understanding the artist.

2005-05-11T19:49:00.000+01:00

I know how these things work. This whole psychological profiling bullshit. Gods know that they aren't truly accurate as to the soul. You might wonder how i know. I'll tell you. But it might not be the easiest thing to hear. You might then understand where the tortured part of my pseudonym comes from.

When i was little, and i mean the ages of five and six, my parents assumed i was always off playing make believe with my head. At seven, it was still normal for someone who is 'maladjusted' to society to do such things, but at eight my parents began to worry that the ghosts and animals i was frequently encountering and communicating with were all in my head. They didn't believe me despite my best efforts to convince them otherwise. So i was turfed off for psychometric evaluation and psychological assessment. I spent three months looking at inkblots and telling them what i could 'see' in them... they were of course just inkblots. But still no-one believed me about the things i could actually see. so i was deemed crazy and locked up in a psychiatric ward for a while. So many different methods were used to try to hammer it home that i couldn't see the things i see, including electro-convulsive therapy. Honestly, being there was enough to send me mental.

So i lied.

I said that i could no longer see the spirits and the dead, or the imprints left by deaths hand, or anything else. I was released just like that. Reconditioned and back ready in society to make my mark. Of course, i was expected to attend therapy for a couple of years, and seeing as i was now in secondary school, they'd cottoned onto the fact that im a dab hand with a paintbrush or a pen, so the obvious choice for them was to suggest art therapy. Meaning i 'express' my pent up emotion with the aid of art.... hmm... actually it backfired on them...
I suddenly found that i had a way of letting the world have a glimpse at the things i see that others don't without anyone ever having to believe it was real without them wanting to. Which suits me just fine... i mean... interpretation is 9/10ths of the picture right?
so as i got a bit older i got a bit more exposure.. and apparently my brooding sense of death and gore represents a troubled individual with violent tendencies...

gotta love psychologists right?

but hell, the rest of the world jumped for it... and the real truths remain plain out in the open... but unless you are like me you might not see them.

An Introduction

2005-05-11T11:13:00.000+01:00

My name is John Stewart.
I'm 23 years old and not exactly what one would consider to be normal. I operate under the pseudonym of 'the tortured artist'. I moved to lethbridge in October of 1999 to study art at Sheffield University and never left.
While i was there someone noticed some of my work, and it was sold just before i graduated. I had no reason to leave, so i found a place in Underthorpe. It's not great, but its home. It has somewhere to sleep live and draw and paint.
Two years on and i can still afford to do the odd free commission. Which is why this journal exists. I've taken on a free commission; to help out over at the University in Sheffield - a PhD student in psychology is doing a study partly funded by the art department into psychological profiles of art, subjects and artists and wants a live study in me. Who better than me? well... i can't comment, but i can't do this by halves. Which is why this is in existance. The guy wants to profile my personality and establish whether the way i see the world influences how i paint the world. He still won't get everything, there are some secrets human ears cannot and will not hear, so it will all go here, to be edited so its fit for comsumption.

lingering in lethbridge

understanding the artist.

An Introduction