The Life of Brian John Spencer

Watch me painting here

Brian John Spencer is an Irish-British writer, artist and video-maker.

The new age of "Perked-Up Unionism"

The republican movement may represent an insurgent force in southern politics and present itself as a party of protest even while holding power in Northern Ireland, yet unionism still holds ascendency.

The classic trope of Northern politics is that nationalism represents confidence, which unionism represents demoralisation.

It seems the status quo has inverted. For Fionnuala O'Connor, we are living in the age of "perked-up unionism" and "stale nationalism". Fionnuala O'Connor wrote in the Irish News, February 9 2016, ‘We could be all be into a new political era without noticing’:

Being of planter stock

British planter in Jamaica, by George Spratt

John Hewitt, of "planter stock", wrote he was 'As native in my thought as any here.' Belfast poet and son of a British soldier, Michael Longley said that Hewitt's verse taught people not to be embarrassed or ashamed of their connection to colonialism. It's not something I was conscious of growing up. I was always Irish and British, I watched the BBC and lived on the island of Ireland.

AWIT - 'Articulating What I Thought'

'Portrait de poètes' (1942) by Serge Ivanoff: Yanette Delétang-Tardif, Maurice Alphonse Jacques Fombeure, Jean Follain, Rémi Masset, Eugène Guillevic

When I read Orwell, I am reading someone who has written what I'm thinking. I read:

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is war minus the shooting."

And thought, 'finally someone has expressed and articulated exactly what I felt about sport and the culture around it!' Seamus Heaney wrote:

"One perceptible function of poetry is to write a place into existence." 

That is the role of the writer and poet: to put reality and the everyday experience into words. Jean Follain, friend of Francis Ponge, who Ciaran Carson introduced me to, said:

"Le mot fait corps avec la chose." (The word makes body with the thing)

Roddy Doyle, deviating a little, said:

"Like a lot of writers, I knew I wanted to write but I didn’t know what I wanted to write about. When I wrote The Commitments, it clicked. I felt this was the world that was familiar and I could make it a bit unfamiliar and sparkling."

But the point remains. The role of the writer is to articulate what everyone thinks; doing it in a way that adds spice and energy. They make it everyday but with excitement. They make the mundane profoundly readable.

Except the funny thing was that while I recognised this phenomenon I didn't have the words or terms to express this phenomenon.

That represents a great irony. So I propose 'AWIT' - Articulating What I Thought.

Irish Americans looked and sounded like Orangemen



Cartoon of Bernadette Devlin by Aislin (Terry Mosher)

The words in title are the words of Bernadette Devlin, the youngest person ever to be elected to Westminster, and the figure in the cartoon. You can read her Maiden Speech in the Commons, April 22 1969, here. On her rise to the London parliament and prolific profile her face was seen around the world and she travelled widely, including to America. She was the figurehead of Ireland's discriminated-against and the disposed and had the sympathies of Irish-Americans. A hearing from Irish-America was as natural so as to breath, since animosity based on "England's historic wrongs" were closely and long held. As the Spectator wrote in 1882:

"The hatred of England is cultivated by the American branch of the Irish race “as a sort of religion,” we can well believe. The history of the last two or three years shows it to be so."

Live Drawing at @MurphysButchers on @theLisburnRoad

Following a wonderfully enjoyable day of Live Drawing at Arcadia Deli on the last Saturday of August 2014, I did a day of Drawing at Murphy's Butchers on the Lisburn Road on Saturday October 4.

Murphy's was another very enjoyable day, drawing people of all ages and backgrounds. From drawing a little boy who had just finished a morning of mini-rugby at Belfast Harlequins, to drawing Ulster Rugby players Stephen Ferris and Robbie Diack. Please have a look and explore all the drawings and videos from the day.

See the pictures below to see all my work from the day of drawing in Murphy's Butchers. See all my Vine freeze-frame videos here. Also be sure to look and read about my Conference and Seminar Drawing here.

My work with Michael Deane

The Daily Draw: featuring @MichaelDeane61 as promised. pic.twitter.com/MQ6EVIgTtF
— Brian John Spencer (@brianjohnspencr) March 2, 2013

[UPDATE - also read this post here]

It all began with a chance tweet and a simple cartoon as explained here in my 'The Artist's Journey' series, and in even more detail my journey is described here. That original cartoon, created on a wet March Saturday afternoon after rugby coaching and before going into town to sit in Waterstones all day, was then used in the Michael Deane signature wine, 'Chez Deano', which you can see below.

