Publications

Interview with Michael Reinardy about his Exhibition “Inscapes 23” in the Foyer Art Space

 

 

How did your exhibition “Inscapes 23” come about?

 

I was dissatisfied with painting figuratively. I was swinging between figurative and abstract most of my life. I found a way of painting in a more meaningful way by using the process of meditation, the beginning stages of meditation, clearing one’s mind completely. I am told I am an individual of the more passionate kind, so to achieve clearing one’s mind is a very steep challenge. I shut my eyes, I shut my mind, I clear everything out, and when I feel the turmoil in me has settled, I open my eyes again and survey the blank piece of paper or canvas. Then I let my hand do the doing; I’m listening to my hand, actually. What I find in the abstract is really new, that does not exist until I make it. This is an incredibly joyful moment for me – I’ve made a discovery! I’ve made something that’s never existed before! I do not paint what I can see, but I see what I paint! I watch my hand, the paper and the brush, what’s coming out of it! I beg the viewer not to see in my work a message; I have no system, no intention, no programme, I have no direction. I avoid having a style, because a style anchors me immediately to habits, customs, that we all have in plenty. I can imagine that this process is similar to improvisation in music or acting; I’m thinking of the music of Dave Brubeck – amazing – or Mozart with his variations.

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So you don’t decide beforehand what you are going to paint?

 

In a sense you could say the paintings are not constructed, they are improvised. But I do need a preparation time before this process can begin. It might take a few days until I have the feeling the empty vessel is slowly filling up, until it is spilling over, and then I go. I whack it down within an hour. I leave it for a day or two until I can’t find anything to change.

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When did you start painting like this?

 

I started this process about five years ago after my heart surgery (triple heart bypass) when I wondered, “Can I still paint?” Because I was forbidden to do anything else: not walk too much, not lift anything or do anything. So I started a little bit at first and I found an experience like a dam bursting, a flood coming, and I began to produce three and sometimes four pictures a day, every day. But I was afraid if I went on like this, soon I would be empty, and have a burn out. So I came to this process I described – listening and letting it fill up, and holding it back a bit, not letting the horses bolt! That’s where I am now.

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I was wondering about the titles of the paintings, where do they come from?

 

It sometimes takes weeks to find a title, until I can find a resonance. If you look at this small one, I call it “Water over Rocks”: but looking at it now, a year or two later, I thought, “Hmm, that’s a poor title”. I had thoughts of water over rocks, but it was a thought, the image actually tells me something like a thicket, and some definite and indefinite shapes moving in that thicket, but how do you make a title out of that? You don’t want to lead the viewer by the nose, to the concept. Lately, but not in these paintings here, I have taken themes for a painting from suggestions by Rudolf Steiner about how one speaks when communicating with the dead. Time and again he says, never use concepts; what the dead can truly

understand is when you speak to them in verbs, in physical activity, not mental activity. They would understand what a painting is all about through this feeling of activity which I want to communicate, through what you see physically with your eyes. That is what makes up this painting – it is verbs, activity, movement…doing, doing, doing! Like my hero Jackson Pollack, he does exactly the same as me. I love his work. Also the German Gerhard Richter, who works with a squeegee; what he produces makes me jump! But I still get such fulfilment from my paintings, because every time I get the experience of “My God, I’ve produced something that never existed before.” It is so overwhelming!

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Michael came to Camphill 60 years ago, working as an art and craft teacher in Scotland and Northern Ireland. He and his wife Heidi were House Co-ordinators in many Camphill settings, with their five children. They are now retired in Clanabogan, where Michael paints full time.