Delineation of ‘Theory’: An artist’s statement
Shaun Belcher November 2009
Like a viewer lodged behind a camera obscura that which I describe in the following short article may appear upside down and nonsensical to some and is but a snapshot of my wandering thoughts at this particular juncture.
I am a somewhat unusual case to be writing about my ‘fine art’ practice (Indeed I am not sure I if I have one at all in the conventional sense) as between the years 1993 to 2003 I could be hardly said to have ‘practiced’ the finer art at all. However I did continue with other ‘praxis’ notably poetry (published by a Scottish academic press) and song-writing (I released a series of Americana CDs).
In conventional terms this kind of indeterminacy and genre-hopping is frowned upon as not being quite serious enough. Thankfully I have enough USA based models to not worry too much about that e.g. Terry Allen and his ilk. However whatever my ‘practice’ entailed throughout this period one thing remained constant. My commitment and seriousness about what I was depicting in whatever medium. What also remains constant is any wider appreciation of my wanderings…especially here in Nottingham U.K. I remain an ‘outsider’ artist in more ways than one.
Throughout my ‘art-working’ life some things have remained stubbornly, hospital one might even say obsessively’, constant. Be it in digital images as recently or in drawing or poetry and song I have remained constant in delineating a clearly ‘map-able’ terrain. This terrain extends about 5 to 20 miles in radius of my hometown of Didcot in Oxfordshire, England. Always the poor relation of the illustrious centre of learning that resides but a stones throw away.
There runs a hard core of intention throughout which draws on politics, ecological thinking and that obsessive returning to notions of ‘place’ and ‘landscape’. I regard my work as being a mapping of constant themes which recur sometimes years later. The River Thames is one theme the Berkshire Downs another. Local folk tales and oral literature mined from local libraries another. A recent song ‘Hanging Puppet’ drew on one such ‘tale. In fact one could describe it as artistic ‘Anglocana’ to differentiate it from Americana. I have written well over 2000 songs over the years..mostly recorded in lo-fi and only really coming to life when in the hands of other more talented musicians (see the Moon Over the Downs CD 2003). Poetry has appeared in various magazines and in the Scottish anthology The Ice Horses (1996). I have at least 4 unpublished complete books of poetry on the shelf.
One could describe my work as multi-disciplinary with a strong streak of green politics colouring the waters beneath.
I have drawn on some clear influences in writing and art. Seamus Heaney’s concept of a personal ‘Hedge School’ going back to John Clare is one thread. My forebear’s personal involvement in Agricultural Unions is another (see Skeleton at the Plough poems). I also am influenced by a ‘working class’ sense of writing picked up form Carver and Gallagher and other dirty realists. In song almost any Americana act would suffice but most importantly Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams and Johnny Cash come to mind. I can reference them in a USA directed essay but it means nothing to the artworld or academia here which increases my sense of internal exile. I am not American but I have strong American influences going back to Walden lake.
To try and build an alternative approach I have increasingly been drawn back to the English Civil War when the notions of science and arts were more fluid and interchangeable. I have recently purchased a reproduction of Robert Plot’s Oxford a marvellous Natural History of Oxfordshire from 1677. In it one finds specimens such as ‘Stones that look like Horses’…wonderful….
It is this kind of merging of scientific natural history and folk-lore terminology that I now most interested in. Both in poetry (see Downland Ballads) and artworks (see TRACK..2009)
So how does theory inform my practice? Well I see no distinction between the various arts. I am widely read in poetry and song and that informs my practice whatever I do.