Vivisected Northern Ireland - Hugh Muir, be Intolerant of intolerance

I've written before about the vanity of small differences and the vivisection of Northern Ireland and the baleful effects of these egregious habits. In the face of such deleterious habits, I have called upon the need for civil intolerance. We can also learn from a parralel experience. In response to the flying of a jihadist-style flag in a London housing estate Hugh Muir wrote in the Guardian that we must resist those who would Balkanise public space. He wrote:

Deanes Meatlocker Malbec wine label

It all began with a simple Matisse-inspired cartoon and a chance tweet. The cartoon then led to the Michael Deane 'Horsemeat' collection and the first wine label. You can read all about the creative process and working relationship here. 

Conference Drawing

My Conference Notes Cartoon of Josh Richards (@Mighty_Ginge) at @Create2014Co, more here.

I do Live Drawing. I also do Conference Drawing. This is where I go to conferences, seminars and talks and document what is said through words and coloured drawings. Think mind maps. Think story boards. A wonderful way to remember the special event and the special ideas and contacts made. Below are 12 images from the 12 conferences and events that I've done Conference Drawing at over the last year. Click the links below to see a full selection of images from each of the 12 events. 

Read more about Live Drawing here. See a full chronology of all the Live Drawing cartoons I've ever drawn on my Flickr page here. See how I work and think and process ideas on my Live Drawing Tumblr portfolio here.

The cartoonist as the true journalist

John pilger thinks so:

"The most effective defender of the paper is not one of these. He has shaggy dark hair and a beard - or he did when I last saw him. For more than 20 years I have turned to his work as you would reach for coffee in the morning. He is outrageous, anarchic, brilliant, sometimes inexplicable and a bit mad (not really). For those who doubt the truth is subversive and often absurd, I point them towards two pages in the Guardian, where he resides. 

Only Steve Bell exposes consistently, fearlessly, the bullshit of "public life". Indeed, his characters are often drowning in or water-skiing on the stuff. "Right, that's it," says the last governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, to Gordon Brown, then prime minister, and chancellor Alistair Darling, "heads down, tea break over!" They are up to their chins in a tank of turds. 

Steve Bell is a cartoonist and a true journalist with few rivals. He is Hogarth and Swift with a touch of Peter Sellers and a sprinkling of Orwell. He is more of an English original than one of his prime targets, Margaret Thatcher, the former petit-bourgeois totem. Often using the wickedly all-seeing penguin star of his strip, "If..." he rumbled both Thatcher and her protege, Blair, early in their criminal ascendancy."

In full here. The New Statesman also covered this with, 'John Pilger on Steve Bell and the cartoonist as true journalist.'

Sean O'Casey - Writing gets harder the more you do it

Irish writer Sean O'Casey and his wife Eileen Reynolds

Sean O'Casey, playwright born in the tenement slums of Dublin, said:

"When I write a new play. When I sit down to try to write a new play, I’ve had the experience of many plays before. Yet that new play that I am going to try to write gives me the same agony, the same trouble, the, same effort, the same Herculean work as the very first play I ever wrote gave to me."

Christopher Hitchens said the same thing:

"I hate to agree with George Will about this… The truth is, yes there is nothing like not writing for making you unhappy and if you have the compulsion then the only problem that you’ll have is, you surrender to this compulsion more and more and, you’ll find [writing] gets harder the more you do it. That seems a shame. It should get easier, it should become more like a facility for example. It becomes more difficult and it becomes more difficult because you are reading more and more work by better and better people and you’ve lost the sheer nerve and the blind solipsism that allowed you to think you could try it when you were young before you had made any proper comparisons. So it gets much more nerve wracking and much more difficult in every way costly for you and no doubt for your readers."

Samuel Beckett on writing more generally said in 1954:

"It’s hard to go on with everything loathed and repudiated as soon as formulated, and in the act of formulation, and before formulation."

Beckett also wrote:

"I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one’s material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding."

Malcolm Jones - Art is theft, Ctd

In an article, 'There’s Nothing Wrong—and a Lot That’s Right—About Copying Other Artists' Malcolm Jones said:

"I learned to draw and paint on my own, and I did it by copying."

He also said:

"I understood more about Vermeer by painting my own Vermeer… than I had ever learned by simply staring at his paintings."

Oliver jeffers said the same:

"Any opportunity I get to see John Singer Sargent, I do. For technical ability. That’s how I learned how to paint, by dissecting his work and trying to work out, how does he make that look like an ear but he’s only done three strokes?"

Oliver Jeffers has previously spoken on art as theft here. Coco Chanel said:

"Only those with no memory insist on their originality."

Andrew Sullivan wrote a piece, 'In defence of duplicating art'.

Previous posts, Julian Opie on art as theft here.

@TheJohnHewitt Exhibition - 'Troubled Into Utterance'

John Hewitt is the "conscience of the planter tradition". The "father figure" to a shelf of Irish poets that includes Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley. W.B. Yeats wrote, "I owe my soul to Shakespeare, to Spenser, and to Blake". Heaney can surely write that of Hewitt. By his own words Hewitt was "troubled into utterance". Troubled by the terror and tensions of his Northern Ireland.

