We’re incredibly honoured to feature “Augury Woods,” a unique photography series by internationally renowned (ex) illustrator, artist and now photographer, Jasper Goodall. Jasper rose to the attention of the creative community through his seminal work for fashion and culture magazine The Face in the 2000’s. His artwork was widely referenced and helped influence a generation of image makers, paving the way for illustration to become as fashionable as it is today.
After stepping away from the creative arena for some years, he gives us his account of finding his way back into a renewed and very different creative practice, along with his insights on decadence, life, healing, and growth.
To see more of his extraordinary work, please visit Jaspergoodall.com.
Decadent: Hi Jasper, and welcome to Decadent. Getting straight to it, what does ‘Decadent’ mean to you?
Jasper: I suppose I have had a conflicted relationship with decadence over my creative years. When asked the question ‘what is the most decadent thing I have done, I don’t have much of an answer – perhaps I had fantasies of decadence that I never actually lived, and the fantasies were articulated through my artwork. I always believed that I what I did when I was an ‘illustrator’ (I prefer to think I was an ‘image maker’ because I was never wholly commercial) was a kind of fantasy art. A different kind to your 80’s sci fi/fantasy but nevertheless I dealt in fantasies – and often these were of a sexual nature. So in many ways the most decadent thing I have done is – make the artwork that I made between 2000 and around 2014.
It was in fact the decadence of this work that caused me to cease making it altogether for some time. The overtly erotic tone always caused me a degree of discomfort and I was in a more or less continual conflict with myself about the content, the morality of it, what others felt about it. If you are unaware of the work I’m referring to there is a small archive on my website here https:// www.jaspergoodall.com/archive#/the-erotic/ but a google search of my name will give you all you need to know.
This moral conflict is perhaps surprising given that we are constantly presented with hyper sexualised imagery in the mainstream world of music videos, fashion and even more so on social media platforms; in a real sense our media is more overtly decadent that ever. However when you realise that I was brought up in the 70’s by a radical feminist artist (my mother) and many of the children I hung out with were brought up the same, you can see how I might have reached a point of internal conflict with my work.
From a intra psychic point of view I had a kind of war going on. It was a battle of two forces with ‘little me’ in the middle: After the death of my mother (I was 25) a rebel part of me began to manifest. This rebel was hugely in favour of decadence, wanted to fly in the face of what it saw as prudish and pious morals, was absolutely anti censorious and wanted to celebrate sexual excess. I venerated 60’s pulp comic covers and 80’s gore movies for their wholesale lack of giving a sh*t about morals or political correcteness. It was the antithesis of how I grew up. But in opposition to this rebel was a stern and disapproving voice – this was my internalised mother, and this part of me made me feel really ashamed of myself. This ashamed part was a dismal and forlorn aspect who felt awful. To feel better he would side with the rebel to say ‘fuck you mother!’ But he was never quite sure of his bravado and before long would begin to feel ashamed again!
You can see this dynamic in people everywhere – its a classic, particularly prevalent in those with a religious upbringing – we’ve all heard of catholic guilt, but you’ll see it in anyone who is at odds with a strong childhood paradigm – rebel, shame, rebel, shame.
After many years of this dynamic I just got so tired that I wanted to walk away from making artwork all together. I was done – I jacked it in and went and studied Psychosynthesis counselling instead and it was there that I began to understand the dynamics articulated above. I was wholly convinced I was no longer an artist and, wow, it was such a relief!… until it wasn’t. After a few years I began to see that I had a creative aspect that wasn’t happy to have been jettisoned as the fallout of the conflict. I was depressed by not making artwork – I needed to manifest images. In fact, despite having a fledgling counselling practice, I felt really pointless. I now believe that there is something in me, and other creative people of all ilks, that must manifest ideas into the world in order to feel purposeful.
The work presented here was made quite recently and helped me find my way into my current practice of nocturnal landscape photography. It was a fascinating ‘experiment’ where I created a pseudonym ‘Augury Woods’ and just played with image making. Because I wasn’t Jasper Goodall I kind of played a psychic trick on myself – if you are not yourself, you can do what you like! Kind of flying under the radar of my inner critic. It gave me freedom to play with no consequences and no sense of judgement, real or imagined.
In a way this ’creative space’ of Augury woods is where I can continue to have fantasies or to play with grown up fairy tales – perhaps that is a kind of decadence, but I prefer ‘free to have fun’ rather than the connotations decadence brings.
As I made this work I began to understand that walking away had been a part of a much larger process, I just didn’t realise it at the time. Much like some forests need a fire to clear the old dead wood and make space for new green shoots, I had to be totally convinced for a period of time that I was never going to make art again. That is the only way my mind could fully rest and stop caring about how I was going to change, or make better work, or become really relevant again – I needed to remove myself from the ‘critical eye’ of what my agent thought, or what the creative public thought, even if to a large extent these may have been my own critical projections onto external figures, and the best way to do this was just to stop altogether.
For a while I had tried to force new and different work out of me, but I don’t think that really works… flogging a dead horse is the phrase that comes to mind. It doesn’t work because one is simply trying too hard; trying to be creative in a state of sustained low level panic is not productive. You have to stop trying, you have to surrender. When you truly surrender you might clear some space for tender shoots to brave the big wide world.
Perhaps ironically (to me) and, in fact hugely healing, was being commissioned by Suspira magazine which is a niche British publication that looks at the horror genre though a feminist lens. I have always felt that my work celebrated feminine sexuality and power but I guess my inner critic had his/her doubts! When Suspira saw this work they loved the images of wild, powerful and supernatural women running in the night and asked me to make some work for them. To be commissioned by a feminist magazine felt like completing a very long and wide circle; some internal mechanism kind of quietly tipped or clicked or moved in some way and one day I was developing a photograph with the intention of adding a figure when I saw that the image had so much atmosphere in and of itself, that putting in a ‘witch’ was maybe unnecessary. Since then I have focussed on trying to capture and distill the atmosphere of a forest at night. Maybe there’s something out there in the dark, or maybe not….
I still use Augury Woods as a play space and will continue to do so, and who knows maybe one day fantasy will blend with some kind of reality, but for now it’s fun to just play and indulge my imagination.
This is what Aubrey Beardsley would have been doing