Inheritance - a time bomb or a gift to share?

At which point in history does the conflict in the Middle East have its beginnings?    

We can go back centuries, millennia even as each successive civilization puts down its roots in the land, laying the foundations for claim and counterclaim for generations to come. As soon as we untangle one part there is another layer of tangle underneath. So how far do we go back?    

In the past I have always looked back to the dawn of recorded history in the Middle East but in fact I actually believe this question to be both unhelpful and inappropriate. Backwards is no way forwards. Over the centuries there has simply accumulated too much wrong and too much right on all sides to make any clear cut moral case for, or against any party being in the right or not. Too many "peoples" now have a cultural or ancestral claim on the land. If making a Divine claim on the land, lack of consideration for others can easily lead us into a "my god is bigger than your god" scenario, which then makes God into an agent of human endeavor.

So what is the way forward? There are two key words that govern my attitudes to, and actions within the Middle East whether at home in Scotland or in Jerusalem. Two words, "compassion" and "coexistence".    

To have compassion for someone is to show concern for putting someone else's well-being on a par with our own. It is a recognition that everyone has the right to basic human dignity and it challenges our willingness to offer it regardless of whether we perceive it as deserved or not.

Although we may have "rights" regarding certain issues, and we may be perfectly within our "rights" to exercise them, the compassionate response is to consider the well-being of others in the light of our "rights". Their well-being and our rights may actually be in conflict with each other. I have seen this in Glasgow and in Belfast where parading/marching through a particularly sensitive area of the city is "our right". But is it actually the right thing to do, if it’s provocative and antagonistic? Is it a compassionate response? Is it not one of arrogance that says “this is my right and you are going to have to live with its consequences”?

Which brings me to the second of my two key words. Coexistence. Recently, on a gable end wall in west Jerusalem I saw a work of graffiti art that said "just forgive". It’s easy to say but in reality much more difficult to do. Fundamentalists, whichever side they are on will have difficulty with this and they will see only the rightness of their own world-view, and in more extreme cases the wrongness of everyone else's. In reality the alternative to forgiveness does not even bear thinking about. It can only lead to bitterness, reprisal (tit for tat which adds yet more layers), suspicion, fear and inevitably to an escalation of conflict.

Although it may not be easy or even desirable to forget (lest we repeat our past mistakes), it is possible to forgive. Within a conflict, this can begin to happen when at least one of the sides realises it can, and must, let go of exclusive claims on mistreatment, persecution and suffering. Having the courage to recognise that others have suffered too, is the start of putting the well-being of such others on a level with our own. I have recently been encouraged whilst talking with people on both sides of this conflict and hearing an increasing number of ordinary Israelis and Palestinian/Israeli Arabs speak of one land for all people. Some even say they don’t care what it’s called, just so long as they can live here, at home, in peace and with dignity.           

Stuart Duffin, Jerusalem/Glasgow 2013

    

Mada Mekudash (Heb.) = Sacred Science

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Essentially, these new oils were made in a single three week explosion of creativity over Christmas. It was a prolonged moment of inspiration, the catalyst of which was a single condensed moment of sheer panic when I realised that I had absolutely no oil paintings left to show prospective clients in the New Year!

The etchings are a different matter altogether, two of which came about after I was encouraged to look again at older plates from the late 90’s that had never really be satisfactorily completed (now called Dreaming of Jerusalem and Babylon Recall). Most of the rather minimal images were erased from the plates with a heavy duty power grinder and then re-polished leaving traces of things to re work (the palimpsest idea again…see the post on November 2011 below)

The third etching, the one titled Mada Mekudash is one that I started while in Jerusalem last summer and although I have been working on them all consistently since then, they have taken a long time to finish. I think it was worth it. I hope you do too.

And I’ll be back in Jerusalem working on new mezzotints at Jerusalem Print Workshop in June.

The errors of history - the history of errors

Being back in Jerusalem in August and September was both very challenging and very informative. It’ll take a while for it to manifest itself in any future works. In the meanwhile all I can say is that my immediate and on going response I hope will be a compassionate one…it makes me think of 

”an indiscriminate act of kindness” 

(thanks, as always, Foy)

So what about this current body of six new works on line for November?

