Cy Gavin

That's the thing about that kind of work is that I think to read it in the way that it was resonant in its time requires information, a lot of information, actually.

I enjoy that.

I enjoy getting books and reading about what I'm looking at from bygone times.

Yeah, I think that those same, I mean, painted by human beings, I think what has really shifted hugely in terms of like what is painted or what people think of as worthy of being painted or whatever is the accessibility of materials.

And yeah, and I think I was just even thinking about this conversation of like painting, like what is painting, like what is painting?

And like, you know, 17,000 years ago, you know, that's when the skull caves were.

And it's like, we don't understand exactly what, how those images were resonant in that time.

They're clearly meaningful for whoever made them.

I don't think they lose value for not being able to decode them.

I don't feel so arrogant as to think I understand like what situation produced the painting that I didn't make.

Even myself, I'm like, what made this?

as a human being, not as a person painting, as a human being, if I'm puzzling something or if it matters to me in some kind of way, it's going to be a thing I talk about.

It's a thing that will probably come out in the studio.

And it is not so contrived as to be like, I'm going to do this thing that will change the way that this site is seen.

It just doesn't work like that.

It would have when I was younger, where I think actually to use this ugly word, I think that's where art can become propaganda.

Yeah.

And I really struggled as a young person to be like, so like who painted these religious, like I want to look at these paintings at face value as just great artworks.

But then there's also this underpinning of like who's funding them, the kind of actions of the church that maybe they're working for and how the person making it wasn't even kind of seen in a good light by those churches.

I think it can be a component.