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Love &

HatePortfolio - Russell Honeyman- July 2017 - MA Fine Art Brighton University

Love & HatePortfolio and Exhibition of Art by

Russell HoneymanBrighton University MA Fine Art July 2017AGM75 - SN12828690

List of WorksPainting

Self Portrait May 2017 - 4Peace Angel - 7Burn (prohet) - 9Venus (sourcerer) - 11Europa - 13Fearless Girl - 15Scarlet Coloured Beast - 17

Socially Engaged - Political sketches - 19Performative Body

Love and Hate video - 29

Models for sculpture and installationCivilisation Box - 31Non-binary - 33Soft cock - 35Maxim Machine Gun - 37Killing by remote - 39

Love and Hate are opposite sides of the same coin. We need

to understand both to learn empathy and end violence

Thank you to Lesley and Iain, Joyce, Sanga, Marta, Dana and Dawn, and my friends, who all

encouraged me to leap into art, and to those who are swimming in it with me. Thank you to the

spirit of all - may we achieve utopia here on earth.

www.raphaeldelmer.wordpress.comwww.russellhoneyman.comrussellhoneyman@gmail.com

Love and Hate - or the possibility of empathy in turbulent timesRussell Honeyman MA Fine Art Brighton June 2017In the aftermath of terror attacks in London and Manchester, I contemplate artwork that addresses love and hate in our society. Men armed with ordinary motor vehicles and knives launch suicide attacks on innocent civilians, and we can’t figure out why - except that they have been radicalised to hate. Our media obsesses over the minutest details of these attacks at home. Meanwhile, most of us are only vaguely aware that our ‘coalition’ bombers strike schools, hospitals and mosques in Iraq and Syria, killing hundreds of civilians. Our media are banned from showing photos of war casualties, ever since such photography caused public opinion to end the Vietnam War. We’ve stopped counting the dead in our wars of liberation in Iraq, Libya and Syria - they are numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

I believe that our wars, and the brutal logic of capitalism, are linked to violence in our society. Not just violence from terror attacks, but from violence on our streets and in our houses, drug abuse, suicides and hopelessness. I believe there are better ways to improve the human condition than by bombing countries who do not have democratic governments.

We need to understand ourselves, since our human condition defines society. Our society is traumatised, out of touch with itself, and addicted to consumption as a way of keeping its mind off its pain. We distance ourselves from real feeling.

A solution is for us to be more connected with ourselves and others. Where empathy exists it is hard to commit violence. To have empathy we need to have experience in common. We can’t all travel into a war zone and experience first hand what it might be like to live through a bombing raid, but we can share experience through our media and arts. We might see better what we are doing, and find better solutions, for it is surely within our power to create a better society based on love and tolerance.

Russell Honeyman MA Fine Art Brighton University Portfolio July 2017 - Page 4 Russell Honeyman MA Fine Art Brighton University Portfolio July 2017 - Page 5

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Peace Angel drawing down the MoonAcrylic on Canvas stretcher, 2016, 60 x 60 cm

Peace Angel is a meditation on boundaries and non-boundaries. Archetypal images jostle in the clouds - the moon, anima, animus, force and peace, the flow of energy, warm and cold, light and dark. The separation and mingling can also be a metaphor for power, gender and nation. The moon is painted in pale tints of complimentary peach and cyan so it shimmers.

In September 2007, on a clouded night during the Harvest full moon, I went out to take photos of the moonrise on Brighton seafront. On the way back, I noticed the Peace Statue was framed by clouds lit up by the blue light of the moon and the reddish orange of the streetlights. I took photos and only now am interpreting them through painting. I’m painting loosely, letting my memory and impressions guide my brush, inspired by my sense of the goddess that night. The clouds take various forms, a hare leaping over the moon, kindness, birth and laughter. I struggle when these forms emerge - if I try to develop a form it loses its mystery, so I try to practice detachment and let the paint go where it will.

I chose acrylic because it dries instantly, allow-ing me to quickly apply layers, and to respond intuitively to my impressions.

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Burn (prophet)Oil on Wood. 2017. 7 x 10 x 0.5 in

In a campfire, I thought I could see the Chinese character for happiness partly described by the logs. My painting of the photo, however, led me to think of passion and intertwining. I painted tones using Venetian red on a pine board. I then crudely mixed titanium white, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange and painted it on thick, quick and expressively. I loaded the brush with or-ange, and dipped in pale tint of yellow to get the graduation streaks and flickers. Trying to trust the outcome of the brush strokes and not fuss too much. Left to dry a few days, then glazed the dark surround with ultramarine and liquin, and with palest tint of ultramarine, the white heart of the fire. I was surprised to see a prophet emerge, silhouetted against a burning bush.


