“You have to be sick to listen to me” was a strapline I used on my hospital radio talk show. The Sunday night 8 til 10 slot had weekly inspirational guests. They were strongmen, long distance swimmers, musicians, adventurers. Sometimes celebrities were lured from the local bookshop signings that had less interest than they had hoped. Afterall, the famous really want only one thing – to collect people that endlessly repeat their name.
One guest brought a drunk friend with him in the hope to cause trouble – an artist with a history of deliberately saying the wrong thing on live radio broadcasts. It didn’t work with me. Fred Barnfield and I immediately became the best of friends. It was unusual on the face of it. Fred was in his seventies, drunk alcohol heavily every Sunday. I was mid thirties, never drank. He’d taken the decision to become an artist early in his life, I pursued physical culture. Little common ground on the face of it. We’d both had tedious day jobs and enjoyed freedom to think our own thoughts. Over the five years of the show he became my most regular guest.
We’d seen each other in the local newspapers and it was from this that he gave me his first bit of wisdom. “Fame is the last of the passions,” he whispered. He reasoned that most people want to be celebrities. To overcome that urge and dissolve into nothingness was the next inevitable step to growth. I instantly understood it. Applying it – several times I thought I had. Not so sure now. Deep zen thoughts occurred a lot in Fred’s discourses and we had many over the next decade.
Fred’s vast body of art can be difficult to appreciate. Like a strongman performing assistance exercises to improve the competition lifts, he painted more than those intended for show. Many were meditative in their execution, nothing special. Others were fantastic. He often waxed lyrical about ones that to me seemed most mundane. Who am I to say which is which? Even now I get surprised what buyers choose for their walls. I became curator of his collection before he died. With the reality that his lifelong passion was destined for the skip if left to his relatives – he asked me to get his work on as many walls as I could. He believed – like his hero Modigliani – that his art would me more appreciated posthumously. I am starting to see that.
In 2011 I rented the top floor of a derelict building as an office with storage space. He was sceptical about what I could gain from it. A few months later, repainted in his customary blob style I invited him up to see the empty space for him to use. He had often dreamed of an ideal exhibition – one that he could have complete control of. It was the start of the JULY9 exhibition. Fred died in 2013. We decided to make the exhibition online in his eventual absence which I have continued via the SEISMICSECRET youtube channel.
Fred would have loved being mentioned on MAXSTYRKA. How many reading this site train in the hope to get famous in their own field? Maybe we’re all still collecting names: Fred understood our reasoning. He eventually let it go, dissolved into being just who he was. We can too. Happy Birthday Fred.
