I have never followed or been that interested in David Lynch. His prominence came about in my tightly controlled religious years – controlled by me and others – and so now as he has died and I discover his genius as a surrealist artist, I am playing catchup.
It seems that he was indeed a mystic, a surrealist and a genius. This is the current view by fans and critics both and I am strongly drawn to mysticism of all kinds.
I am partcilarly drawn to three statements of his I have listened to over the past week:
On death:
“I believe life is a continuum, and that no one really dies, they just drop their physical body and we’ll all meet again. Otherwise I don’t see how anybody could ever, once they see someone die, that they’d just disappear forever and that’s what we’re all bound to do. I’m sorry but it just doesn’t make any sense, it’s a continuum, and we’re all going to be fine at the end of the story.”
On ageing:
“Inside, we are ageless…and when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It’s the body that is changing around the ageless centre.”
On music:
“Music can swell the heart till it almost bursts – you can’t believe that beauty that comes….and it comes from these notes…”
David Lynch, Hands Up, Cowboy!, 2020, mixed media painting on wood, 41 3/4″ × 37 11/16″ × 4 7/8″ (106 cm × 95.7 cm × 12.4 cm) © David Lynch. Photo by Robert Wedemeyer, Los Angeles
William Blake as an English outsider artist and poet [28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827] was dismissed by the church and the arts community as off the wall and crazy and then, as sometimes happens in history after the death of such a person, he became seen as a significant and highly influential poet and artist in the so called romantic school eg William Wordsworth. His mysticism had various iterations including a so-called visit from God at the window of his bedroom when he was a 4 year old and exposure to the Moravians and Count Zinzendorf. No doubt film and social media were big on the influence and popularity of David Lynch before his death and now he has joined Blake. I will be researching the primary influences on Lynch but surmise it will be at least, the father of surrealism, Salvatore Dali.
Artists are not always this influential and the seeking of influence is the curse [ and sometimes, maybe, small blessing] of social media. The artist who wants to paint and draw and direct films for the pure joy and struggle of mark making might become a Lynch or a Blake or most likely, not at all. They might at least and best have some sense of being in a place of purpose and meaning. This is becoming my experience now that I have some sense of condfidence in my own intentional mark making after hundreds of hours of making marks over the last 10-15 years. One needs to be determined and disciplined to be an artist and to write down any ideas that come as David Lynch used to say: Don’t rely on your own memory if you have a good idea – write it down however small or big it might be or become – a painting or a script for a film – write it down!
Blake’s apprenticeship as a young print maker developed his obvious draughtsmanship seen in such works below. [ The Sun at his Eastern Gate, Water colour over pen and ink, illustration, 1816-1820]
There is talent and then as “they” say, it’s all about perspiration. If one has some interest in and love for visual arts then get going and keep going – talented, young, old or disabled. It IS work, work, work, make, make, make that makes the artist and the place in his/her/their own story.
Blake and Lynch were huge talents, gifted and influential in their own and aligned worlds. They also tapped into another real but unseen mystical world, the imagination alive and the sense of the other as a regular visitor made alive in the making and in the final works we have to revisit.
Music as mind altering or God tapping on windows or strange groups of spiritualists doesn’t fit with rational thinking or scientific impiricism – albeit there is a huge upswing in qualitative research now – but it is a place where the spiritual is impinging on open hearts and minds. A breath, a silence or something akin.This is not a call to cultic exclusivism not a return to fundamentalism but rather is driven by my own intense interest, imagination and experience and one that I am convinced ties us all to the spirit/spiritual and to ancient and modern mythology, inexplicable inspiration, ideas and art beyond consumption and decoration.
Suggested Reading:
William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience,
Dr Martin Shaw Smokehole
Out of Office, Out of Mind Charcoal, guache on Arches Water Colour Paper 2024. Artist: Peter Breen
Peter Breen, January 2025. Brisbane Queensland Australia.
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