The Root that Grew Into a Tree

I found this dried root of hogweed on a hilltop walk with friends. It’s been in my studio for quite a while now, and has given birth to many images. Upended on its stalk the root becomes a tree. I’ve written about using it as a model in a post made last year, but since then there have been even more manifestations of it.

I made a toy theatre out of building blocks, and stood the root on the stage to make an image I titled Day of the Triffids in honour of John Wyndham’s novel about an invasion of killer alien plant-life.

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I’ve drawn it extensively for my picture-book of Hansel & Gretel, due out this summer. Here it is in a detail from a preparatory image of a witchy forest drenched in moonlight.

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My friend, artist Phil Cooper, has made a model of it in preparation for a film we plan as a book-trailer.

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Versions of the root-as-tree made by artist Johann Rohl when he worked in my studio for a month last summer.

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And in the background here, another by Johann with a horse by me hiding behind it, plus a couple of trees and a maquette that I made.

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In this detail of an endpaper for Hansel & Gretel, a leafy version appears bottom left.

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Festooned with icicles in my study for the print Christmas at Camelot.

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Yesterday my friend Philippa spent a day with me in the studio, and she produced this delicately beautiful version of the root, made in coloured pencils and sgrafitto.

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Johann made the three images on the left, and I made the tree.

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Four artists all working from one, small, dried root.

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Johann Rohl at ‘Dark Movements’

Johann Rohl, the graduate in illustration who I wrote about here a while ago, has travelled to west Wales to stay with us at Ty Isaf, and to see Dark Movements at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre. After four days of intense conversations, leisurely meals and attic-studio visits during which we shared ideas about our various, independent projects, he’s heading back to Yorkshire this afternoon.

I shall miss him. It has been a great pleasure meeting for the first time, and getting to know him better. There have been long walks around the garden and in the surrounding countryside, and last night we went to a Midsummer Celebration Party held by my friend Mary-Ann Constantine. Throughout all these activities, Johann and Jack have been forging a firm friendship. Jack thinks Johann came here expressly to cuddle and play with him. (And maybe he did!)

Yesterday we pored over the beautiful project-work Johann has been making on the theme of Pomona, and I was blown away by the confetti-shower of tiny, beautifully wrought drawings scattered like blown flower petals all over the  kitchen table. Like me, Johann explores his themes with great intensity, in sketch-books, maquettes and loose drawings. Examining them is to take a fascinating stroll around a map of the artist’s mind.

Today we’ll take a last spin around the gallery at the Arts Centre, and then he’ll be whisked away by train and back to his own world. It’s been fantastic to have him here. I want him to come and live in my studio!

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You can read my two-part post about Johann and his portfolio illustrations for Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber stories, HERE and HERE.

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Johann Christian Rohl in the wolf’s den, part 2: the interview

Part 1 of J. C. R. in the wolf’s den may be found HERE

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• Clive H-J. With The Company of Wolves you’ve explored just one of the suite of Angela Carter’s tales, The Bloody Chamber. Was your first experience of this dark and sexualised spin on Red Riding Hood the short story, or the film by Neil Jordan? Many people came to Carter as a writer after seeing it.

• Johann CR. I read the book first. I’d been told about the book by a friend I’d made in my first year of Uni, she was a second year and told me what briefs to expect and gave me advice and a lot of support throughout my time at Cambridge school of Art. I owe a lot of my development to her. (Erika Lewis I am eternally grateful, you beautiful blackbird.) I couldn’t put the book down. I was completely engrossed. This was a book that had so much meat to it. A most decadent banquet. There was a lot in those pages that I savoured. The writing itself was gothic, so rich in detail that you could almost smell the acrid blood drenching the tales. It was sharp and witty.

• The stories felt like familiar terrain but weren’t. It was full of surprises and there was a whole wealth of dark imagery for me to delve into. There’s sexual bluntness, a bounty of symbolism. The writing is sharp and witty and there’s a heavy presence of danger! When I finished it I’d go back and read my favourite bits and I still do. I didn’t even know the film existed until one of my lecturers, Mick Gowar (an expert in fairytales and folklore and one of my most favourite people on this earth) told me about it in my second year. He’d recommended it as at the time I was exploring how the dream world had been achieved through film. I’d looked at Alice by Jan Svankmajer and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders by Jaromil Jires. Both films share a lot of similarities with Neil Jordan’s interpretation of The Company of Wolves, and allowed me to go deeper into the world of dream imagery. It was nice to see an interpretation of The Company of Wolves on film because all I’d known before was my own, obviously, so it was cool to compare the director’s take on it. Also the use of special effects was immensely appreciated! They really don’t make films like that anymore (and if they do then please point them out to me!) What about you? Which did you experience first?

