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Class
of 56
by James Cullen
It is
believed that our basic personality and character are already set at
birth. It must then be the influence of circumstance and the individuals
involved that emerge as the major source of inspiration to personal
change and the resulting individual.
The Self portrait “A Class of 56” sets out to explore that
theory and is so named to imply learning with and from those individuals
it examines. It is necessarily anecdotal and presents its case in cartoon
form, bridging experience to incident like a story board bouncing literally
from one frame to another.
The work explores the visual effects of combining photographic imagery
with selected type that best relates to the subject matter. It is the
intention of each work to best personify the subject by representing
them within a book cover, a film advert or within a medium that sits
comfortably with the character profile.
The subjects begin with the male parent and ends with the son. The journey
between embraces individuals varying dramatically in both professions
and philosophy but all of who may well have influenced the one thing
they all had in common, that being the artist. The individual works
question a wide variety of relationships that can evolve. The Medicine
Man for instance, refers to the artist’s doctor who while having
been necessarily physically intimate has no emotional relationship what
so ever yet never the less has influence over the way the artist considers
his own health.
The series is designed to challenge the observer with a kaleidoscopic
visual impact that compares the complexities of individuality with that
of symbolic imagery contained within its narrative.
Just as I am woven irrevocably into their lives of at least the ones that really existed, so are they in mine. I have therefore transformed my memorabilia, family photos and friendly snap shots into a fantasy of films and Novels.
I have provided my cast with extravagant images that best relate to the parts they have acted out with me. A list of films and novels and comic notions, that relate to specific memories of specific individuals from whom I have gained so much. But I have also included real fantasies because I have in my youth identified, like all young folk with the icons of the times that have been role models of a different kind. Over the years these have merged with my real people to become just one long uninterrupted memory. If I was to see my life flash before me then this is what I would see. It is for that reason I have called this series of fifty-six portraits of people who have made a positive difference to the way I feel, the way I think or just the way I remember things. My adult life began in 1956 with my leaving home at fourteen to go to the college of art. The series was produced in the year I became fifty-six coinciding with a period of deep re-evaluation of my work. It became an obsession during that year taking exactly a year to produce from my 56th birthday up until my fifty-seventh such was the obsession that it was the only work produced.
Copyright © 2007 James Cullen All Rights Reserved