well being surrounded by all those unbearably full of themselves, idealistic twenty-somethings. I was such a pain in my own ass at that age, that the thought of reliving it or watching others live it, makes me nauseous.

My utopia would be me, alone, with maybe some pets, on the set of Logan’s run, sat drinking my favourite gin ( monkey 47) and tonic with lots of ice and a slice of grapefruit in the glass. Cheers!

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She likened me to a fool, not once but twice. And maybe I was. I had more debt than I had money, I shut up more than I spoke out and I was easily distracted and lazy by nature.

I remember staring at her, my critic, trying to feel shame, anger or maybe guilt but none came. Instead, I felt my fool smile to itself. It had no regrets because it was a creature of no apology. So I mentally digested her words and shrugged, grateful that my fool was the reason why I was an artist and why over the years I had developed a very thick skin.

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This work was created during a very long conversation on speakerphone, with my friend Tracey. We were discussing the ins and outs of, How to spot the narcissist in your life?

Tracey is one of the most intelligent women I know. She really gets life and has fought against the constraints of family, culture and social expectations in order to thrive. For Tracey, unpicking the past has meant systematically expelling all the narcissists from her life. Family or friend no one has escaped this cull. It’s purpose was to enable her to leave behind, ‘a negative culture of mental health fuckery’ that has held her back.
Love bombing is an expression that is used to describe behaviour where someone attempts to influence another person or a group of people with an excessive amount of attention and affection. It is a commonly used method of grooming by cults, gangs and pimps to gain trust and control their victims. Narcissists also use it to gain control of their interpersonal relationships with partners, family and friends and once trust is assured, this control will turn abusive and debasing in nature.
I have no memory of the mechanics of making this work, but when I ended the call I definitely remember staring at the piece before I photographed it, in a state of mild confusion with the scissors still in my hand and a lot of glue on my trackie-bot-bots.

Of course it’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

-Charles Bukowski

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