Katie Hopkins and a new year resolution

‘Feed the Goat and he will score!’ That was what Manchester City fans of a certain vintage used to chant/sing of our legendary striker, Shaun Goater, who banged in 84 goals in 184 appearances for the club.

But it occurred to me today that it could equally be said of internet trolls: feed them, and they will score. Starve them, and they will die.

The trigger for this was waking this morning to find that Katie Hopkins was trending on Twitter once more. At which ‘news’ my heart fell, but I admit to also clicking to find out just why.

Now Hopkins is a remarkable specimen who makes a living – and a pretty good one – from being vile.

It is an unfortunate fact of the world we live in that the internet in particular allows trolls not merely to survive, but to thrive.

Imagine for a moment what would have happened today if nobody had retweeted Hopkins’s latest bout of bile; if nobody had commented on it; if no petitions had been started; if nobody had clicked on the relevant links: what would have happened?

The reality is that Hopkins and her ilk feed on our outrage. And I make no apology – I can be as outraged as the next person.

I can read tweets and other things, and react before my brain has chance to render me sensible. I can also thus allow my knee to jerk like the next person – and I’m not proud of it.

Today’s comments were about Scots and Ebola – and they were bang out of order.

But it’s also slightly disturbing to see so many people believing that when someone talks derisively of any group (in this case, Scots) it’s racist.

It’s not – and no, you cannot ‘harass’ an entire people, as someone suggested when I raised this on social media earlier today.

We should be grateful for that. No matter how ‘right on’ we want to be ourselves, we should not welcome or encourage the state to further demonise free speech.

Incitement is illegal: calling the Scottish people ‘sweaty socks’ and pretending that the Scottish NHS is inadequate is not. And nor should it be.

There is a danger that, the more we evolve – or some of us, at least – the more we forget the common sense of knowing that, however unpleasant such terms are, they are not and should never be made illegal.

For goodness sake – under what law?

Can we no longer refer to the Germans as ‘Krauts’ of the French as ‘Frogs’?

Personally, I wouldn’t. But I’d be deeply worried if we actually made such phrases – and more – of themselves illegal.

Just as I’d be damned worried if we made the expression of racism – or homophobia or sexism or any hatred on the basis of religion of ability/disability/size illegal.

Think about that: do you really believe that outlawing words and sentiments, creating – in effect – thought crimes – is actually the basis for a healthy and whole society?

But this isn’t just about Scottish people. Hopkins has long form for targeting many groups, including fat people. Now I’m far from skinny myself: am I calling for her to be indicted on the basis of some imagined law? Absolutely not.

After all, if I did, it would rather stop me calling her a pathetic, ugly (in the spiritual sense) little cunt ... although clearly facts are on my side. But then again, I’m fat by today’s un-Rubenesque standards. And ain’t that the truth.

I have been bullied on the basis for almost half a century. Well, at least until a burst of confidence saw off the trolls before they dared comment.

And there indeed is a lesson.

But in the here and now, I do find myself wondering whether, after packing her children off to bed at night, Hopkins cries into a glass of wine at what her life and work mean. I cannot personally imagine making a living out of being such a vile individual. I cannot imagine having such a lack of personal morals/ethics.

But that’s the world we live in, where such people are magnified my both mass media and social media.

Which is precisely why I say that there’s an easy solution.

Those of you who have read this blog for some time will know that I do not do new year resolutions. But I’m changing tack this time around.

I will, in 2015, try my damnedest not to feed the trolls. I politely suggest that you all try to do the same, no matter how outraged you – and I – are by what they say.

That is the way to get rid of the nasty little fuckers. Not by petitions that give them far greater credence than they should ever have.

At the end of the day, why would you give oxygen to a troll?

Discovering art in the internet age

Short and Stout by Susan Harrell

After musing over the merits of this year’s Turner Prize nominees – and trying to remain open-minded and positive – I was left not with any sense of elation or revelation, but certainly with a need to go back and look at some rather more ‘traditional’ work.

If the big galleries seem to obsess about the latest trend in conceptual art, then the screen on your desk or your smartphone can provide a door to a world where painting and drawing and printing are alive and well – and most certainly not just ‘stuck in the past’.

Technologies may change, new materials may be developed, but that doesn’t have to mean that the only way to approach art in today’s world is a dumbing-down of traditional art skills: rather, it can provide the chance to explore new ways of creating visual images.

Moscow Taxi by Mattias Adolfsson

And so, remembering August’s exercise, which came about as a direct response to an online conversation where someone was voicing the doubt that any real art existed any more, here is another set of brief introductions to artists and their work that I have encountered in cyberspace.

They deliberately range across style, subject and medium – and also place: one of the great advantages of the internet is that it allows us to find things from the other side of the world that we should not otherwise be likely to know about.

But then again, art is a universal.

Southwold by Annie Cowdrey

Annie Cowdrey’s work is varied, from pen and ink to oil to watercolour to lino cuts; while her subjects range from landscape to portraiture.

Based in the south west of France (lucky, lucky her), she maintains a particular interest in the processes of art.

It’s well worth reading any notes she makes on works: for instance, her comments on how working on a portrait is not just about the subject but about the artist themselves, is a fascinating idea.

Three Trees by Annie Cowdrey

It’s so easy to view the artist simply as a conduit when it comes to portrayals of other people, but inevitably part of the painter comes through in the subject.

Her works in white ink on black paper – particularly those featuring trees – have a ghostly and almost mythical quality. They’re so simple, one might think, but they are also so effective that they stay long in the mind.

Personally, they instantly conjure childhood journeys from Tebay to Newbiggin on dark nights, when the car lights lit up the skeletal trees ahead.

Roy's lillies

You can follow Annie in Twitter at @anniethepainter. And find out more at anniethepainter.com.

