Two Minds

17-18 July 1999

Exhibition at Atrium Gallery, London

In July 1999 I presented Two Minds at the Atrium Gallery in London. The exhibition brought together paintings and the first edition of The Journey of the Flower Man, the novel I had written between 1991 and 1992 while travelling through India, Ireland and Europe.

At the time I thought I was simply exhibiting two different aspects of my creative life. Looking back, I realise the exhibition quietly documented the beginning of a much deeper understanding.

A Photograph That Changed Meaning

The photograph above was taken during the exhibition by Peter True.

In my hand is the first edition of The Journey of the Flower Man. Behind me hangs Three Snakes.

For many years I regarded it simply as a record of the exhibition. Today I see something quite different. Without intending to, the photograph preserved the moment I first began to understand the relationship between my writing and my painting. It recorded a discovery whose significance would continue to unfold over the years that followed.

The Discovery

Between 1991 and 1992 I wrote The Journey of the Flower Man in longhand while travelling through India, Ireland and Europe. The following year, while living in London, I painted Three Snakes, never imagining that the two works might be connected.

Later, while typing the handwritten manuscript into my computer, I reached a passage describing snakes beneath a pink sky. I stopped. Earlier that same week I had completed Three Snakes, a painting that echoed the very scene I had just rediscovered in the forgotten manuscript.

Until that moment I had regarded the novel and the painting as entirely separate works. Suddenly that no longer seemed possible.

It was the first time I recognised that my writing and my painting were emerging from the same imagination.

“Some people might think these coincidences to be the hand of God. On the other hand C.G. Jung would suppose it was my unconscious at work. I’m not sure. I’m in two minds.”

— Exhibition catalogue, London, 1999

Looking Back

When I wrote those words for the exhibition catalogue, I was trying to describe something I couldn’t yet explain.

Visitors often assumed the paintings were religious because of recurring images such as light, flowers and snakes. I wasn’t trying to make religious paintings; those images simply kept returning. The same was true of my writing. Certain landscapes, symbols and characters appeared again and again, regardless of whether I was holding a pen or a paintbrush.

Over time I stopped trying to explain those recurrences and instead learned to trust them.

Looking back now, I no longer see Two Minds as an exhibition about painting and writing. I see it as the moment I began to recognise that both were expressions of the same imagination. Since then I have come to see writing, painting and music not as separate creative practices, but as different expressions of that single imaginative landscape.

Exhibition Catalogue