He used the written word - an "incredible instrument, half wand, half weapon" (Martin Amis) - to address these troubles and to articulate a greater context and vision. In a verse portrait Robert Greacen said John Hewitt 'defined the issues of our time... [and] tried to break the mould of bigotry.' He flew "out and beyond those radar systems" of Protestant and Catholic. Offered a creative hand

Exhibition - What an age to be alive

The words of the Age UK video are raw, provocative and inspiring. They are the words of British poet Roger McGough:

"There is no cure for ageing because ageing isn’t an illness, but a way of life. And some are better at it than others. The secret: think yourself younger than you really are. Design a website, invent an app, take up Zoomba, forget to nap. Time flies they say but it’s hours that fly. Time sits on its hands as we rush by. In the blink of an eye, the brush of a year, you are old - but valued still. Welcome to the fold."

They are also the words of the Age UK TV advert which is helping to launch an Age UK campaign - 'Love Later Life'. A vision to promote more positivity about ageing. The campaign follows from research that found that 77% of adults are looking forward to living longer, yet 91% of adults say something needs to be done to help us all lead a better later life. And 83% of adults believe negative perceptions of later life must change. The research found that 53% of adults have a generally positive attitude towards ageing and that positive attitudes increase the older we get. 50% of those aged 85 years and above believe that having a positive attitude to ageing is the key to living longer. From their wisdom and experience, this is a message for us all.

Live Drawing - #TweetUpNI

.@brianjohnspencr doing some live sketching while we watch @bbctheview! #tweetupni pic.twitter.com/a781gqKwOA
— Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast) March 13, 2014

 

 

#tweetupni @dcmbfs kicks off the tweetup in McHughs pic.twitter.com/zJbVp9HPfl
— Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast) March 13, 2014

 

Why we hate, Ctd Solomon Northup



Master Ford with Solomon Northup in Charlie Brooker's film adaption of the memoir by Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup wrote about his life in Twelve Years a Slave, the story of a free man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South in 1841. In that he shared his thoughts about his slave master, master Ford:

"The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery. He never doubted the moral right of one man holding another in subjection. Brought up under other circumstances and other influences, his notions would undoubtedly have been different."

My previous post on 'Why we hate' with Andrew Sullivan here. On hate and mistrust as the basic canon of Northern Ireland life here. On Daniel Hannan and cognitive dissonance here. And my article 'Why we hate in Northern Ireland' on eamonnmallie.com here.

Live Drawing with Ian Knox at #TweetUpNI

On Thursday 14 March 2014 I spent an evening drawing and cartooning at the Slugger O'Toole event, 'Belfast's Big Tweet Up'. Above is a cartoon of Ian Knox and I. See below for a full selection of pictures of Ian and I cartooning each other.

Cartoon off at #tweetupNI between @brianjohnspencr and Ian Knox from @irish_news pic.twitter.com/pfAHSAleJF
— Eye on the Hill (@chambrepa) March 13, 2014

.@brianjohnspencr doing some live sketching while we watch @bbctheview! #tweetupni pic.twitter.com/a781gqKwOA
— Alan in Belfast (@alaninbelfast) March 13, 2014

My previous post on Ian Knox:

Ian Knox speaking with the Detail here. Ian Knox and I drawing together in the Black Box, Belfast in 2013 here. My coverage of Ian Knox's December 2013 exhibition,'Lifelines and Deadlines' here. A selection of photos of Ian Knox at work here. My article here on why an Ian Knox prize to encourage satire and political cartooning like the Herb Block foundation in America which rewards and encourages future talent.

Art is theft, Ctd

  

Look at the cartoon I did above left and here. Then check out the cartoon of Barack Obama above right by Andre Carrilho. You can see it's not a direct copy or replica, but you should be able to see that I have borrowed the lips and chin. Subtle but remarkable. I learnt how Carrilho does his Obama off by heart. By storing it in my memory bank of cartoons the visual vocabulary comes out in my work.

"Only those with no memory insist on their originality."
— Coco Chanel 

"Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning."
― George Bernard Shaw 

I looked at this process previously here where I explained how the work of Ian Knox comes out in my work.

Unhappy when working - unhappy when workless

John Gray is a political philosopher and author of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism

The title is the contrast and tension that has struck me most in my adulthood. That people are ever unhappy when they're working. Just as they're ever unhappy when they're out of work. I have come to the conclusion that it's all an illusion - there is only now. Life is a struggle. It is no utopia and there is no utopia but chasing that illusion is what gets us through. There is only labour and laborious occupations and there is not getting around them. George Bernard Shaw said in Misalliance:

"The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired."

Or putting it another way:

"The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not."