I was struck by a little claim to fame from Walberswick, one windblasted seaside holiday last year, regarding the locals harassment of Charles Rennie Macintosh which resulted in his being banged up in the local jail for looking a bit odd while he wrote notes and painted pictures like the one above on holiday in 1914. His broad Scottish accent wrongly placed him as a german spy in the minds of his captors.

I think the First World War brutalised so much of our world and unsurprisingly left its mark on art too. I need to look at this more deeply and get my timelines sorted out but I think we lost an alternative artistic time line that flowed from Macintosh, Klimt, Rodin along with other secessionists. This line was severed by the First World War. It’s design influence was still to be felt in the Deco movement of the 30’s but that too sputtered out completely in the face of World War Two.

I’m trying hard to articulate something here about a kind of art that isn’t as whimsical as Art Nouveau, is derived from representation, organic and beautiful, incorporates elements from graphic design but is patently not the super-realism of post graphic novel Athena poster 80s nonsense. I see it sometimes in Ralph Steadman’s mad cartoons, and found a bit of it in Freda Khalo’s early works (when she wasn’t trying to be Modigliani). It portrays the wonder, the worship of the forms around us and reflects them – but would still manage to piss off a Daily Mail reader.

But to indulge in it seems, to try and work at a piece that can’t draw its heritage directly from Duchamp’s Fountain doesn’t seem possible at the moment – unless you are David Hockney of course. He can get away with bloody anything it seems.

When I paint I want it to be like music. When I write I want it to be like painting.

Is this trying to create synesthesia?