Interview

Art

Attention

Culture

S&U interviews

6 February 2025

5 min read

Interview: Alastair Gordon on the artist’s attention

Why the overlooked and everyday capture the creative gaze.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

An artist sits in front of a board covered in images, canvases and paper.

The careers of artists rarely progress in a simple linear fashion. That was very much the experience of Alastair Gordon in 2024. Gordon is co-founder of Morphē Arts, a painter, art tutor at Leith School of Art and a contributor to Seen & Unseen. He works from his studio in South London and exhibits with galleries and art fairs across the UK, Europe and the US. His experience in the past year opens up fascinating avenues into guidance, focus and prayer.

He says that: “In many ways, I achieved none of the goals I set for myself last year. I didn’t generate more income in the studio than the previous year, I wasn’t invited to exhibit at the prominent LA gallery I had in my sights, and I didn’t make it into Modern Painters magazine.

Yet, I had an extraordinary year exhibiting that excelled my expectations. Exhibiting at An Lanntair Gallery in the Outer Hebrides marked my first museum show. I completed my first public commission for a church in South London, and my fourth book, Lost Things, co-written with the wonderful poet Ed Mayhew, is ready for release next month.

This past year taught me a valuable lesson about not fixating on goals as defined by the art world. Instead, I learned to focus more on what truly matters: the work that really matters and the people I hope to connect with through my painting.”

One of the surprising opportunities that came to him in 2024 was a commission to paint for a church. He says of this that: “It was a wonderful opportunity to create a painting for All Saints, Wandsworth. It’s unusual to have the chance to make a large work that resonates so deeply with my Christian faith. The painting is centred around the theme of prayer, and I aimed to draw on art historical references to prayer while incorporating the prayers of the current church congregation.

When I was working on the imagery for 'Prayer of the Saints,' I focused on key ideas related to the prayers of the church congregation—past, present, and future. Commissioned to complete the nine vacant panels in the chancel, I faced a unique compositional challenge.

The motifs of olive leaves, lilies, white roses, pebbles, and feathers symbolise quiet petitions to God. The central panel features an open Bible to Philippians 4:6, accompanied by a handwritten journal with a sketch of a stained-glass window and a prayer of Augustine, as well as a broken mobile phone that represents a longing to communicate.

I included images of Wandsworth, Wimbledon, and Battersea to reflect our prayers for the local community, alongside portraits of current missionaries and a world map highlighting our prayers for God’s mission abroad. A portrait of a cherished brother who died young serves as a poignant reminder of our prayers for lament and hope.”

As a result, he says: “The painting features flowers like white roses and lilies, which are often observed in Western art as symbols of prayer, alongside images of the local community, held in reverence by the congregation and the missionaries they support worldwide.”

The philosopher Simone Weil suggested that attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same as prayer. Gordon says that this insight on attention and prayer resonates deeply with his experience as an artist: “When I engage fully in my work, that heightened attention feels like a form of prayer.”

An altar is surrounded behind by a curved wall displaying art work on panels. — Prayer of the Saints, Wandsworth

Looking at the overlooked is central to my artistic practice. I feel a resonance with artists of the past who have focused on the everyday moments.

His latest book project, a collaboration with Ed Mayhew, touches on similar themes: “It started with a glimmer. Two years ago, Ed sent me a poem and asked if I would like to create a painting in response. It was the most beautiful poem and an enticing invitation. I made a painting and sent it back to him. He replied with another poem, and I responded with another painting. This back-and-forth continued, and before we knew it, we had created 25 poems and paintings in collaboration.

The connection between words and images was foremost in our thinking for this project. I didn’t want to illustrate so much as to respond to Ed’s words through paint and drawing. Similarly, when Ed returned my paintings with words, he aimed not so much to describe but also to converse. Our hope was to create an equal exchange between word and image, allowing each to complement and enhance the other.

Lost Things is a precious collaboration. We are very grateful for this partnership and the unique book it has produced. Lost Things explores all the things that go missing in life, the hopes we have for their return, and the love we share for the overlooked. This book explores the oddities that have been misplaced or forgotten—strange objects that wash up on the shore, appear in your sock drawer, or disappear into the loft for decades. It also reflects on the people we have lost or forgotten. In this way, the book takes a playful approach while also pointing toward deeper truths.

Paying attention in this way to what others have overlooked or lost seems very much the task of artists: “Looking at the overlooked is central to my artistic practice. I feel a resonance with artists of the past who have focused on the everyday moments that might otherwise go unobserved. Most often, it’s the mundane objects that have become so familiar that they almost become invisible.

Focusing on details—colours, shapes, emotions, and often overlooked objects—allows me to connect with something greater. It feels like speaking in tongues; the act of creation transcends words and expresses something less tangible. At times, the meaning isn’t clear, and I need to wait for it to be revealed.”

All this would seem to have been very much the case in the past year, where unanticipated opportunities led to wonderful work and exciting new projects.

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Article

Art

Culture

Film & TV

21 January 2025

5 min read

The constant pull of David Lynch’s direction

What made the director’s films so universally resonant?

Sonny Tindall

Sonny works creatively with videography, graphic design, fashion, and photography.

Lynch painting.

