Artist's Statement: Julian Swift on His People and Creatures of Straw

Straw people and animals are invisible in the countryside but not if they come into a city. The very thing they are made of is alien to city dwellers. Sadly, Cities are full of people who think that milk automatically arrives in plastic containers or that meat, somehow, just appears on supermarket shelves. At best they don't think or don't care how it gets there. As part of this food production chain, straw is well below their radar. The majority of people will only know it as a substance that has nothing to do with their lives. A minority are knowledgeable on just about every topic but it would be wishful to think that vast swathes of urban humanity are not obsessed with trivia and technology; how it can amuse them and what it can do for them.

It is this very human condition which allows me as an artist to play with the idea of creating a sub-strata of mystical creatures and people of straw who watch us from hedgerows or hillsides. In my imagination, they watch, bemused, when we pass through their world in our high-tech transport.

Once I had created them I couldn't resist giving them a hierarchy, a society of their own where some straw people are 'more equal than others'. The man/dog centaur is a law unto himself as is the 'angel' in 'a morning walk'. The freewheeling bogus generals in 'The Picnic' are beyond authority but others may fall under it. The creativity of straw men building 'sand men' in 'a day at the seaside' is facilitated by the figures kicking a ball around. These background people belong to a lower echelon but are somehow in control. There is a disquieting element in this painting which echoes human history where diligent but possibly less intelligent bureaucrats monitor creative people very closely. In most societies law-abiding, productive citizens are familiar with the control systems set up by administrative automatons whose primary means of measuring human behaviour is based on the 'common denominator'. In this way, the lower strata is the more powerful or the 'more equal'. It seems imperative to include this social anomaly in the world of straw people too. It is a theme capable of development.

Once down this road, I wondered why straw people couldn't have a religion. A painting not yet done but planned is 'The Nativity'. Here straw people gather around the 'Magi' wearing or carrying replica animal heads. These are either fashion accessories or badges of identity... or are they an attempt to emulate the human myth of the nativity in the stable? The woman holding the child already appears in 'Mother and child'. A potentially terrifying experience for a straw woman with one eye missing who bravely enters the human world of medical clinics because her child's leg has come off. The real 'sink estate' women in shell suits appear not to notice her difference to them. One look at the child would alarm them though.

What interests me about straw people is how little contact they need with humans. Everything they want is out there. They utilise what we throw away. If they find a bicycle with no tyres but the pedals still turn the back wheel, they'll use it to get around on or to carry their meagre possessions. They like to emulate us so if they find a box of matches and a packet of cigarettes left on a park bench they will attempt to smoke the cigarettes. Carelessly discarded tea bags by human picnickers are highly valued. They like tea. The generals in 'The picnic' are enjoying both. The old teapot must have come in handy as did some matches or a lighter with which to light a fire to boil a kettle. Obviously, they have to be careful not to get too close to fire. At what point I imbued them with the desire or need to eat and drink, I'm not sure. In theory, they have no physiology to cope with food or liquid but if I can give them a religion, why not everything else? I can only speculate where they found the Battenberg cake? Is it a leftover from a human picnic or do they venture into out-of-town shopping areas at night and raid supermarket bins for food beyond its 'best before date'? Which of the two generals will get the last piece?

Asking these questions about straw creatures from my imagination is ridiculous. They only become a reality on paper. In the first place because I saw two scarecrows in a farmer's field looking as though they were having a conversation. A slight breeze can do amazing things with a boiler suit filled with straw. One question I can't answer is why there are two types of dog. One type is fully formed as in the 'Straw hunting dogs' whereas others are made of sticks tied together to give them a very stiff-legged gait. Their heads are made of plastic bags tied at the neck. There may be an analogy with dogs in human society. Some are 'just there' as working dogs whereas others have become symbiotic human companions and are cosseted and admired for their form and speed. On the other hand, I could simply be having fun with a pencil. The dogs, however, form an important catalyst between the world of straw people and humans. In 'The morning walk' the very powerful real dog can see what its master can't see. The straw angel is even making friendly overtures to it.

