When my plane with it’s destination Romania left Berlin (Germany) airport several months ago, I didn’t know that a few days earlier Gavin Mundy’s plane had started from London Heathrow with the same destination. Having four months of Care work with Romanian orphans ahead we met each other in the office of Teaching and Project Abroad. At this stage I also didn’t know that I just met an artistic, talented guy. We all saw a rather quiet young man, who could suddenly show a very special sense of humour we all liked. But no one could be expected to know that he would turn out to be a real artist.
For his work in the orphanage his amazing drawing skills became a real gold mine and made him a popular idol, no matter how old his admirers were. The older ones wanted him to draw letters in different writing styles, commenced with really artistic and colourful ones up to more geometrical graffiti ones. The little ones were happy with a picture of a sporty racing car or a portrait of themselves. Gavin noticed how they behaved when they watched him drawing: “They watched really attentive what I was doing. Some of them tried to imitate every single movement. They even copied the way I hold the pencil. It was great fun for all of us.” To encourage the children to draw is probably one of the best ways to therapy orphans with difficult stories. You could calm them down by drawing. The nice and cosy atmosphere during these hours was a worthwhile contrast to the hectic life in the orphanage, where life seems to follow Darwin’s theory of the “survival of the fittest” and children have to defend there rights to have a relatively peaceful life. A few weeks later we came up with the idea to decorate one of the floors in the orphanage to get rid of the cold atmosphere and create a feel good factor by turning this floor into a bright and clean room. After two stressful weeks of preparing the painting project was ready to start. Of course it was Gavin who conducted this part of the project, concordantly accepted as the expert. Searching for motifs, Gavin suggested we should cover the white walls with a wide variety of splats in different sizes and colours. Gavin drew the outlines on the walls minding the right proportions and directing us what colours to use. Due to this guidance our project was successfully completed and the children were able to enjoy their new environment and even continued the splats in other rooms.
Suspicious Mind Meanwhile we had become curious. During one of our evenings, listening to some kind of music trickling on us out of the radio, Gavin confessed that listening to music makes him see colours. We were impressed. It sounded suspiciously like a really artistic mind. How colourful, in the true sense of the word, must his world look like? We assailed him with questions: How does it look? Can you draw it? Does certain music produce certain colours? Gavin struggled with explaining.” It happens with any music, but sometime it is more intensive and among other things it depends on the volume. Certain sounds make certain colours. For example violins can cause red waves, but a trumpet, fuzzy yellow things like a sparkler. The picture is moving and therefore not portrayable. It’s like a digital animation”. Only later we get to know that there is a name for this phenomenon: Synaesthesia. That is a neurological mixing of senses. It can also comprise other characteristics like hearing colours, seeing sounds or tasting tactile sensation. That means that one perception awakes another. Famous artists from every genre have been/are synaesthetes, as for instance Beethoven. So, we started to wonder more and more about Gavin. What is his story? What is going on in his head? Where did he learn to draw and paint like this? Where do his ideas come from? I think it’s time to lift all these secrets.
“I Just Did It” Gavin Mundy was born in 1975 in London. As his grand father had been an artist as well and Gavin grew up with his pictures from childhood on, they awakened the wish to create art like this. Today he cannot remember a time without drawing. At the same time it was not the only dream or his declared aim and career aspiration to become a painter. “ I just did it”. Eventually this passion leaded him to study graphic design. Among others this was followed by a job in a London art gallery and some design work as well. Gradually he realised that that was not what he wanted to do. His work should have something to do with real art and not just be graphic advertising. He thought of alternatives and finally he decided on art therapy. On the one hand there is a connection to drawing and on the other hand this kind of work seemed more useful to him. The mixture of art and science is also an intriguing aspect. To gain some experience in Care work Gavin decided to come to Romania and work with orphans. He opted for Romania because he had been here a few years ago, was fascinated by this country and wanted to come back.
Maturing of Ideas Beyond question Romania with its spectacular nature and its huge contrasts between the beauty of old buildings and the poverty and suffering on the streets is the ideal destination for someone who is always looking out for subjects to draw. In front of a panorama, where artistically untalented people would say: “I wish I could draw that”, Gavin just says to himself “I have to draw this”. Though, that does not mean that he is freed from making mistakes or that he has a universally valid concept how to do it. ”You do it, to find out how to do it”. Every picture is a learning experience as well as testing your skills. Not every experience leads to a painting. Sometimes there is a period of just collecting ideas for pictures. He may keep them in mind for a couple of years without painting them, because there is either not enough time or the ideas need to mature till he dares to commit them on paper. However, afterwards there might be a creative period of intense work where all the ideas seem to flow out.
Social Critic or Bent on Pleasure? Gavin believes that art can express, inspire and/or educate. In the first place he draws for the pleasure of it and to make himself understand all the little miracles of nature. Water for instance can appear in so many different forms, whether drops, a lake, a waterfall, the sea or just ice: “water is a weird thing.” One criterion for a good picture is if Gavin gets the impression that he learnt something by painting. If there is anything he wants to express then it is his respect and admiration for everything that surrounds us, yet daily routine makes people become ignorant against the beauty of things “Sometimes I’m fascinated by every day subjects, which people don’t even seem to notice”. In this case Gavin becomes a social critic and wants to educate them through his pictures. In doing so it is not his purpose to gain peoples laudation. “ I appreciate peoples respect for the detail in my work but it’s the subject itself that I want people to consider”…“I want to show people the way I see things and why I find them fascinating” His favourite motifs are diverse. Starting with space art, fantasy and science fiction, to animals and landscapes. Often he encounters incomprehension about this large variety of interests. People are used to painters specialising in a certain theme, but to Gavin there are so many amazing subjects that it would be a shame just to concentrate on one. Some of you may ask: “How come that someone is interested in drawing fantasy and science fiction art”? Gavin answers: “It is just the fascination of stretching your imagination. It gives you the chance to make things up and presume how our future world or another planet might look like. It is refreshing if you mix different art disciplines such as human figures and still life”. Moreover in both fields its a good opportunity to improve your technical skills and push your understanding as everything has to look realistic even if it’s just a creation of your mind. If you look at Gavin’s pictures, most of them painted with acrylics, it is clearly visible that he managed this task very well. The “unknown origin” even affords satisfaction in the observer, as probably everyone wondered why aliens are always presented as little white dolls with huge eyes. Gavin’s picture shows a weird creature with a lot of arms or tentacles and you can neither define if there is a head or eyes nor if they are artificial hoses or actually some kind of natural material. There is still space for imagination, but it leads you back to the fact that no one knows what an alien looks like. The real subjects like animals and landscapes are not less impressive, drawn with a perfection that could make you believe you are looking at a photograph. No matter if you take the Siberian tiger, which stalks majestically through the snow or the icebergs of Iceland mirroring clear and blue in a lake, you always get the character of the painted subject and understand how it would feel watching it in reality. So contrary to the pleasure of experimenting it were always subjects, which formed the base for Gavin’s painting. He describes modern art, where pictures are dominated by shapes and dashes of colours as not satisfying for him although he concedes it a place in history.
However Digital art, which is created on a computer, is also part of Gavin’s artistic work. Though he misses the tactile sensation he agrees some aspects are easier, which for some can lead to lifeless work. But Gavin strongly disagrees with people saying that Digital art is not real art. “Its not like I just press a button and the computer does it for me, the computer is just another tool after all. Digital art shouldn’t be any worse artistically because it’s done on a computer than a writer’s work because it’s typed on a word processor. You use the same skills and principles as hundreds of years ago”.
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