• Clive H-J. Like you, book first, film later. Interestingly, I felt sure that one of the fairy tale films Neil Jordan had referenced, was a favourite of mine. But we’ll come to that later.

• Clive H-J. in the matter of re-spinning old tales, many have tried, and just about all have failed in comparison to what Carter achieved. She got there first, and in my opinion did it best, though I accept that I haven’t read everything out there. One of the things that makes me wish she had lived longer… and there are many… is that within The Bloody Chamber, she offered two riffs on Beauty and the Beast: The Tiger’s Bride and The Courtship of Mr Lyon, and both are beautiful in their own rights. I’m impressed by that doubling up, because to me it shows the kind of creativity I want to see in an artist, where there is no single, definitive approach. In my own practice I work and re-work a cache of carefully selected themes, because no version is the definitive one, and every time I set out, I feel as though I’ll do better for all the work that’s gone before. Like an actor never nailing the role of Hamlet, but discovering new layers with each performance. Discuss!

• Johann CR. Reading the different takes on the same tale surprised me. I think as a collection I’m in amour of the way each story has it’s own fleshed out world that feels completely its own and at the same time there are these echoes from one story into another. The same motifs crop up and it feels like you’re looking through alternate realities of the same world. I think as an artist you’re taught to approach things from different perspectives. What art school has taught me is that there are an infinite number of solutions to be made. No single idea is the ultimate one. All of the artists that I look up to seem to have that creative unrest, that ability to keep going and going and going with an idea and with work in general. I think through observing the different perspectives on a subject you allow deeper understanding which is ultimately what it’s all about, exploration.

• Clive H-J. I agree. So which of the other Bloody Chamber tales is tickling away at you right now, in terms of how you might approach it?
• Johann C R. At the moment I’m working on The Lady of the House of Love which is a story overflowing with an abundance of imagery. It has this duality and divergency that I really enjoy in a story and I’m looking to recreate that. I’m hoping I can mirror all the contrasts and contradictions in it.

Below: image for The Lady of the House of Love

• Johann CR. I really want to capture those elements of beauty and grotesqueness, violence and serenity, those qualities that give depth. I like that. The presence of sex and death is rife in these tales, and that’s something I want to be present in my drawings.

• Clive H-J. I’m guessing you’ve already found and read Bruno Betelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment (1976), but if you haven’t, order a copy from Abebooks now. (And if you haven’t read it yet, then you are going to love me for eternity for pointing you in its direction!)

• Johann CR. I haven’t! Why that book isn’t already on my shelf I do not know. It looks like a Johann Rohl essential!

• Clive H-J. To me it seems that Carter… like Betelheim did by bringing an analytical approach to the way children ‘use’ fairy tales to make sense of the world and its frightening aspects… gives her readers license to dredge up the darker sexualities underlying the tales, and be creative with them. (‘It’s OK’, she seems to be telling us, ‘to have those feelings. They’re exciting. It’s good to imagine a sexuality in which your lover licks your skin clean away to expose ever deeper layers of desire.’) I believe this particularly germane to gay men and women, for whom sexuality has too often in the past been a thing of shame. Discuss

• Johann CR. I like the idea of layers being exposed by a lover, I think that’s a wonderful metaphor for the nature of a relationship and for sex as well because the only way you can let someone in is by bringing your walls down and exposing yourself. It’s a beautiful thing to be in a relationship with somebody. You learn so much from each other and you grow, and even when it doesn’t work out you still grow from the things that go wrong. The same can be said about work; you’re constantly working stuff out and learning, through exposure and exploration. There are always new conclusions to be reached, and even when an idea doesn’t work out you learn from it, and so you’re peeling layers of yourself back and revealing a better version of yourself. I believe that’s why I’m drawn to The Bloody Chamber it has that honesty and bluntness about sexuality, and I think that’s something I tend to seek out, that openness and assurance that it is okay to have those feelings and desires.
• As a young gay man growing up I’ve always felt the need to hide those parts of myself away as a means of self preservation and I think in a way it’s been very damaging as I’m sure a lot of other people in the world have experienced themselves. So naturally I’ve always tried to look for assurance in some form or another where I can, be that in film, art or literature. I’m starting to find that if I’m open about my thoughts, feelings and experiences though then I’m allowing myself to make connections with other people that share those same thoughts, feelings and similar experiences and in turn I’m creating this world for myself where I no longer feel segregated or alone and that’s breaking down a lot of walls for me. At what point did you feel comfortable about your sexuality ?