Venus (Sorcerer)Oil on Canvas Stretcher. 2017. 24 x 24 x 1.6 in

I showed my painting of Venus at a private exhibition for the MA students on my course. The first question I was asked was why isn’t she blue? Well, Venus isn’t blue, as you can tell from looking into the night sky most nights of the year where she can be seen as the brightest star: at dusk, the Evening Star, the first to emerge from behind the brilliance of the sun, and then, traversing the sky, the Morning Star, the last to be dimmed by his reawakening. She is reddish-yellow-gold.

I too was brought up thinking Mars is red and Venus is blue, as Mars is the god of war, and Venus the goddess of love. But she is golden red when viewed by the naked eye. Apparently, the legend of blue Venus is due to filters used in the first photos of Venus.

Venus is also covered in clouds of sulphuric acid, so you cant see her face. But recent satellite photography has been able to penetrate this veil, and digital images of Venus have now been published. She is a hot planet, around 450ºC at the surface, and basically a seething mass of volcanoes and molten lava rivers, erupting, flowing, cooling and sinking again into the molten core of planet.

When I first saw a digital satellite image of Venus, I wanted to paint her. I had been wrestling themes of empathy and violence; my response to the political problems of the world (why cant we just love each other), and was struggling with literal representations of this struggle: paintings of machine guns reducing tribesmen to red and white splashes (Maxim Machine Gun), video of emotional abuse symbolised by flagellation with red paint (Love and Hate).

The lava flows on Venus have been rendered in the satellite images as a mingling of red and white, sometimes abrupt, sometimes smooth. The painting of it, around 60 hours of layers, provided me with plenty of time to meditate on the mingling of the red and white, which symbolises blood and semen, feminine and masculine, war and surrender. I used mineral pigments – Venetian Red, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine, Titanium Dioxide.

The second question I was asked was why the two titles? Well actually, my rednition of Venus has four aspects, depending on which way up you hang the canvas. Many symbolic motifs emerge from the patterns in the painting. The four secondary names I have chosen for Venus are: Sourcerer, Owl (wisdom), Tree, Ancestor.


Europa (Elope)Oil on Canvas Stretcher. 2017. 48 x 60 x 0.5 in

I’m working on representations of beauty and the beast. I painted Scarlet Coloured Beast, Fearless Child and Europa in quick succession.

The image is archetypal, multilayered and ambiguous. Archetypes are of fundamental importance to politics. Such imagery can express ideas and trigger subconscious fears and desires – especially effective across language barriers.

The Europa myth symbolises the hopes and fears of European Union. Does the young woman represent European nations first seduced, then carried away, and finally raped by a god in disguise (the ancient Greek Europa myth)? Is the beast a dreadful, fascist superstate? Or is this a love affair, with passionate hearts and self-interest subsumed, as the lovers elope into a bright new dawn?

Making the painting also brought to mind the English myth of the White Hart, a mythic, magical beast which can never be caught, try as you might. And, needless to say, the elusive ideal of European unity.


Fearless Child (beyond gender, grace confronting power)Oil on Canvas Stretcher. 2017. 60 x 100 x 0.5 in

Art tells its own story no matter what the artists intended. When I first saw images of a new statue – a child confronting the raging bull of capitalism on New York’s Wall Street – I loved it – I loved the graceful response to power. However, I’ve been reading more about it. Firstly, the creator of the original bull statue is incensed. He wants the child removed. He says his original bull (1989) was a tribute to the fortitude of humanity surviving the stock market crash of 1987. But his bull becomes a predator when we see the little girl in its path. I say good to get this perspective… sometimes statues have their own meanings, not the meanings their creators intended. There’s more. I found out the little girl statue was paid for as part of a campaign to get more women into high paid jobs running capitalist corporations. So it’s not about grace confronting power after all. It’s about demanding a bigger part of the capitalist cake for some capitalist women.

A few days after Fearless Girl was unveiled, a news photo went viral on social media. It shows Saffiyah Khan, a young woman, smiling, unflinchingly facing the rage of an English nationalist. Their dynamic is strikingly similar to Fearless Girl.