Well, as usual I can see repeat patterns and recurring motifs such as the standing stone (with the word "stone" sprayed on it by some bored graffiti writer!). Or the carved stone hand, both of which refer obliquely to the ubiquitous Jerusalem limestone (used for all building and paving) while also pointing to the source of all that Jerusalem is cursed and charmed with…its sanctity…its sacredness.

In a wider sense, these works also speak of my concern for the widening gaps between faith and science, and between different faiths on the one hand, and our seeming lack of concern for our world on the other.

We live in a fragmented global society where bridge building between cultures and the furthering of our understanding and appreciation of such divergent cultures must be pursued with a non-judgemental compassion.

We live on a Fragile Earth, of which we have been given stewardship, and which in turn supports our very existence. We would do well to remember that.

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

11,000 entries... less than 1000 selected... and two of them are mine!

So if you are in London, UK over the summer and fancy a bit of culture then get along to the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. It will be showing from 4 June til 12 August 2012.

The Infallible Law of Error

"The Infallible Law of Error"! Now where on Earth did that title come from? Well, I made it up because I liked the paradox of the "law of error" claiming to be infallible. It sums up my experience of both science and religion.

The text in the centre of the work with this title is a quote from one of quantum physics biggest brains on the planet. He said "at the heart of a very large black hole lies a tiny singularity. And a singularity is…when we don't know what to do!" Basically Einstein got it right when his theory of relativity explained the universe on an atomic, planetary and galactic scale. It also predicted the existence of black holes but got it wrong when he said that they were rarely or unlikely to exist in reality. Not only do they exist (and perhaps abundantly as it now seems that they could well be the very core of EVERY galaxy)  but within a black hole Einstein's theories just don't work. Things just get too weird. It's up to the more recent theory of quantum gravity to begin to explain what's going on in the tiny "heart of a very large black hole". Yet what we are finding is that Einstein's theory and the theory of quantum gravity profoundly contradict each other yet both exist within the paradox that is our universe. Fascinated? Confused? I am!

Einstein expressed a flash of insight though when he said (and I paraphrase here)  "Religion without science is lame, science without religion is blind" and this is what the work titled  "Lost Blue Heaven" touches on.

The other works titled "Fads and Fallacies in the name of  …Science …Faith …Reason" and also to an extent "Resistance+/-Acceptance" play with the history of our understanding and eventual harnessing of electricity. It spans from the  days when we thought electrical phenomena to be purely a Divine manifestation, through the time of The Electricians entertaining us with their wondrous tricks to the 18th century scientific experiments and contradictory theories of a Divine animal electricity (proposed by Luigi Galvani) or a universal electricity (proposed by Alessandro Volta) endowing all life. It was Volta who invented the electric battery or Voltic Pile and it was his colleague Galvani who famously made the dissected frogs legs twitch with it.

Are you still reading this? Glad to hear it. So its not just me that's fascinated by all this stuff then?

The Last Supper on line

It's finally happened. The "Last Supper" oil painting launch was on Sunday 4 March and it was packed out. My thanks goes to all who have supported this in so many different ways.

But to be honest I don't know where the last year and a half has gone! But now that the Last Supper is on the wall I can catch up with a year's worth of postponed work.

I am not going to say much about the painting here. It is all on line...detailed close ups and explanations of the symbolism. Have a look at it on line.

photo Iain Mclean

An Angel's Palimpsest

palimpsest.  1.  n.  Parchment used for  a second time after the original writing has been erased [scraped off]



I have always loved the idea of things being reused. Either reincorporated into something different and given a new meaning and context or coming to life again as something very different.

With this body of new work, in particular the digital compositions such as "An Angels Palimpsest" above (click on it) or "A Cautionary Tale", I have revisited work form a couple of years back that was as "finished" as could be at the time but with which I was not very convinced and was never published. Both of these new pieces are a substantial reworking of older images much of which was erased but with traces of some original elements surviving...in the manner of a palimpsest.

The mezzotints, "Babble-On" being the first in this series, come from new composition ideas again following the "reason or revelation" theme mentioned in previous blog posts below (June and also way back in September 2010). However today I found a proof of a large scale mezzotint that I ditched in 2010 for being poorly drawn and realised that the idea was sound enough to rework...again in the manner of a palimpsest!

palimpsest.  2.  n.  Monumental brass turned and re-engraved on the reverse side

I've been doing this on the backs of my old etching plates for decades!!...again in the manner of...yeah, yeah, we know.