• Clive H-J. That’ll take a little explaining, because I grew up in different times. I was born in 1951, when homosexuality was illegal and considered by most people to be an aberration. For a child, those attitudes made for an incredibly isolating experience, and I hid as best I could the aspects that would draw attention to me. It made me rather introverted. What I still find most repellent about those times, is my memory of the cruelty practiced at every level. (You see it today, with the hatred directed at immigrants and all those deemed to be ‘outsiders’. For the greater part, homosexuality today in the UK has been protected by law from the prejudices that were once so rife.) Back in the 1950s and even the 60s, society as a whole openly despised and mocked gay men (and it was men, rather than women, that drew the most homophobic wrath), labelling them as limp-wristed, fey, ludicrous. Moreover gay men in the entertainment industry were actively complicit in that homophobia, emasculating themselves into parodies and sexual grotesques. (Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard, John Inman and too many others.) It was as though it couldn’t be countenanced that homosexuals might actually be like everyone else, or that gay mens’ ‘desires’ came in as many varied packages as did those of heterosexuals. We had to be rendered neuter, laughed at, held up to ridicule. We couldn’t be handsome, or masculine, or heroic or powerful or any positive thing. It was horrible, and I absolutely knew that it was a lie, even before I began to discover the wider world for myself.

• So I didn’t share my understanding of my sexuality with my parents, as I knew from things they said that they would’t understand. Imagine, if you can, a world in which there were no role models for gay men and no positive expressions of homosexuality. It was a world in which a defining part of my life would have to remain hidden. I knew that I was different and that my sexual desires ran counter to everything I saw around me, but I was damned certain that I didn’t fancy Kenneth Williams!

• I got lucky. I went away to school in London. I studied performing arts at Italia Conti, left when I was fifteen-and-a-half, and made my way as a dancer/actor. Later I became a choreographer. In that world I could be myself. There were many of us, and we recognised each other. Gradually I told trusted, long-term friends. All was well. British film director and gay activist, Derek Jarman. became my hero. He was a force to be reckoned with. Here was a passionate, outspoken, drop-dead handsome and openly homosexual man. He was fired up and angry, and he wouldn’t shut-the-fuck-up. The establishment hated and feared him, but for me, he showed the way. Nothing was the same after Derek Jarman. He changed everything for us. I wish he were here still. Seek out his books, Johann. He was compassionate, insightful and loving, and he burned white-hot. Jarman wrote beautifully. Beautifully.

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• Given that we’re both horror film fans, I have to ask which film/s affected you most in terms of staying with you and informing your work? Mine are:
• 1) Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I love all its aspects: the visual aesthetic, the pace of the unfolding narrative, the sound (no music, but the soundtrack is masterful) the actors’ performances, the matte-paintings by Albert Whitlock that so ravishingly enhance the location footage, the horrific bird assault that begins with a seagull dive-bombing a man fuelling his car. All the performances in a film shot through with neurosis are mesmerising, not least newcomer Tipp Hedren’s cool blonde socialite becoming steadily unravelled.
• 2) Hitchcock’s Psycho, because Anthony Perkins’ troubled Norman did it for me, and I deeply appreciated Janet Leigh’s unflinching yet nuanced performance of Marian Crane. Then there was Bernard Hermann’s amazingly nerve-jangling score. (Everyone talks about the shower scene music, but just listen to what Hermann did for Marian’s car journey in the rain. Staggering!
• 3) La belle et la bête, directed by Jean Cocteau. Probably not horror at all… though in terms of what the Beast suffers the film might profitably be viewed alongside David Cronenberg’s The Fly… but certainly the most beautiful film of a fairy tale ever made.

•  Johann CR. Yeahhh! The Birds and Psycho are both genius! I haven’t seen La Belle et la Bête. I’ll have to add that to my list!

• Clive H-J. Do it. Now! The experience is going to change you.

• Johann CR. I think for me films had a major influence in the early stages of my life but as I grew up I took a lot from video-games. Films that stick out for me from my early childhood that I think heavily influenced my interests now are:
•  1) the Film of Roald Dahl’s The Witches. It frightened and fascinated me. I watched it recently and It’s fantastic! The Head Witch (Angelica Huston) is still as grotesque as ever. The special effects in it are fantastic and I think as a result it’s stood the test of time
• 2) The Thing (the 80s one) was my first experience of a horror film. I saw it when I was very young. Far too young, really, to be watching anything like that. On a Wednesday after school I’d go to my grandparents house for tea and my granddad would record monster movies that had been on the telly for me because I was obsessed with stuff like that. I was always drawing monsters. So I’d go and there’d be a new VHS waiting for me and I’d go into the living room with my colouring pencils and paper and watch whatever it was whilst lying on the floor drawing. I don’t think I ever expected to see anything like that. I was disturbed, to say the least, but at the same time I had this morbid curiosity to rewind the tape and try again to keep my eyes open to the sight of this warped and twisted ‘thing’ on the TV screen. If only my granddad knew what he was recording for me haha!