Arturo Dimodica’s virile Charging Bull was installed after the stock market crash of 1987. The huge brass bull was intended to celebrate the resilience of humans and of course of the stock market. I see the power of capitalism to manifest desire and self-interest. In 2017, Kristen Visbal’s new statue, Fearless Girl, was placed in the path of the charging bull. Sponsors of this work say it is about gender - it was unveiled on Women’s Day – and is intended to lobby for more women in capitalist boardrooms. But I read it in a more revolutionary way, as symbolising the power of any individual to say ‘NO’ to a seemingly unstoppable social process.


Scarlet beast (terror war)Oil on Canvas Stretcher. 2017. 48 x 60 x 0.5 in

The broadest context for my work is a world in flames, lit-erally: the flames of the Ama-zon rain forest being cleared to make way for burger-beef farmers, the flames of oil-fields, where jihadists and the coalition of the west is bomb-ing soldiers and civilians alike. From New York on 9-11 and Iraq in 2003 to the Arab spring and the ‘liberation’ of Syria it seems a horrifying manifes-tation of the Biblical Book of Revelation, which foretells of the destruction “to come”. Reflection on the news, and the mythological beast of Armageddon, led to my paint-ings Scarlet Beast, and the more optimistic Europa and the Bull.

This painting was a re-sponse to the beast and the whore of Babylon, foretold in the biblical book of Revela-tion.

The beast is in this case a primal hunger, devouring man while still alive. The person riding the beast seems removed, and has a saintly aura. But she is complicit and sharing the spoils.


Socially Engagedpolitical sketches

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Democracy Bomb. A response to my learning that 2,600 people, including civilians have been killed by drone strikes in Asia and Africa, under the instruction of Democratic President Barack Obama. These people have been killed without any defense or legal representation. It’s not right. And unfortunately, it seems to be the ‘price’ of bringing democracy to these countries. Hence, democracy seems to be delivered in the form of a bomb. Are we really improving people lives by these interventions?C

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The Performative Body - video

A still from my short video Love and Hate. Emotional abuse destroys as much as physical abuse. Men are also victims. This is a plea to end violence against all people. Performing abuse, followed by reflection and healing, helps heal people, perpetrators and victims.

Not shown in this video is the after-performance healing – a session of meditation and music which completes the performance.

I am working on a series of performances or installations on the theme of Empathy and Violence. It seems important to connect directly with audi-ences so that I can work on empathy. So, I need to use the body as a medium, my body, in performance, in order to relate directly with audiences, so that my art is intersubjective.

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Models for Sculpture and

Installation

Maxim Machine Gun - detail of painting in model


Civilisation BoxClay and painted wood model, 2017

When Descartes announced “I think, therefore I am”, rationalist ideas of the Enlightenment raised human consciousness above the body, the world, and even God. Pure reason gave amazing powers to humans – science yielded the secret of the philosophers stone (nuclear power), and the power of capitalism yielded the power to control nature (divine power). Civilisation box shows the symbols of civilisation on the outside. But what does the casket contain?

There is a cost. Humans have become impris-oned and deformed by the world of symbols and logic they created. Inside Civilisation box you will find the pale, deformed vestiges of the core of the human body, of animal desire. Male and female desire, represented by their genitals, has become deformed in an effort to fit into the idealism of the age. We cannot lose our organic core, but we risk turning it into something we would rather hide inside the mask of symbolic logic we call ‘Civilisiation’.

The genitals themselves are made of Daas clay, and pressed into a cube.

Civilisation Box that evolved from my explo-ration of mind/body/world. This started with a doubt which I guess has been with me for as long as I can remember. My culture as a young Rhodesian demanded nationalistic obedience to what my parents called lies. More recently, Mugabe showed me that whatever political system I gave my allegiance to could betray me (in this case, the cause of African liberation). Though my parents were good, progressive creative people, they were also part of the times. I could tolerate this, so long as I could escape. Workaholism, alcoholism and a sense of doing some good in my work gave me a certain sense of purpose. Then my country Zimbabwe col-

lapsed along with my liberal ideals, I lost my sense of identity, then my wife and material possessions. I moved to London, then Brighton.

I had lost my bearings. I focused on escaping alcohol. I found yoga first, then meditation. I found, to my amazement, that I could choose to feel happy – not the ecstasy I once pursued, but the absence of unhappiness.