@fabartstuff is different to anything in the realm of art that I’ve written about previously.

This is a three-way, Twitter collaboration between Dr Theresa Porrett, who works in the NHS supporting nurse specialists, and describes herself as a “would-be photo journalist”, health policy analyst, writer and commentator Roy Lilley, and digital professional Fran Maher.

Their feed offers a range of art-related tweets, including retweets of works by various artists, but it also includes Lilley’s own iPad pictures, which are frankly amazing.

His results are put into particularly sharp perspective by my own rather clumsy digital efforts – ‘how on earth do you even find a stylus that works properly on an iPad?’ I find myself asking, every time a new work pops up on my Twitter feed.

St Paul's by Roy Lilley

And that is no minor question. But even such a technology-related matter doesn’t alter the basic point that, the tech aside, he’s simply a damned good artist.

Although he also paints traditional watercolours too, Lilley’s portraits and landscapes done on the tablet have a distinctive and highly effective style, and are a prefect illustration of what I mean by new technologies not meaning a waning of skills.

@fabartstuff is new, but what it also shows is just how much talent for and love of art there is out there, across all walks of life – and also how the internet can offer us a portal both to discover and share a wide range of art.

Washed Clean by Susan Harrell

Meanwhile, taking a leap across The Pond, Susan Harrell is a self-trained oil painter from North Carolina, who creates photorealistic works on canvas, wood and aluminium.

I’ve loved photorealism since my teens, and these works simply make me awed at the effect.

Her work ranges across subjects, but it’s in her still life paintings where the approach really works – not least in her sometimes quirky compositions and unusual takes on otherwise traditional subjects.

In the 2013 oil on panel, Washed Clean, for instance, she takes a very conventional bunch of red grapes, but gives it a distinctly modern twist by painting it from a bird’s eye view, in a metal colander, gaining wonderful light, textures and reflections in the process.

Three's Company by Susan Harrell

Short and Stout is a beautifully-realised picture of an old-fashioned, stove-top kettle – but standing outside, so that the sky and landscape are reflected in the curved metal.

Three’s Company takes a trio of apples, but this is no cliché. Instead, she paints two of them in a damp plastic bag that is clinging, in places, to the fruits.

Follow Susan at ‪@susanharrellart and find out more about her work at www.susanharrell.com. 

David Stamp hails from Plymouth and is now based on the other side of the Tamar in Cornwall.

Self taught, he works in acrylic, watercolour and mixed media.

We Have Green Light by David Stamp

We Have the Green Light – a mixed-media, semi-abstract work – is indicative of the light that he conveys in his flower paintings.

And here seems the perfect moment to mention another little point: David’s subjects matters of choice include flowers – surely a ‘feminine’ subject, while Susan Harrell’s photorealism is a style that is most often associated with male artists.

The reality is that art is a world where we can find such stereotypical and limiting ideas being happily ignored, as artists find and develop the styles that suit them – not on the basis of preconceived gender roles.

Market Jew Street, Penzanze by David Stamp

But back to David’s work. The mixed-media, semi-abstract approach is not just to be found in the flower paintings.

Market Jew Street, Penzance (the name comes from the Cornish, Marghas Yow, which means Thursday Market), includes aspects of collage and, as David himself challenges viewers: “spot the tin mine chimney in the centre”.

How much more Cornish can you get?

To find out more, David’s own website is at ‪davidstamp.co.uk‪, while he tweets at @stamper485‪.

The sheer breadth of art that you can find online is illustrated by ‪@GardenGallery2, which‪ is the Twitter feed for Frances, a Derbyshire-based artist who creates felted art, most of which is inspired by the wildlife in that county.

Felted Hare by Garden Gallery

This is art that is craft-based – which would have been looked down on snootily in the past.

The works produced have lovely colour, while the felting provides textural interests that Frances matches extremely well to her subjects.

Frances doesn’t appear to have any obvious outlet for selling her works, so – and I’m guessing here – for her, this seems to be mainly a hobby.

It’s another way of seeing that the desire to create goes far beyond the walls of galleries and beyond those who studied at art school.

The internet offers the chance to explore a hugely democratic world of art.

‪Check out (and ‘like’!) her Facebook page for more examples of her work.

Raygun by Mattias Adolfsson

Mattias Adolfsson is a freelance illustrator from Sweden, producing some highly imaginative – and fun – ink drawings and, with these, some exquisite books.

Raygun, for instance, brings to mind steampunk, but then gives it a delightful, fantastical spin by turning a sci-fi hand weapon into a dragon.

Similarly, Unorthodox Friendship takes the idea of a boy meeting a dinosaur and turns that on its head by making both of them robots.

These works have real charm and humour, while his blog is a wonderful insight into an artist’s sketchbooks: Moscow Taxi is gloriously, bonkersly detailed – something that’s far from unique in Mattias’s work.

Unorthodox Friendship by Mattias Adopfsson

Ilustration is a particular art form, but what you find when looking at works like these is that it also provokes another way of examining that old question about what constitutes art, particularly when it comes to highly graphic work.

When I was in my teens and my teachers were busy mapping out a career path for me as a graphic artist, I couldn’t see that as having any link with ‘fine art’. Or put another way, with what I considered to be ‘real’ art.

Knight by Roy Lilley

Nowadays, I look at works like this and conclude that they’re all art, and that one thing that conceptual art achieves, oddly enough, is to help to eliminate some of the old definitions that created a sort of artistic caste system.

And after all, who paints history or mythological or religious scenes any more?

So whether it’s Mattias’s illustrations or Garden Gallery’s felted hares or Roy Lilley’s digital creations, it’s all art: simples.

You’ll find Mattias’s blog at mattiasa.blogspot.co.uk and you can follow him on Twitter at ‪@MattiasInk‪.