At the age of 16, initially wanting to experience the infamous performances of actors, John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins, I decided to watch The Elephant Man (1980). This was the film that opened up the weird and wonderful world of director, David Lynch, a world I immediately wanted to dive headfirst into.

I did so by watching the film that became the catalyst for world-renowned director and producer, Mel Brooks, offering Lynch the chance to direct The Elephant Man. The film in question? His very first, Eraserhead (1977).

It was, and remains to this day, the most singular cinematic experience of my life.

I’m of the opinion that almost all filmmakers fall in to one of two categories; those who become artists through the medium of filmmaking, and those who are already artists who choose the vehicle of filmmaking to create their art. David Lynch is, for me at least, the ultimate embodiment of the latter. Proof of such can be found in his status as a renaissance man.

Originally a painter, a practice he continued throughout his life, his desire to transition to making films was borne out of wanting to see his paintings move. He was also an actor, a musician, and sound designer. Not to mention, a furniture designer who regularly built props for his films, author of several books and designer of his very own comic book.

The television show, Twin Peaks, is perhaps the best example of just how impossible it was to bind Lynch to a single artistic form. The seminal TV show revolutionised what television could be, as it was the first show to stray from the episodic storytelling format, instead choosing to follow one continual storyline through an entire series.

David Lynch exists within an exclusive category of artists, those whose names have become an adjective. Lynchian, similar to Kafkaesque, Brechtian or Daliesque, is recognised as an official word in the Oxford dictionary. An eponymous adjective is an honour reserved for only the most unique and distinct of artists.

Although it could be argued that the term – Lynchian - is now too loosely applied to anything deemed to be somewhat counter-cultural within mainstream cinema, its true meaning relates to the often indefinable style and voice of the man himself.

He invoked the spiritual depths of us, the existential longings and cravings, the questions that seem intrinsic to the human condition, the wonderings that feel as though they originate from somewhere deep within us, our souls, perhaps.

I’ve come to think that it’s the ultimately the spiritual essence of Lynch’s films that make them truly unique, and him a worthy recipient of an eponymous adjective. Lynch’s films exist within their own world, frequently reminiscent of a dream.

Sometimes euphoric, often a nightmare.

He was an avid practitioner and advocate of transcendental meditation, so it’s perhaps not too surprising that when speaking on his creative process, Lynch attributed many of his creative ideas as emerging from his own subconscious through the practices of meditation and daydreaming. He’s often compared ideas to the act of fishing, they aren’t created, they already exist, you’ve just got to have the right bait to catch them.

I wonder if this process is what makes the worlds housed within Lynch’s films unlike any others. He invites us into his own subconscious, by allowing it to bleed out onto the screen.

Despite his allusivity in style and format, what I’ve always found most confounding about David Lynch’s work is its universality.

I feel as though the term ‘fringe artist’ has scarcely been better applied to anyone other than Lynch.

How has a man who’s created some of the boldest, most avant-garde and, at times, downright disturbing art of the last century picked up four Oscar nominations (and an honorary win), a Masterclass and a Disney movie (The Straight Story)?

Surely translating your own subconscious, something we view as idiomatic to each individual person, onto the screen is a guaranteed recipe for alienating your audience?

So why does Lynch’s work, instead of pushing us away, so consistently pull us in?

I could pontificate on the different potential techniques Lynch employed to keep his work just grounded enough to allow us to relate to it. His films being rooted in instantly recognisable symbols of Americana, for example. Or perhaps his deployment of easily digestible genres and conventions, Twin Peaks is a melodramatic murder mystery TV show, Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001) are, at their core, noir films and even Wild at Heart (1990) is a textbook road movie.

But Lynch’s work has taught me to dig far deeper than that.

He invoked spiritual depths of us, the existential longings and cravings, the questions that seem intrinsic to the human condition, the wonderings that feel as though they originate from somewhere deep within us, our souls, perhaps.

That, for me at least, is the answer to his universality.

But how did he do it?

As has already been mentioned, it’s by mining his own subconscious and the spiritual within himself, and allowing it to flow into the worlds he created. But, most importantly, he never definitively characterised these things, he simply let them exist, depicted them. His work doesn’t come to us with the answers, it comes to us with questions. David Lynch’s questions: questions about the world. Questions about himself.

The very same questions we all ask ourselves on a daily basis: is evil within us or is it the product of what is around us? How can we allow light to prevail over darkness?

His work allows us to sit, ruminate, and respond to those questions.

I didn’t anticipate how profound of an effect David Lynch’s passing would have on me. It’s undoubtedly the strongest feeling of loss and grief I’ve felt from the passing of someone in the public sphere.

So deep were my feelings that I felt I needed to process it through the writing of this piece.

And despite the myriad of feelings and thoughts that have been swirling around my head since originally reading the news headline, I find myself continually returning to the very first thought I had. It was a quote from American comedian, Theo Von. When mourning the death of fellow comedian, Norm Macdonald, Theo said,

‘It feels like you’re losing a book that nobody has copies of.’

I feel despair that I’ll never be able to see the world through David Lynch’s eyes again. But I find great comfort that he, through his art, has passed his vision onto us, ensuring that we’ll always be able to see the Lynchian in our world.