The art of Alasdair Macintyre
INDEX
ART
Current work
Legends of Art
Early work
ARTIST PROFILE
Exhibiting History
Artist Statement
MEDIA RELEASE
Thoughts on “Journeyman”
For the last decade, I have been using the “A” baseball cap wearing figure as a reference for the self, in both 2D (mainly in the 90’s) and 3D work. In this case the artist, based loosely on my own persona as a younger artist, where indeed, I wore an “Atlanta Braves” baseball cap. I made earnest, heartfelt and purgative art, usually nocturnally (which is where I became a fan of the “Atlanta Braves”, commercial television showed major league baseball in the early hours, when I was hard at work painting). Without exception, the majority of much of the art I produced at this time, though painstaking, honest, biographical… was rubbish.
It is really only in hindsight that one can see this fact, and of course, there must be a dying, and a re-birth, or a resurrection, if you will, with the knowledge of what has gone before, and a victory over ego, before you can venture forth, with an art which is truly of one’s self.
It is then when you discover what you are truly up against. The canon of art history is as daunting as history itself, and the futility of such an expedition is explored in “tempus omnia revelat” and “L’eclise”.
The problem with any artist today, in any western civilization, is the incapability to be anything other than a poor relation to what has gone before.
It is a journey however, that one who has been designated amongst us as “an artist”, is pre-ordained to take, inveterately, summarily, and without question… “The cross I have to bear” (“Journeyman”), which indeed I did, literally, at a Good Friday Stations of the Cross service, during the making of this work.
Now, at 35, is the right time for me to execute “Journeyman”. Christ was in his thirties when he undertook his mission. Dante’s journey in “The Divine comedy” took place when he was 35, which is also when Siddhartha, the Buddha, achieved enlightenment. It is also half of the Biblical “three score and ten”, and the age that some writers suggest that the spirit is sustained in eternity.
Therefore, in order for me to move forward with my art, I have effectively instigated the demise of my own “A cap” self. I do not wear the cap any more, physically or metaphorically.
Walk on.
It is with some sorrow that I announce the death of the “A-cap”.
“The A-cap is dead. Long live the A-cap”,
Alasdair Macintyre
Brisbane, July, 2006
