Interview
Art
Attention
Culture
S&U interviews
5 min read

Interview: Alastair Gordon on the artist’s attention

Why the overlooked and everyday capture the creative gaze.

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 The painting is centred around the theme of prayer, and I aimed to draw on art historical references to prayer while incorporating the prayers of the current church congregation.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. 

A book cover reads 'Lost Things'.

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
Attention
Culture
Digital
Easter
4 min read

Let your mind wander if you want to make the most of Lent

How to escape the cold and bitter tunnels of digital distraction.

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A montage image places a woman, with eyes shut and hands on hip, at the centre of blurred circle of ground and tree branches.
Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

According to Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth century French polymath: all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. 

And now, four hundred years later, we have proof of how hard we find this. 

Researchers carried out an experiment, putting several people in a room on their own with nothing else to do but sit there for fifteen minutes.  A majority admitted feeling uncomfortable with little but their thoughts to console them.  The experiment was repeated, only this time an instrument was placed in the room that could administer an unpleasant electric shock.  In the fifteen-minute period, one in four women self-administered the shock to relieve the boredom.  Two in three men did. 

There is a chance we draw the wrong conclusions from social experiments because it is hard to get into the minds of others, but we can make a good guess here.  Our lives are over-stimulated.  To be alone in a room with our thoughts for any length of time is unusual to the point of weird.  We don’t need to live like this.  Our smartphones are the ‘rod and staff which comfort us’.  Any spare moment can be spent using TikTok, Instagram or Spotify.   

As people age, they tend to think the world is losing its attention span without realising that focus declines as we grow older.  But something seems to have changed in the last two decades.  A whole new digital architecture has been designed that wasn’t there.  It creates the buzz of the city but has gone up around us like skyscrapers, creating cold shadows and bitter wind tunnels of anger and distraction that block out the warmth.   

This new online city is intentionally designed to keep our attention; to prevent us from doing anything offline.  And it is working.  Between 2010 and 2020, globally, we consumed twenty times more information.  This is a colossal increase for our brains to cope with in the blink of an evolutionary eye.  Our minds have become less like the cool, white minimalist interior design people aspire to in life and more like the junk garage where broken and pointless stuff is tipped. 

According to Johann Hari in Stolen Focus, we tend to blame ourselves for this state of affairs.  After all, if we tell others our smartphone is distracting us, the answer we get back is to turn it off.  While we can take steps like this, Hari says it lets tech companies off the hook.  As with shopaholics, there is individual responsibility, but there is also the edifice of consumer capitalism designed to make us buy more stuff or absorb more information. 

Mind wandering is, paradoxically, a form of attention.  It is the space where we solve the puzzles of our lives, joining dots we had missed, colouring in a picture to bring it alive. 

When we consider what it means to follow Jesus today, we often do not appreciate what tech is doing to us.  The gains are obvious – having the world at our fingertips, being able to talk to family and friends in an instant – but the losses remain obscure.  How does digital distraction affect reading of the Bible and a commitment to prayer?  There is little research on this, but we may be giving God less devoted attention than before.  In flitting from one source to another, like a fly on a hot summer’s day, we do not stay long enough in one place to discover if God is waiting for us there. 

Prompts from God frequently emerge outside the thinking of the Church.  A cohort of Silicon Valley tech wizards has come up with the idea of the digital Sabbath, where people spend one day a week unplugged.  Though describing themselves as not especially religious, their manifesto practically drowns in religious tradition.  They advise people to: 

  • Avoid technology 
  • Connect with loved ones 
  • Nurture your health 
  • Get outside 
  • Avoid commerce 
  • Light candles 
  • Drink wine 
  • Eat bread 
  • Find silence 
  • Give back 

It is sabbath re-imagined for the digital era.   

Johann Hari also lists some practical actions that can be taken, like staying on task and limiting exposure to social media in particular as it is shown to be bad for mental health in large doses.  We should also allow our minds to wander.  This does not contradict the argument about not losing focus.  Mind wandering is, paradoxically, a form of attention.  It is the space where we solve the puzzles of our lives, joining dots we had missed, colouring in a picture to bring it alive.   

When the prophet Elijah meets with God at Mount Horeb, there is first a strong wind, then a powerful earthquake and lastly a raging fire.  But God does not reveal himself in these gripping phenomena.  He is to be found in the sheer silence which follows; in the whisper of a voice. 

The sheer silence today is broken by the familiar buzz of a news feed or social media update – or the shock of an electric current.  The moment we move out of earshot of the faint audio of the divine.    

Join with us - Behind the Seen

Seen & Unseen is free for everyone and is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Alongside other benefits (book discounts etc.), you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing what I’m reading and my reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin

Editor-in-Chief