Jake Fern Art

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My art training was a non-training. I left university with a First Class Honours in how to BS and play the game. I thought I'd 'won' but on leaving education reality hit me like a brick wall and totally floored me. That was the worst experience of my life but the best thing that ever happened to me. It was the start of a journey that 25 years later still continues. In that time I have lived in a tent in the foothills of the Himalayas for 6 months, spent a year saving tortoises in South Africa and 5 years living in a mud hut in a refugee camp in Sudan. Everything I have seen has confirmed to me that humanity has got something fundamentally wrong.. but I am not a pessimist. I have a deep faith.., not in any religion, but in the truth. Keats' words are my keystone in life; "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." These words guide me and keep me grounded. Fundamentally I am an anarchist, but not a proponent of the silly version of anarchy that we're presented with through the media. True anarchism proposes that natural harmony will result as the restrictive layers of state control and authoritarianism are abandoned. When the human soul is honoured and respected it will step up to the mark and shine.. but like any over disciplined child it currently whinces and cowers at a raised hand and shrinks from it's true, magical potential. Like all artists I try and reflect back that sense of wonder and beauty to the viewer so that on this journey we stray not too far from the path.