It has been suggested that the straw people might be jealous of or aspire to our consumer-driven lifestyle. That they stand outside cities gazing in amazement at bright lights and tall buildings. I can see a series of paintings where they have ventured into cities and merge with the very poor. Would anyone notice them in the context? In a sense, the 'Mother and child' painting could be the forerunner of such a series. The 'Lottery winner' where a woman is trying to make herself look human so she can claim her winnings might be another. How could she spend her winnings and on what? Investment and bank accounts would be no more alien to her than they are to the 3 million humans in Britain who don't possess such things but could she write a cheque?... Could she use an ATM?... Is she literate enough to pass a driving test so she can view big houses in the comfort of her own car?... Could she control a powerful machine like a car?... What language does she speak? Is there really a hidden pathos in the painting to suggest that she has found a ticket which isn't worth anything? These are all daft questions.

Questions I am sometimes asked are:- (and this assumes the questioner suspends disbelief and ignores the fact that straw people are just a figment of my imagination)
"Where do they come from?"
"Are they made or are they born?"
"Are they strong?"
"Where do they get their clothes from?"
"Do they have sinister intentions towards us?"

The great thing about a fantasy world is that anything is possible. Straw people and animals could be made by humans, given life and set free to wander or they could happen spontaneously as in 'The awakening'. Their very ambiguity is the most appealing thing about them. They have been given socio-political significance by some... Do they echo the plight of all the poor underprivileged people in the world? I always have in mind film footage of African boys making amazing toys from things and materials which we in the 1st world would dismiss as rubbish or Indian children dismantling our old, worn out, computers in Mumbai. It would be easy for me to jump on this 'bandwagon' of social conscience and take credit for something I never envisaged. If the concept draws people's attention to the struggling poor of this planet then I would be pleased but this was never the purpose of the straw people. They are quite content with who they are and what they have.

Future paintings or drawings in this genre will highlight our 'throw away' society. Straw people are parallel with those humans who live on the touchline of an affluent society who are not as mentally bankrupt as some would have us believe. They simply value what happens next in a soap opera or the next new bit of technology more than life itself. Funnily enough, they are the very sector who gave rise to the idea of straw people. The two are so far apart outside the circle of human existence and endeavour they are almost standing next to one another.

Essentially People and creatures of straw are no more than a cryptic doodle destined to reflect our own fears and ambitions. They should be humorous. I reflect on my own origins and the veritable explosion of technology which has happened in my lifetime. Like most people of my age, I come from another planet where people had to 'make do and mend'. Working class people didn't have bank accounts or credit cards. They couldn't borrow on their future expected earnings to buy new things. All they had was their wages in cash which they brought home on a Thursday night. It had to last until the following Thursday or they went hungry. They were practical and inventive with food and other things they needed. I have a memory of my father building a cart so he could push his decorating ladders and tools to the next job. He found two big wheels and an axle off an old pram and fixed them to a wooden cart. Today a man would get a powerful hand drill from his extensive range of tools and drill the right sized hole through the wood but not then, not in that society. My father heated a piece of round metal in the fire and burnt a hole where he wanted it.

Today that man wouldn't even use something as 'low tech' as a handcart, he would simply put his tools in a van and drive to where he needs to use them. I suppose the world I grew up in was simpler and slower and harder. People in that world had no concept of mobile phones or the internet or cars boasting more technology than that which took a man to the moon. I wonder what my parents, would think of satellite navigation in a car or the e-mails I send to the other side of the world in seconds.

The world we know today, with all its technology is more fragile than we realise. The recent banking crisis was predicated on assumptions about the future. Similarly, the infrastructure of technology is predicated on assumptions about the availability of electrical power. Is it possible that one day we could all return to a world where we have to burn a hole through a piece of wood? Will we have to re-learn skills from the poor or the disenfranchised like the straw people?

I sometimes wonder if I am my own 'Straw Man'.

Julian Swift. 12th, December 2009