As it happens, I agree with Gilbert, one of the contributors to Oscar Wilde's famous dialogue, The Critic as Artist, who argues that higher criticism is 'the record of one's own soul'. He goes on to describe it as 'the only civilized form of autobiography, as it deals not with the events, but with the thoughts of one's life; not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind'.
Read Morepeter fuller
The Artist and the Subject /
The potentialities of the medium of screen acting first came into my life when I saw Robert Deniro's collaboration with Martin Scorsese, in particular; Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino, at the age of 14. The discipline, intensity and devotion in exhibition throughout gave me the idea that a search for meaning in life was possible through performance in film. In method acting; ideas, expression, mind, body, voice and heart are all inextricably linked towards a praxis, poetical in nature, truthful at its core. The goal to express the essence of what it is to be human under a single observing eye, the camera. Behind the camera, the director, and behind the director an audience, but in observation is there really any separation between participants, in this way the observer is also the subject, and the subject the observer.
Read MoreWilliam Tillyer at Bernard Jacobson Gallery /
I believe that Tillyer's enticingly beautiful water-colours reunite us with that 'common culture' in a way which does not compromise our Modernity. Beautiful in themselves, true at once to nature and to materials, Tillyer's gentle washes of colour have a wider meaning. They remind us that if we divorce our highest aesthetic emotions and perceptions from the world of nature, we will be more inclined to injure and to exploit the natural world - and indeed, each other - than if we perceive ourselves as being part of it.
Read More