DRAWING IN DARKNESS

Evening Star, Issue 19551, 9 May 1927, Page 3

DRAWING IN DARKNESS

ARTIST AND UNSEEN FORCES STMBE AUTOMATIC ACTIQH “ Several actors and actresses, during recent months, have confessed to mo how, while on tho stage, they have been impelled by some force _ outside themselves to act a part a certain way, says Mr Hannen Swaffcr, author and journalist, and formerly editor of the ' People ’ in an article to the 'Daily Express.’ "Writers have told mo how ideas came to them as though sonio agency by their side was communicating,” continues Mr Swaffer. “Musicians talked to me about compositions they have dreamed, and then written down and published, and about music they have hoard sung or played by unseen powers in their rooms. “They have told mo because I had sympathy, and understood them. The outside world has known nothing of their confidences. I met, recently, a remarkable artist, known to the world for his mastery of technique, who openly confessed for publication that many of his drawings—they are to bo exhibited publicly at tho St. George’s Galleries, off llanover Square—were merely automatic, that he was the agency, or medium, through whom they were made. Who or what the communicating being, or force, is he does not know.

“This was Austin 0. Spare, who sprang into fame as a boy of sixteen, but who, for some years now, au exile from the comfortable life that ho formerly enjoyed, has been existing in a slum, 'cultivating tho occult, ‘ developing the sub-conscious,’ perfecting a new technique. AN EXILE FROM MAYFAIR.

“ I sat with him recently in his poverty-stricken room in a tenement house in the borough. There was just a rough bed, wireless apparatus scattered around on the floor, a book or two, and his drawings. Before the war ho lived in Mayfair; now his homo is in a slum, among London’s roughest characters.

“‘I have boon almost starving for six months,’ said Spare, ‘ and then I was taken ill. 1 would not use a charm to cure myself. If you remove one evil you induce another.’ “Spare talks of the occult as frankly as that, saying for instance, how, trying to master unseen forces, ho has even sought to produce rain. His father was a London policeman. He was born in Smithficld in 1888, and, at the ago of fourteen, entered a stainedglass factory in Kcnnington, spending his evenings at tho Lambeth School of Art. When sixteen, he won a scholarship at tho Royal College of Art. Soon after his father found one of his pen-and-ink drawings, which, unknown to tho boy, lie sent to tho Royal Academy. It was hung, with the result that the young artist was hailed as a genius. “Some of Spare’s ‘automatic drawings,’ done in pencil, remind mo of the work of Dore; others are rather like tho later work of Aubrey Beardsley. The draughtmauship, however, is, to my ipAul, more brilliant than any of which Beardsley or Dore was capable. WIDELY DIVERGENT SUBJECTS.

“Spare’s subjects are widely divergent. _ They pass from the noblest inspiration to tho most evil. Some transport to a high spiritual ecstasy, _ inducing belief in a high human destiny. Others are despairing in their revelation of human nature wodlocked to the animal world. In somo spirituality breathes among tho forms of satyrs. “All these drawings, says Mr Spare, aro super-normal. He does nob dogmatise’ about the method. Ho is experimenting. ‘ln some cases the ideas aro tho result of my inward psychical experiences,’ Air Spare told me, ‘ things I have not necessarily seen, or outivardly experienced. In others, the drawings aro automatic, started with no idea as to what form they shall take, and completed without conscious direction. “ ‘ Indeed, sometimes, when I have been drawjng while in a sort of dream, I have aivakened to find that it has been dark for a long time. I have been drawing, perhaps for hours, in the darkness, the most delicate work that I could not see.

“ ‘On other occasions, I have gone to bed and fallen asleep, lost in the mesh of somo vivid dream. Suddenly I have aivakened to find myself, not in bed, but in my chair, rapidly drawing away in the darkness, something of which I have never been conscious.’ WORK NOT UNDER CONTROL. “ On somo occasions, in order to do automatic drawings, Air Spare stares into a mirror and induces self-hypno-tism. In a hypnotic state, he sometimes goes on working for hours, awaking io find that ho has covered pages and pages full of tbo most beautiful, work. He cannot always control it. 'there aro periods, sometimes for months at a time, he says, when, receiving no promptings .from outside, he cannot work at all. At others, ho is unable to stop working. “‘Although it was my strong wish to do somo more drawings for the exhibition,’ ho said tbo other day, 1 ray pencil did not move for three months. On another occasion, I worked on in a dream state for twenty-four hours finishing a book of fifty pages. “ ‘ Unknown to themselves, I believe many artists are inspired by ouisido forces, or that they work through their sub-conscious mind. Tho development of these powers will open up a new world. I believe that ‘ Hamlet ’ was the result of a psychical of Shakespeare’s, which found expression in the act form be bad adopted, otherwise 3’ou cannot explain him.

“‘All significant art, I believe, comes from that source. It is inspiration revelations, spiritual truths which men express in tho different ways they havo developed. I am now trying to perfect a technique of automatic drawing, so that the best can lie brought out in me. If we study the sub-con-scious, wo have much to learn.

“ ‘ Prophecy and revelation are as possible to-day as they ever were. They can operate, if only yon induce the conditions. What the conditions are we must discover. Tho prophets and the seers were hermits. Because of circumstances, I have lived for months a hermit’s life. Poverty has made me live alone. It has been partly choice, partly compulsion. Tim result lias been psychic development.’ ”