It is high time that I came to grips with a crucial distinction, which has become clear in my mind since watching the film I mentioned yesterday about the work of Maggie Hambling. I have often thought of my work as having a kind of “symbolic” character, in which specific images can be read as standing for general ideas and experiences. On several occasions my wife has commented on the obscurity of the references within my work, and her comments have reminded my of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s comments about the impossibility of a “private language”.
Symbols earn that title by the fact that their significance is shared within a community of people. The import of a symbol is not self-evident. If its meaning is only decipherable by one person (or even a very small clique) then instead of serving as a “window” that permits us to enter into another area of experience, it remains a “screen” which separates its user from those who are not privy to its private meaning.
This is a problem with some of the work of Stanley Spencer, although these days commentary on the meaning for him of personal symbolic images, such as “Cookham”, has become disseminated widely. A large portion of the work of Marc Chagall needs to be accompanied by a key for the viewer.
I have been wondering whether perhaps too many of my images really need to be rendered rather more transparent. Or it is the case that, on the other hand, I need the responses of the detached viewer in order to discover for myself what is really going on? What, for example, does “Almscliff Crag” actually represent?