Flex Mentallo

Recurring themes and motifs include shadows, mirrors, dreams, nightmares, miracles and visions, reflections and water. Corridors are tunnels into the past. A young girl hides in a wardrobe watching her mother stare into a mirror. In another image, she tries on her mother's wedding veil - or has it become a shroud? Dusty corridors store dust covered museum pieces - which are in fact veiled family portraits. A blithe young man crosses water, using the heads of floating children as stepping stones. Nirmal embarks in a dugout carrying the body of murdered Mohan - his son in all but name. People's reflections persist in the slow glass of mirrors long after the reflection was cast.. And so on.

His iconography has entered the collective unconscious of our culture. So I tend to prefer his less celebrated works. His painterly technique is not that hard to imitate, but that belies his originality. On reflection, I realise that he had quite a lot of influence on me during my student days. I think however the alienation in so much of my work was there all along. Alienation - in particular, a difficult childhood in a broken home, an alcoholic and abusive father - and most hauntingly for me, watching helplessly as my two youngest sisters, ten years my junior, lost their mother at around 7 years of age. Predictably, emotional abuse from a very young age shaped the adults they woud become - and while they both survived, the difficult journey they were forced to take towards adult life in some respects bypassed a proper childhood. After I left home to attend college - not realising I'd never come home except for brief visits on holidays - they largely managed the household. They are probably the chief motivation in choosing to work for the past 18 years in the field of mental health. I am still trying to rescue them. Here is a gallery of smaller studies spanning 20 years. They may be viewed as a series of ghost stories. My dead are included, but in some cases, it is the living who are depicted - revenants of persistent memories perhaps.

I for one would absolutely love to hear more about these three artists - they were among my boyhood heroes!

I look forward to that!

Welcome aboard Cat! Wonderful stuff so far! (If anyone else would care to post whatever they might like to share, that would be great as well.)

Trust me folks - impressive though this display is, it's but the tip of Brian's iceberg!

Many thanks Larry - that is warmly received and very encouraging! I had not expected to keep this thread alive more than a few days, regarding it as overly self indulgent, but as one story ends it seems to leave several others waiting to be told. And people seem to keep reading, and so... Actually, it would be great if other boardies would share their stories and interests here. Mentioning no names, I've had various p.m.'s from boardies who are either artists, or indophiles like myself. There are certainly some intriguing personal histories to be told - but they are not mine! Also, just to underscore that I'd love it if people posted images I dont know about. Underwater covers for instance!

It fascinated me to wonder in what state of being was the child, lost below the waves for an entire year. It was only when watching Bells fron the Deep that I recalled this picture, buried in a folder for the past 20 years...

A local family named De Rapiza commissioned the fresco of the miracle at the end of the 11th century. As with the majority of Romanesque artists, the painter is unknown. I came across the picture in a thick book on Romanesque painting many years ago, and along with the striking composition, the title leapt out at me. “The child miraculously preserved in the Sea of Azov.”

In its many architectural layers, Rome has often been compared to a palimpsest and the church of San Clemente is often quoted to illustrate this. The church was built in the 12th century on top of a church from the 4th century, which, in turn, was built on top of a house and a mithraeum from the first and second centuries AD, which were constructed on buildings from the first century BC. A total of at least five layers of architectural history, going back over two thousand years.

As I watched Bells from the Deep, the story of the drowned city of Kitezh reminded me of another miracle. St. Clement was the fourth bishop of Rome. In the traditional story, he was exiled to the Crimea, where he converted thousands, and then was martyred. His bones were cast into the Sea of Azov, where pilgrims later came to worship, and so God created a shrine, which only emerged from the waves on the anniversary of his death. On one occasion, a woman lost her child at the shrine, which sank beneath the waves with the child in it. When she returned the following year, she found the child, alive and well, “miraculously preserved in the sea of Azov”

And worth reposting Ilya Repin: "Sadko" (again), a Russian fairy tale that was also the subject of an opera by Rimsky Korsakov Sadko, a poor but spirited minstrel, wagers his head against the wealth of the Novgorod merchants that he will catch golden fish in the neighbouring Lake Ilmen. Aided by the Sea-King's daughter he wins, and embarks upon a voyage on one of the fleet of ships that have become his. Overtaken by storm, it is decided by the ship's company that one of their number must be offered as a sacrifice to the Sea-King. Lots are drawn, with the result that Sadko finds himself on a plank in mid-ocean. Entering the Sea-King's domain, he plays upon his gusli with such goodwill that the monarch and his court are soon engaged in a frenzied dance. A fierce gale ensues. St. Nicholas, intervening on behalf of seafarers above, dashes the gusli to the ground, orders Sadko home, and transforms the Sea-King's daughter, who has offered herself to the already married minstrel, into the river Volkhov, on which Novgorod now stands.

I share this fascination with many artists, writers, filmmakers and composers. [Again, if anyone knows of any, please post them here!] Here is Peter Weir for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Wave

If anyone has any comic, pulp, book or magazine covers on underwater themes I’d be grateful to see them posted here!

And a few magazines:

I’ve always been fascinated by water as a medium, and by myths about water. My two favourite ACG covers:

This legend gave birth to numerous incredible rumours, which have survived to this day. It is said that only those who are pure in their heart and soul will find their way to Kitezh It is also said that in calm weather one can sometimes hear the wailing sound of chiming bells and people singing from under the waters of the Lake Svetloyar. Some people say that the most pious individuals may actually see the lights of religious processions and even buildings on the bottom of the lake. This is why the Lake Svetloyar is sometimes called the "Russian Atlantis". Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya (1907) is based on the legend of Kitezh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_the_Invisible_City_of_Kitezh_and_the_Maiden_Fevroniya The most astonishing scene shows a man literally swimming across the frozen lake, as the ice creaks and cracks below him. "I wanted to get shots of pilgrims crawling around on the ice trying to catch a glimpse of the lost city, but as there were no pilgrims around I hired two drunks from the next town and put them on the ice. One of them has his face right on the ice and looks like he is in very deep meditation. The accountant’s truth: he was completely drunk and fell asleep, and we had to wake him at the end of the take." However, though staged, Herzog assures us it accurately depicts what pilgrims who visit the lake actually do - presumably when interfering filmmakers arent around. In Siberia such mystical experiences are not confined to history. They are living. Bells from the Deep was a revelation. I had always thought of Herzog as quite mad - now I felt a deeper connection to which hitherto I had been quite blind.