Marcus and the Ancesters

Harris Smart, Editor, Subud Voice

My background was working class. My mother was lower middle class and my father was very much an East End Cockney boy. They met during the war and married. My father was drafted into the Merchant Navy, became very ill, and was invalided out.

They lived in a very small flat in London all through the blitz. I was conceived and born there. My father got a job as a postman. His aim was always to get out of London and they managed to get a transfer to a new town where we lived in a council house and I was sent to the local grammar school.

Unfortunately the early garden cities in England were literally designed to have the factories and the workers houses on one side and the managers’ houses on the other side. This was to do with the southeast prevailing winds, so that the smoke from the factories didn’t get blown onto the executives’ houses. This was real 30s planning.

So because I lived on the east side and had to cross the railway line. I had to run this gauntlet past the local secondary modern. In those days in England you took this 11 plus exam and if you passed you went to a grammar school and if you failed you went to the secondary modern.

If you went to the grammar school you wore a uniform. I remember cycling from our council estate, past this school to get over the railway bridge to the grammar school I was just attacked, names called and things thrown, and at the grammar school you encountered the most intolerable snobbery and class abuse.

So I was copping from both sides. I was getting beaten up and bullied form both sides. Quite a few writers have written about this. It was like a social experiment - working class people get educated. Their own class think they’re stuck up and the other class don’t want to accept them.

There was a lost generation without roots. It may be one of the reasons I was so ready to join something like Subud. You get snobbery and class in Subud but it gave me roots and sense of belonging I didn’t get when I was growing up. It was noticeable moving into another class.

HS: There are some interesting stories in your book about the influence of ancestors. You mention that for several generations your family was involved in ‘wood’ and this carries on now into the painting you are doing.

That came alive for me when I was writing the book. On my father’s side a long line of carpenters. They ran a successful carpentry shop in the East End. It seemed to skip a generation.

My brother became a carpenter and I use wood in my work. I work on wooden panels, I do relief work in wood, and I screw on, or nail on, or glue on wood.

My three-dimensional art - I don’t know how it started - I’d always done a little painting, small pieces, I never had a studio. When I decided to be a painter - inspired by a pop art show I saw - for some reason I decided to give it this sculptural aspect. Who knows, maybe I didn’t have any materials at the time. That became the direction I went in.

I remember thinking the first few pieces I did had this African art quality and when I started reading more about this African art - it was such a powerful drive. You see it in Picasso’s work. My work is a sort of cross between sculpture and painting. Maybe I find a funny shaped piece of wood and I lay things down and move them around and something looks good so I nail it down, add some colour, and something begins to emerge from that. The usual thing is people paint what they see but in my case I see what I’m doing.

In the beginning I have no idea where I’m going. There’s usually a point where what’s happening reminds me of an image, an archetypal image a dancer, a night-club hostess, a vase of flowers, Jesus Christ and I start to pursue that. It’s very satisfying for me. It’s analogous to the dream process.

The inner wants to tell you something and it takes these scraps and shards of information and makes them into a story. That’s what I enjoy with my work. I don’t know what I’m going to paint. Then I do the christening side, think up titles for them. I’ve done a lot of authority figures. Kings, princes, princesses, generals which is interesting.

Return to "Via Books" Home Page