Press

> TLDR; outsider.

Dissatisfied with the “wasp medium” and unrealised promises of [Magick Craftsmanship](https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0486274543?tag=piktur-20), I scoured [Mayer](https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0571143318?tag=piktur-20) then [Doerner](https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/015657716X?tag=piktur-20) for understanding — that was my 18th summer. I maintained a Sydney cemetery ledger and gained admission to the National Art School. In the former gaol, between police station and court, O-day speeches presaged the statistical probability of failure. Soon realised one ought found their own school. Art History discarded by State funded iconoclasts — progeny of the Deconstructionists had one task. And Painting was remote.

M had a pamphlet, another path. I spoke with [Charlie Sheard](https://charliesheard.com/en-US/) the following summer. My rambling assemblage of trivia transmuted in that crucible and became intuition. Filberts and flats, a contrivance of 19th Century commerce, I learned the _correct_ handling of brushes, that one could discern and speak unironically of _Beauty_. The continuum of _Western Art History_ opened. I was mentored there in the enumerable responsibilities of the Painter.

Meanwhile, peers scorched their grocery allowance, tar coated fingers curled around the teat, chapped lips suckled, blushing, russet-red gum recession, all burning overbright. Labour bought tobacco and reproductions — although _labour’s_ generous, it was after all a “bullshit job”, a faux statistic propping up the quarterly — up ‘n’ to the right. Lulled, I deferred — hedged. There’ve been inordinate lessons since then. We did not know it at the time, but all summers hence’d wish for the benevolence and ignorance of these.

Finery accumulated, minerals, manganese, lapis, agate burnishing wands, annotations… and yet _the Great Work_ did not materialise, existing only in hoarded reproductions.

These, boxed between locations in the dim years of forgetting, prone beneath the Moloch[^1], where pragmatism overruled inner imperative. Procession of days concretised in tearless contortion. Imperative, a thorn.

Late, though the _secret’s_ obvious now — acuity of attention, and discipline over time. _The verb is “see,” not “walk on”_[^2]. We undermine ourselves. To see the “portions of eternity too great for the eye of man”[^3] contained in this instant passing. Quietly I resume this work so “my pagan head shall sink into the winter land, and there be purified.”[^4]

Born Sydney, 1988.

## Dedication

> He said: “It is all useless, \[…\] the current is drawing us.”  
> And Polo said: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”[^5]

> To take flight every day! At least for a moment, which may be brief, as long as it is intense. A “spiritual exercise” every day - either alone, or in the company of someone who also wishes to better himself. Spiritual exercises. Step out of duration … try to get rid of your own passions, vanities, and the itch for talk about your own name, which sometimes burns you like a chronic disease. Avoid backbiting. Get rid of pity and hatred. Love all free human beings. Become eternal by transcending yourself. This work on yourself is necessary; this ambition justified. Lots of people let themselves be wholly absorbed by militant politics and the preparation for social revolution. Rare, much more rare, are they who, in order to prepare for the revolution, are willing to make themselves worthy of it.[^6]

> Learn of the green world what can be thy place  
> In scaled invention or true artistry,  
> Pull down thy vanity[^7]

[^1]: Scott Alexander, ‘Meditations on Moloch’, _Slate Star Codex_, 30 July 2014, [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

[^2]: Ezra Pound, “Canto CXVI”, The Pisan Cantos, New Directions, 1948

[^3]: William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, c. 1790–1793; in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman, Anchor Books, rev. ed. 1988

[^4]: JA Baker, _The Peregrine_, Collins, 1967

[^5]: Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili (1972); trans. William Weaver as Invisible Cities, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1974

[^6]: Georges Friedmann, La Puissance et la Sagesse (1970); quoted in Pierre Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase, Blackwell, 1995

[^7]: Ezra Pound, “Canto LXXXI”, The Pisan Cantos, New Directions, 1948

## Education

-   2008–2010 Charlie Sheard Studio School , Sydney
-   2007 Bachelor of Fine Art (Incomplete), National Art School , Sydney

## Teaching

-   2015-present Founder of [course.kulchu.red](https://course.kulchu.red)
-   2013–2015 Instructor, Sydney Community College
-   2010–2012 Studio Assistant to Charlie Sheard