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PHILOSOPHY |
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The first and most fundamental influence on my life, imagination and creative expression has been and continues to be the Norwegian landscape. It is the landscape of my childhood, my dreams and is in every sense my Home. I was born in London, then educated and trained in England. My career took me all over the world. I have experienced a wide range of cultures and environments. I have met a vast array of humans of every race, creed and status. Despite all of this, it is to the mountains and fjords of Norway that I always return. My first and constant obsession has been drawing, resulting in part from a childhood often devoid of human company. The isolation of an only child living on the edge of a fragmented family enabled me to create imaginary worlds and develop creative talents in place of skills in ordinary human interaction. A passion for sketching was augmented by a schooling in classical drawing followed by a higher education and career in Design. Whilst the Human world has often been a source of confusion and discomfort and loneliness my closest companion, the Natural world has never ceased to be a source of profound delight. I have found a common language in the constancy of man’s instinctive, usually unconscious response to nature’s laws and processes. The power of simple gesture as shown by the deliberate mark or symbol, be it a crude hand print on a cave wall or the most delicate brush stroke of a skilled calligrapher, demonstrates the intent and action of the human animal. I remain most fascinated by the simplest symbols - made with the simplest tools. If I have any so called “Mission” as an Artist, it is to communicate my experience of this extraordinary country to the world. Therefore both as an artist and as a man, I live constantly and simultaneously in two worlds: in a common reality and in the realm of my imagination; as both an urban sophisticate and as a hermit; whilst supremely mannered and able to be crudely simplistic; capable of being both jaded and naive, both passionate and detached. Most of what interests most people most of the time, is of little or no interest to me, yet I pursue the absolute. Whilst alienation is an integral part of my existence, my work has evolved in such a way that I need the support and contribution of those more connected to society. My work is solitary in conception but collective in its production and universal in its audience. The initial impact of my work is visual, but the texture, form and content create an equally powerful emotional and/ or kinaesthetic response. My work is inspired by the Norwegian landscape, constructed by Norwegians using materials found within that landscape and incorporating the climatic conditions of that environment. The results are international in appeal. If I have any understanding of what I hear commonly referred to as “Love”, it is how I feel about living and working in Norway. If I had to identify one aspect of my life for which i am most grateful, it would be for my childhood years spent on the edge of the Hardanger fjord. |
My work is inspired by the Norwegian landscape, constructed by Norwegians using materials found within that landscape and incorporating the climatic conditions of that environment. The results are international in appeal. If I have any understanding of what I hear commonly referred to as “Love”, it is how I feel about living and working in Norway. If I had to identify one aspect of my life for which i am most grateful, it would be for my childhood years spent on the edge of the Hardanger fjord. If I have any so called “Mission” as an Artist, it is to communicate my experience of this extraordinary country to the world. It was Nietzsche who observed that “one reason we love nature so much is that it has no opinions about us “ and in the novel The Magus, the landscape of Norway is described as being ‘profoundly indifferent’ to mankind. For someone whose life has been full of rules and regulations concerning appearance and behaviour, the turn of phrase , the state of a buttonhole, such non-judgmental disinterest comes as great relief to me. An upbringing full of seemingly arbitrary inconsistencies made the very basic rules of life on the edge of a Norwegian fjord easy to live by; rainwater was drawn from a well, food was caught from the sea and fuel cut from the forest. The landscape of my childhood is vast and ancient, the mountains and fjord existed long before and will exist long after my term on earth, but even though I have known it all my life it remains ultimately unknowable to me and remote as a lost paradise. The fjord in which I have swum and played is in fact an environment alien as another planet; the rocks on which I have played remain hard and irreducible. That I find it unceasingly beautiful does not matter, after all “at the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman ... the sunset is not created for my eyes nor does the natural world care for my response to its wonders. “ That science can describe it by mechanics, and religion by dogma makes no difference to me. All theories become irrelevant when the sense of insignificance that results from being confronted with such irrefutable evidence of my life’s inconsequence and brevity reduces the petty urgencies and concerns of my life to nothing. None of it is important, and if I have to courage to pursue this realisation to its logical conclusion, nothing is important - in the long run we are all dead. When this is truly understood and accepted, through the darkness a light dawns, if indeed nothing at all matters, then everything is as important as everything else, and it falls to me to make a decision what , for me, that is. So it begins... I choose this line over that, these colours and shapes, these words and those sounds - my choices will describe me and the responsibility for them lies with me alone. Ian Garlant |
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