I found art practice was another form of medi-tation for me. Painting the beauty of life was a good way of being. An alternative to playing the civilisation game. But there remains an anger at what we humans are doing to the world, our refusal to honour ‘gaia’.


Non binaryI rejected the clas-sic male role model (macho, insensitive) but did not find a new gender cat-egory for me. The idea of a non-binary gender spectrum is interesting, but even here I don’t want to be pinned down. I want to transcend . As a way of investigating this taboo, I made mod-els of genitals: male, female, and at the androgenous stage of the embryio, be-fore it becomes male or female.

Soft cockSoft cock first ap-

peared after arguing about stereotyping of men. I wanted to show masculinity in other forms than macho, hard, aggres-sive. Responding intuitively made a shape that was soft and curved.

Of the three mod-els, this is the more ‘reflective’ - the oth-ers are more literal.


Maxim Machine GunModel, 2017

This is a model of a possible installation. It comes from my research into the colonisation of Africa, in particular, colonisation forced on Africa by military violence. Most of this research was done on Wikipedia. I was born in Zimbabwe, during the civil war for independence. I was taught that the British were brave soldiers who battled bloodthirsty savages to bring civilisation to darkest Africa. The British were massively outnumbered, and won the day through bravery and superior tactics and some sort of personal, almost magical superiority. Also, superior tech-nology. This last bit was not really emphasised. But in my recent researches, I have discovered that it was the Maxim machine gun that enabled American, British, French, Ital-ian and German colonists to massacre indigenous people on a truly horrifying industrial scale.

In particular, the destruction of the Matabele (Ndebele, an offshoot of the Zulu) nation was signified, in my boyhood culture, by the story of Alan Wilson’s Shangani Patrol. 37 British colonists were trapped away from the main British army, and killed by the Matabele during the destruction of their kingdom, (and retrospectively justifying this destruction). The British fought to the last bullet, against overwhelming odds of thousands of warriors, and died singing “God Save the Queen”. A best-selling book was made: “The White Men Sang”, its cover showing a Europe-an soldier wielding his rifle as a club, over a horde of black warriors with shields and spears. The Matabele General was purported to have said “For they were men of men”, in admiration for these indestructible white men – and in admission that his warriors were no match. Thus enabling us schoolboys to believe that the conquest was merely part of the inevitable march of progress.

My later researches showed that these machine guns were a more important factor than I previously realised. Maxim invented his machine gun in 1883, and it was brand new

experience for the Matabele. Up to now, they had been used to European adventurers being armed with Henri-Martini rifles. They knew that if they massed a big army and rushed the enemy, they would overwhelm the Europeans, albeit with some losses. When they tried this tactic against the five machine guns brought into action by the British, their army was wiped out. Thousands were killed. The generals com-mitted suicide. They could not defend their homeland.

The British repeated their success in Nigeria, destroying the ancient Benin City in 1897, using three maxim machine guns and 1,300 troops to destroy a Benin army of 100,000, and looting of the artworks we now know of as symbolising Nigerian culture.

The French and Germans had similar success using Maxim machine guns on other indigenous populations in Africa and the rest of the world. The USA army used the Maxim’s predecessor, the Gatling machine gun to , to wipe out the armed resistance of the plains Indians to the opening up of the West. The British army used advanced artillery, cavalry and Gatling machine guns to destroy the Zulu nation after the embarrassing setback of the battle of Isandlwana (1879), where a British invasion army of 1,800 men was defeated with 1,400 British soldiers killed.

I always knew the spread of Western civilisation was a process of conquest, since the first conquistadors arrived in Mexico. But I had not realised how significant the industrial era was to the complete subjugation of the “other”. I thought that, during Enlightenment times, with rise of humanitar-ian considerations, the spread of Western influence was at least partly made possible by civilisation’s values – medicine, learning, democracy, road-building, law, trade, etc. I had not realised the extent to which these ancient kingdoms resisted ‘civilisation’ and were finally destroyed by latter-day weap-ons of mass destruction.

The feeling of distance, disconnection with the real, fleshy effects of military action created by these industrial killing machines, presages the killing by remote of today’s drone

wars. Westerners can carry on with their lives barely aware that their computerised killing machines are killing people every day.

Colonisation could not have proceeded without the moral justification of freeing natives from the curses of savagery (which are real and did include slavery and human sacri-fice – though we might ask why Europeans feel obliged to undertake such liberation, and whether the results are what was envisaged – traumatised nations, centuries of civil war, over population). The process of civilisation also needed the muscle of brutal suppression, and the technology armed butchery. These processes combined to increase distance, and reduce empathy; necessary conditions for genocide.

