Dog Fighting Facts

 

John LeKay:  How long have you been painting for and do you use oils?

Joe Machine: I’ve been painting on and off for about eighteen years. I keep mostly to the same style as I always have, using events from my life, watering down acrylic, painting heavy with oils. I try and depict as much of my environment as possible, my version of the truth. It’s usually like that.

JL:  The one of the pit bull is very bloody and disturbing. What inspired this painting?

JM:  I painted this picture as a response to watching the 48^th dog fight at Southall Market, a gypsy horse market in London. My family are Romanies; and dog fighting, along with bare knuckle fights, cock fights and hare coursing, is part of English gypsy culture. Brutality of this sort is acceptable with the gypsy fraternity. I don’t endorse it, but it’s part of my past and something which I have had to work with over the years. After this contest (the one in the painting) I decided never to watch another dog fight. During the match, one of the dogs was mauled so badly it had to be put down afterwards. The other dog, the victor, ended up having one of its ears removed. I painted it as I remembered it. I had to do it this way. You don’t take sketches at dog fights. Romany people are very suspicious, even of their own kind. The title of the painting Until the last dog is hung relates to animals fighting to the death, as is usually the way.

 

JL:  Is the woman with beehive hairdo and red dress (with the Skeleton in a suit) a portrait of your mother?  Why the skeleton?

JM:  My mother’s last cigarette is a painting of my mother smoking herself to death. My mother died in 1995 in a cheap hotel in a suburb of Athens, while we were on holiday in Greece. I was very close to my mother. She had a heart condition that nobody knew about. I found her dead in her room one morning. Her death completely altered the course of my life. Up until then I had been involved in crime and thieving. I was self-motivated and mono-interested. After my mother’s death, I began writing and painting about my experiences; the fear of death and life became my subject matter. This painting – my mother is gaunt and stick thin, fag in hand, skeleton leering over her shoulder – was an attempt on my behalf to illustrate my fear. I had to paint my mother as I felt she was before she died.

  JL:  This one looks a little like Egon Schiele, or a deflated blowup doll. Who is the nude woman with the boney knees, yellow hair in a bun and choker?

JM:  The blonde woman in the choker is an ex-girlfriend. I could blather on about the destructive relationship I had with her but it is probably pointless. It’s a fairly early painting. I tried to show her as a two bob slag, which was what I thought of her at the time. Painting her and other women I have had relationships with is a way of working out insecurities attached to myself rather than other people. Painting this particular woman made me realise what I was actually trying to get at was my own cheapness. People who paint only paint themselves regardless of whatever else they might tell you. Any similarities to Schiele are accidental. I don’t look at other artists’ work. I don’t go to galleries. There’s a reason for this.

JL: What about other influences on your work?

JM:  I don’t like to be influenced, although it’s impossible to maintain complete originality. The style of my work depends more on my physical or financial situation. I work with few colours and mix them, usually because I can’t afford too much paint. My grandfather painted like this, and his work has influenced me more than any of the “old school” artists. Most modern painters are mugs because they are obsessed with being artists rather than finding meaning in what they are doing. What these people are really after is celebrity, even though they might say otherwise. They are compelled by a desperation for love and acceptance. They make caricatures out of themselves.

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JL: Who is the sailor with the sinewy oriental hooker in blue?

JM:   The depictions of the sailor are usually me. This is not so much from life.

JL:  Were you ever in the navy?  You seem to paint quite a few Navy pictures like the one of the sailor slashing the mans throat.

JM:  I never stood any chance of getting into the navy because of my criminal convictions. To be honest, I would never have even tried. I never had the bottle. I grew up in a navy town. Some of my school friends’ fathers were sailors. They were violent men. During my childhood I often saw these men drunk and fighting each other, sometimes with weapons. Some of my earliest memories are of violence. I remember chucking-out times in the seafront pubs on a Friday night. Blood all over the pavement, women screaming. For this reason, sailors have always frightened me. They turn up in my paintings so often because I like to address my vulnerability in relation to these men. When I resurrect these men, I often give them my face, probably because of my own involvement in violence and my nervous and often cowardly behaviour.

 

JL:  Who is the woman with the stockings sitting in the fancy red velvet chair?

JM:  This is a painting of my wife Elise, painted while I was out on bail in 2004. During six weeks, I managed to paint fifteen paintings and did around eighty drawings while I was sitting around waiting for the crown prosecution service to assess my case. In the end they threw it out due to ‘unreliable’ evidence against me. I painted Elise a lot because I spent almost all of that period with her. I do tend to paint women a lot more. They are easier than men

JL: Do you usually work on wood and do you work from photos, modals or memory?

JM:  As I said earlier, what materials I use depends on what I can afford. I started working on wood initially because I had a load of plywood lying around in my back yard. I made my own frames and bought some acrylic paint. In the past, I worked like this out of necessity, but it’s something that I’ve developed and carried on with, even when I’ve had a bit more cash. I work from a combination of life, sketches and painting from memory. I tend to paint people or scenes from my life.

 

 

JL:  I really like this one of your grandfather wearing trouser braces. Very intense. How has being a Romany affected your work?

JM: Personally I don’t care about factions. It’s possible to use cultural mindrites as an angle in the process of painting. I’ve done it before in paintings of my Grandfather.  But it’s actions which make work more interesting – not hiding behind someone else’s history. I see myself as a man who sometimes paints and sometimes writes, not as an artist or a criminal or a Romany. I’ve always had a lot of stuff projected onto me by my Romany peers, which hasn’t always been helpful. So much of that culture keeps vulnerability in the shadow. It’s definitely seen as a weakness. They never question the futility of punching another man’s head in. In this way, I’ve had to teach myself to be responsible. No one else was going to do it.

 

JL: You seem to employ a bit of sex and violence in your work. What is it about these subject matters that interest you and where did this derive from?

JM: I was exposed to adult sex and adult violence early on in my life. Living in a seaside town on the Cockney Riviera you can’t really avoid it, even as a child. I grew up around pubs and clubs. This was because my father had a business in the area. Violence is endemic. The general consensus amongst us kids was that we were just expected to accept it. I was never very good at that. Violence has always terrified me and seeing so much of it, as well as being a victim of it, has done nothing to dumb my fear of it. I have the same hatred of it now as I did when I was younger. Such fear devalues the individual. My early attempts to assert myself resulted in theft. Later I started to write and paint in an attempt to try to put sense to some of the things that had happened. I always cringe when I hear people say that art has saved them. Well, it never saved me, but it might have helped. Art has not reformed me. Art will not reform me. It’s just a tool. The individual must make a conscious decision not to adopt the mantle of the victim. I’ve tried to avoid this. Painting is a symptom of my own neurosis. There is nothing holy attached to it. I try and work with my problems by painting them, for my own sake and nobody else’s.

 JL:   This is very interesting work. Really appreciate your style of painting and the brutally honest subject matter.  I also find the cultural Romany aspects really fascinating and unique,  What else are you up too?

JM: I hope to continue painting and to get my paintings seen. If I can do this without compromising my values, I’ll be happy. Art movements are just platforms, manifestos are often rhetorical clap trap. The only important thing is to endure, to enjoy life and enjoy painting. All the while I feel this compulsion to exhibit these elements of my life, I’ll keep doing it.

 www.stuckism.com

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