The birth of my surrealist passion

This will be an adult peering into childhood through deeply personal opaque doors, defenses, emotion and neurological chaos to attempt to explore my early and mid childhood and capture where this passion for the avant-garde first developed.

Le Pere Ubu - Dora Maar

Early childhood, my mother obsessed with finding "the answer" a spiritual quest to make sense of that which inherently must always be a mystery.

Little boy watching and feeling thick indefinable energy from groups that would sit around the table, when I was supposed to sleep... hearing strange voices, wrong languages, closed eyes all peering into darkened spaces. A woman coming into our lounge with black hair straight and severed in the middle curtaining either side of her ears. Her eyes wider than I'd ever seen, she sees things nobody else does.

(Images are all Odilon Redon)

Childhood Occult Influences

The feeling at night was that spirits, demons, past lives, haunting invisible creatures were surrounding me. Books on the occult on coffee tables, French poetry written by my mothers ex boyfriend in faded dogeared parchments expressing things I could never see.... A book I'd steal myself to read with silent anticipation - Odilon Redon. Without a frame to perceive these things with, my exploration was wondrous, knowing I was trespassing in the adult world of darkness only they were meant to witness. Unbearable images of an eye as a hot air balloon, spider with a human head, disembodied head with undersized wings hovering over a yacht.

Friends would stare through me when I would talk about these things. I left it to ferment inside of me. I knew it should all be so scary, but it would caress me.

My mothers black etchings - Indian ink over white china clay. Her grip on an almost invisible pin would amaze me as she scratched the surface of the black square. She'd walk away leaving a landscape of a very old castle and hills, swirling with incongruence - things don't ever look like this, even at night. Images and questions swam in my head when trying to sleep.

Nightmares & Ambivalence

Nightmares electrical sparks in the brain waking me hot and clammy. The light on would send me back to sleep. I never wondered why the things that would haunt my dreams and torment me, would be the things I couldn't wait to see again in books and images during the day.




My father silently watched my mothers quest for existentialist certainty whilst he drowned in his family's expectations. The brilliant pianist was buried under dust, dirt, trucks and needing the accepting smile of his brother and dying father. Selling hardware and building supplies, a world away from ivory keys and emotions ploughing through notes. Sounds becoming images, unexpressed emptiness and desire Rachmaninoff dirge dark places no one could see.

My Father's Gothic Piano Performances

The lounge room ceiling was lifted to make room for an ancient hand carved oak mantle piece that dominated every sense. Bevelled crystal edges of mirrors, 3 Indians cross armed stood either side of the fireplace. Over sized ancient dark wooded Scottish swirls, a long forgotten family crest, strange compartments and secret places.

In this room, my father speaks to me just above a whisper. He tells me... Rachmaninoff composed this piece imagining he was in a coma, and awoke, not the smiling compassionate faces of his family in a sterile hospital, but to darkness, fermented air and having no room to move or breathe. Shock turns to horror as he realises he is in his grave buried listening to the dirt being shovelled on top of the coffin sealing his fate. Looking up at the wood of the baby grand and watching my father's fingers roll over the keys, and his feet fiendishly randomly pressing the brass pedals. My face was cold and pale with terror, and yet a tentative smile would creep slowly through my lips. "Play it again! Play it again!"

My Relationship and Integration of Redon Today:

As an adult, some of these images are still very much alive for me. It is wonderful to have the advantage of being able to in retrospect intellectually frame what then were raw emotional and almost spiritual experiences. I have since learned that Odilon Redon was one of the 'Symbolists' in the late 1800s who were passionate about presenting images and words that go beyond the classicism and realism of their generation.

As the modern day David Lynch does with his films, particularly his latest "Inland Empires", there is a wondrous exploration of what lies between wakefulness and dreaming. The ability and desire to sink beneath consciousness to what lies below.. the intuitive, the unconscious. The joys and horrors of connecting to what our minds are keeping from us. Our deepest fears, desires, what's 'really going on' inside of us. Symbolists are considered by some to be the precursors to the modernism and surrealism that was soon to come.

This 'symbolist' image of the eye balloon has gently haunted me throughout my life. It is the image that now graces my arm after contemplating a tattoo for the last 15 years.

Redon Features in recent Avant Garde Film

Guy Madden, one of the worlds most original and unique film directors has made a film based on this image which is full of evocative imagery and intense atmospheres. He attempts to create films which more accurately reflect the true 'neurological' way we process memory, thoughts and feelings.

A Wonderful Short Film by Guy Madden

"The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Towards Infinity"