It’s amazing to think of European rationalists and scientists developing theories of aesthetics and human rights while this slaughter was going on.

So, I created this artwork to recreate a sense of the discon-nect of a technician firing a machine gun. But at the same time to encompass a feeling of violent action and conse-quence in the expressionist rendering of broken flesh using red and white and purple paint. There came an idea of the machine gun being a sort of paint gun, splattering paint over the image of tribal warriors.

This machine-paint-gun resulted in an unanticipated sense of parallel with Jackson Pollocks’ drip painting. Pollock epit-omised the West’s ideal of individual freedom, an idea used in the cold war against Russia. His reputation as an alcoholic and misogynist did not dent his heroic image. So, this final appropriation, of the image of the male artist, firing meta-phorical paint bullets at the body of Ubuntu (we are one), and completely obliterating it, seemed to sum up the victory of Enlightenment Rationalism over the Ancient Body.

Maxim Machine Model 1:72


Exploration of idea for an installation, contrasting the organised environment of drone command with the messiness of drone killings.

President Obama authorised drone attacks that killed 2,600 people by drone attack during his presidency. Obama explained the “institution-alised process” he invented for killing people by Drone in a video I saw on YouTube.

“There is no doubt that some innocent people have been killed by drone strikes” but the rate of civilian deaths is far lower than in a conventional war.

An informative video that makes Obama seem a responsible man who thinks carefully about the options to “keep America safe doing the least damage possible”. “He says “I don’t have the option of doing nothing” – there are people out there who want to kill us. I wonder, though, if he really has considered the option of doing nothing – or at least, much, much less.

Killing by remoteCollage, acrylic, foam board on canvas, 2017

Russell Honeyman MA Fine Art Brighton University Portfolio July 2017 - Page 40

Russell Honeyman, Inner Vision, oil on cartridge, 40x50cm (2015)

Contact: [email protected], www.russellhoneyman.comArtist Blog: www.raphaeldelamer.wordpress.com Works for sale Saatchi Online: http://www.saatchiart.com/russellhoneyman

Russell Honeyman: exhibitions and shows2017 - May - Brighton - Clairemont Hotel - Open Houses group show 2017 - May - Brighton - YMCA DLG Reed House - Open Houses group show2016 - November - Hove - Clairemont Hotel - Group show2016 - May - Brighton - The Open Studios - Open Houses group show2016 - May - Brighton - YMCA DLG Reed House - Open Houses group show2016 - May - Brighton - Brighthelm Community Centre group show2016 - January - Hove - Naked Eye Gallery - Annual Art Sale group show2015 - October - Brighton - Unitarian Church - Martlett’s Hospice “Top Secret Art Auc-tion” group show2015 - June - Lewes - Foundry Gallery - Artists United Group Show2015 - May - Brighton - Gallery 31 - “Swimmers” Group Show (Open Houses)2015 - May - Brighton - Open Studios - “Shadow Selves” Group Show (Open Houses)2015 - March - Brighton - Brighton Centre - Whalefest group show2015 - January - Hove - Naked Eye Gallery - Annual Art Sale group show2014 - Dec - Chichester - Ox Market Gallery Open Exhibition Group Show2014 - September - Hove - Naked Eye - The Great Art Sale group show2014 - Sept - Brighton Dome - Seas and Swimmers solo2014 - Sept - Hove - Ground Coffee - Seas & Swimmers solo2014 - July - Hove - Small Batch - Big Swim (solo)2014 - June - Brighton - City College (Group)2013 - Brighton ONCA Gallery - EcoMiniWorks (Group)2013 - Brighton - “Life and Magic” Open House (Group)2002 - The Hague - Drawing from Life Group Show

EducationArt and Design Foundation (City College Brighton & Hove)Swedish Massage (VTCT Level 3)Anatomy Physiology and Pathology (VTCT Level 3)Person Centred Counselling (NCFE Level 1 and 2)Journalism (subediting) (NCTJ Level 3)Creative Writing (Certificate University of Sussex)Forestry and Paper Technology (MSc UMIST)Biochemistry (BSc Kings College London)

love hate - raphaeldelamer.files.wordpress.com€¦ · elusive ideal of european unity. ... oil on...

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