Interview with the artist. Nicola Smith interviews Michael Horsnall

What compels you to make art Michael?

I have this inner compulsion to allow the beauty and ecstasy of life to pour through me. I like the process of poetics and part of me just likes to have fun!

How do you go about starting a new piece of work?

I have this inner urge that keeps me turning stuff over. If I don't actively allow that force it makes me unhappy-it seems to have its own dynamic. I've always been doing outdoor artwork, poetry and painting though spasmodically. Being here at university has allowed me to become more prolific and productive-it also allows me to call myself an artist. Three years ago I dreamed of being an artist and now I just call myself one.

Do you tend to do a lot of Artist research before you make a piece?

I've had an interest in art from an early age so having such a large mental history of artwork means I can just look at something and know what resonates within me. When I come to do things, when I look at artists to see if they strike a chord within me-I'm really searching for fellow travellers..if they strike a chord then I'll discover more about them..Art for me isn't just about ideas, though I am interested in what other people think; what critics think- I'm only really interested in what passes through me.

I see you work in various different mediums-painting, outdoor installation. Do you see these as seperate themes as well as different mediums?

To me its all the same thing! I would call myself a landscape painter; I paint inner landscapes and I work in the landscape itself. Different levels of me engage in different aspects though. There is a light hearted enquiring level to my process and then there's the underlying roots where the visceral, primal and spiritual are engaged. I just have this underlying impulse-I thought that being here (university) would allow me to vent it but it just gets bigger! If I have a tiny idea, if it comes from that creative centre then it will expand-if a seed is planted properly then it will grow-I just go round watering seeds!

I can see that your work takes Religion as an underlying theme. What is it that you want to convey?

I have a mystical drive myself and I look for it in other artists- Beuys, Rothko,Kiefer they all have that same sense of being. I like to put a sense of delight into my work-Gods delight in the world-hence the huge expression,the large scale outoor pieces. The religious aspect comes from my own being. I applied to come to university here after the creative experience of an 8 day silent retreat along the line of Ignatius of Loyola-he was strongly interested in the link between spirituality and imagination. I find it difficult to deal with distractions and sidetracks from this theme-some work can be serendipitous of course-most is in fact- but what I need is to stick to my main train of thought.

How do you find creating artwork now that you have the university at your disposal?

This(studio) space is where I say "This is my thumbprint" Only now I can call this stuff art. Most men have their sheds at the end of the garden, I have mine here! Although I paint here, my outdoor installations are what I love. I have a strong impulse to get away, to get out and do something when I'm stuck in here..I'm like a yacht with a big sail but a very heavy anchor-this is part of my anchor, here. A few other good things about being at University are that I get the legitimating use of a student card, an adequate studio space, and I get to call myself an artist!

You title every piece of Art you make-How important is titling to you?

Labelling is key to my work and part of it. labelling refers to my other pastime which is poetry and emphasises that what I'm doing is fundamentally about poetics. Also that we are here partly just playing the gallery game of something being art if it is called art-so I call things art by naming them. This means that I can definitely call my readymade stuff art- to call it art though I must have first personally understood the process and the frame of reference-The way the gallery sanctifies objects as art is really interesting.
I also like to tell stories and parables, weaving religious symbolism into my art. When I label something I label its significance for myself as well as indicating significance to the viewer-its the same as poetry, will the word hold its meaning?

You seem to work on a large scale, both in your paintings and outdoor installations-why is that?

Theres a 'big' streak in me! Ever since I was a child I've been wanting to make things. There's an odd imbalance in me; I often try to confine myself, make myself small, because I don't have confidence in myself. But it never works! Instead of confining myself and my work to a small scale I have realised I need to make things big. The bigger a thing you do, the more people can take pleasure from it...I like interacting with ordinary people at the level of joy and and creativity that is in them..I believe in life giving, life affirming..its all of us together you know.

When you interact with the general public do they usually enjoy your work or do you get a lot of criticism?

I'm a lot happier talking with passers by than I am sitting in seminars! (The people have no expectations I guess!) I'm not put off by any bad criticsm because when something sings for me I know it will for others-usually my outdoor work intrigues people-I guess if they all hated it then I'd pack it in!...Seminars and tutorials are not often enjoyable experiences for me. I tend to get defensive and I don't like explaining my work. In fact I find it rather stupid and disrespectful of people to demand of me why I have made something -or what a piece of work 'means' I don't think there is an answer to "what does it mean?" the question is stupid. On the other hand sometimes seminars can give useful insights.

What do you want your viewers to take away with them?

Simple pleasure and amusement mainly-I'm interested in what gives or brings life! Work expresses my being and if I do the work I can sleep at night. This means I make art because I need to. But the work isn't the important part but often an attempt to articulate the beauty thats inside a person..so when you are struck by the beauty of a line of silver flags across the land that beauty is inside you-its from you not from the work. Thats why I like talking with passers by-I can see the beauty in them.

Put out more flags: Hells Mouth Bay Abersoch 2007

Put out more flags is my largest and most ambitious outdoor work to date. I enjoyed this project like no other as it was hugely interactive with many people helping with the erection and unfurling of the flags as well as coming to view and play with the piece which was ephemeral as the tide and only in place for seven hours. The delight lay chiefly in the serendipitous nature of the project-good weather conditions being paramount. As with most of my outdoor projects I insert myself into them either anonymously as a passer by or overtly as the maker. Overall the work was well recieved with the shimmering light and the wind picking up on the elemental forces of delight that attract souls to this place.

'Events inside a chalice' March 3rd 2008 found objects and plinth

Events inside a chalice is my most recent indoor work and marks a shift into the more self conscious mode of relating text to object and of reprocessing the old surrealist 'trick' of presenting several possible resonances simultaneously. Here we see the bread and wine but where is the chalice? What does the chalice refer to? is it the symbol of the word in religious imagery or is it the cube of the gallery which focuses the attention-is the bread and wine made sacred by man or by God? This kind of parabling is made possible within Post modern culture as the monolithic ly coercive meanings fall away and we are left freely to ponder-which was the very manner in which the parables were told- with all their subversive, deconstructionist effect...Jesus Christ-the great iconoclast.

'The Parable of the Sower' - summer 2006- many people,a beach,5kg glass stones.

Much of my work involves story telling and parable. Here in 'Parable of the sower' (Hells Mouth Bay 2006) I have sown the beach with 5kg glass jewels and then photographed passers by picking them up and taking them home as treasured possessions. I then returned from my holiday with a bucket containing 5kg sand. The theme in a sense echo's Fernando Torres 'grief work ' which I tremendously admire but the empasis is not on sorrow but upon quiet joy-hence the subtitle of the parable (sand into glass -sorrow into joy) A key point of this work is that none of the participants in the parable except me was aware of the plot-this means that the pleasure was simple, real and lasting-from my point of view one could not more completely erase the presence of the artist than this.. One family observing the whole process came to ask me the next day as I was out checking the beach again.On hearing the explaination the man turned to his wife and said: "See I told you he was either an artist or a nutter!"
Parable enables us to carry profound issues into the postmodern world (like Rothko) but without the aggrandisment.