• There’s a quality I can’t quite pin down in Jaromil Jires’ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders that I feel I’m being influenced by right now. If you haven’t yet watched it I’d recommend giving it a look, then maybe we can decipher what it is I’m on about.

• Clive H-J. OK. I’ll do that, and you watch the Cocteau film. Tell you what, afterwards we’ll meet up again here, and discuss. Deal?

Above: a recent ‘self portrait’ by Johann that he tried to palm off on me instead of a photograph. I’m sure you’ll all be pleased that I persisted and was forwarded the image at the top of this post.

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Johann will view La belle et la bête and I’ll view Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, and  later we’ll convene for further discussion here at the Artlog.

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Johann Christian Rohl in the wolf’s den: part 1

It’s no surprise that illustration students are drawn to The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter’s masterful re-working of familiar fairytales worn threadbare with use, into darkly jewelled narratives dripping with sensuality. Beguiled by prose rich with descriptive passages, it might seem a tantalising illustration prospect to anyone innocent of how monstrously difficult it is to partner such heady imaginings. Like Carroll’s Alice, exhaustively illustrated for a hundred and fifty years, though rarely in ways that sit comfortably with the text (I discount Tenniel because he was the first and the most enduring, and I bow my knee and doff my cap to the sublime Mervyn Peak), Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber at once attracts illustrators, and then promptly compromises them by leaving no room for their contributions. Carter is the siren crouching on the rocks above the maelstrom, singing strange songs to those bright-eyed limners flocking to her call, all of them doomed. Until, that is, Johann Christian Rohl came along.

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Rohl recently graduated from Cambridge School of Art with a degree in illustration. He’s been drawing since he was a toddler. His grandmother, alert to his creativity, was impressed enough to compile a surviving folder of his early work, so thanks to her we can see the way he was thinking from the start. There’s an impressive and undeniably creepy drawing of a witch, barrel-shaped and amphibious, scary hands fringed with multiple, scratchy fingers springing directly from her body. Johann was thinking in terms of witchy nastiness from the start.

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His student portfolio of illustrations for Carter’s tale The Company of Wolves may be slender, but it’s none the less impressive for that. Were they to be in a book, these images would be perfect counterpoints to pages of text. They are not so dense, nor at first glance so arresting as to pull the eye from the words. Illustration, after all, should not fight for attention. At the turn of any page, no illustrator should be going head-to-head with the author. (And any who did, with Angela Carter, would simply lose the fight while wrecking the experience for the reader.)

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Rohl draws beautifully, with fine and supple lines that conjure unexpected horrors. The images glitter with a lightness of touch. There’s lots of paper showing, which makes them airy, though look closely and there are areas complex with mark-making (see above), like the tracks of birds in snow.

So, we have here grotesqueness in plenty, not hidden in shadows, but bright with forensic clarity. This is an unusual combination, horror rendered without darkness. It means the draftsmanship has to be faultless, and with Rohl, it always is.

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Poring over Rohl’s drawing of a beastly transformation (see above), is as compelling as staring into the workings of a pre-digital watch. You feel that the artist understands the anatomy as surely as though he had dissected a werewolf in a pathology lab. The image is utterly compelling, and yet it doesn’t bludgeon the viewer. Colour adds a little raw meat to the dish. Rohl’s palette through three of the four images, a dull green and red oxide, is spare and works hard. His black, when densely applied, is mesmerising, as in the five furiously scribbled patches of discharge from a butchered trunk, or in the slab of horizontal darkness through which a frosted and bloated fly, drunkenly careers.

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Finally, with an image of a snow-bound landscape that only black graves and fir-trees punctuate, with no fuss the artist nails the Northern European terrain of fairy tale, anchoring the drawings with a sense of place. Moreover, as a parting shot, something hard to define is coming at you out of the bristling ramparts of that terrible forest.

Clever work, to conjure dread with a pencil. But then Rohl is deft at effortlessly stage-managing his effects, including sound. In the top image, the droning of a blowfly, and above, the soundtrack to that ball-numbing wasteland of white… a deadly silence.

I would love to see what Johann Christian Rohl would make of the great M R James’ Ghost Stories of an Antiquary! He should certainly read them.

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In Part 2, I’ll be interviewing Johann

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