‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.’ ~ William Blake
dub: a copy of.
spectrum: the entire range.
return to the fields
about the journey…
I grew up in a council house in the village of Christow, east Dartmoor, overlooking a beautiful valley we simply referred to as the fields where we would spend many an hour building tree houses, attempting ninja moves, swimming in rivers and exploring the terrain free as birds. The fields seemed a world apart from the village, in all its snobbery and gossip, and in many ways to us harboured mysteries akin to ancient myths and folklore. I was creative as a child; I particularly enjoyed drawing cartoons and was very good at theatre. My parents also like to remind me about the time I ‘Jackson Pollocked’ their bedroom with mum’s nail varnish! The village was largely middle class and well-to-do but there was a minority assortment of low-earning ‘riff-raff’, which I suppose my family fell into (and probably why my accent confuses a lot of people because I don’t sound like a Devonshire dumpling who says ‘ooh-arr’). Dad was a jobbing builder and mum worked mostly as a school secretary around other occupations cleaning and babysitting. It was Thatcher’s ’80s so tough times for those in the low-income bracket living in rural areas but, although my parents struggled a lot financially (divorcing when I was quite young), Dartmoor was an amazing place to have spent a childhood. The wonderful feeling of freedom amid nature experienced by my brother, friends and I remain, I think, the single biggest influence behind my work.
I was an anxious and rebellious indie-kid coming of age in the ’90s via underachieving at a small-town comprehensive (beaten up and kicked out of home, aged 16, during my GCSEs but that’s another story!) and working various part-time jobs to earn money that was mostly spent on t-shirts, weed and cassettes. Early on it was all things indie and grunge – from Senseless Things, Ride, the Cure, Nirvana and L7 (and outrageous shows like The Word) to the dub and spaced-out electronica of Mad Professor, Dub Warriors and the Orb. I remember discovering the golden era of hip-hop from A Tribe Called Quest and the Beastie Boys to Public Enemy and the punkish gangtsa rap from groups like NWA. It was BMX, skateboards, Super Nes and Street Fighter 2 in an era of Strictly Jungle and the Edge mixtapes, late night cruising country back roads of Devon (usually to a free party), high as kites and trippin’ on shrooms, bopping to the drum n bass riddims of Hype, Nicky Blackmarket, Micky Finn, Darren Jay and more! Most of all, I’ll never forget the first time I heard Demon’s Theme on LTJ Bukem’s Logical Progression compilation; it blew my mind and got me into DJing! There was Bristol’s trip hop and d’n’b scene from Massive Attack to Roni Size’s Full Cycle Records. There was the time we got loved-up to see Leftfield’s Paul Daley do a set at Plymouth Warehouse (with Fabio playing jazzy drum n bass in the back room) and my first crowd surf was at a Prodigy gig on speed. We had music with energy, diversity and spirit that made it genuinely exciting to be young.
For a while, I felt alienated from both parents before a process of reconciliation, which took longer with my father (I felt unable to see him for three years). An itinerant teen on benefits, via Kingsteignton, Ogwell and Newton Abbot, I moved to Exeter (into various house shares) to attend college where I encountered the barminess of Brit Art while visiting the now infamous Sensation exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. I recall being particularly drawn to the paintings of Chris Ofili and Fiona Rae. It was around this time that I realised the dream was to be an artist (specifically an abstract painter). The creative culture of the ’90s – in all its pioneering, self-sufficient optimism, eccentricity and romance – spoke to a young, directionless failure who, through youthful naivety, believed the 21st century would play host to an even greater spirit of indie!
After college I lived rent-free in a quaint village pub in Doddiscombsleigh while working in the bar and kitchen, deferred a place at uni, saved some money and travelled Australia and New Zealand. I attained a bachelor’s from the Nottingham Trent University and later got my MA at Central Saint Martins, London (also making various trips around Europe whenever I could, visiting numerous galleries and museums). The former I spent most of my time in record shops, spinning a mixture of dub and intelligent drum n bass on Nottingham’s Fly FM and various bars and clubs, disinterested in my arty-farty contemporaries promulgating postmodernism’s arid worldview. I had lots of fun working part-time in a small bistro run by an old rocker and in my second year I undertook a collaborative project with Nottingham’s Royal Society for the Blind, which got me short-listed for an Ambassadorial Scholarship. At the time I was hoping to study a master’s in California, but sadly it wasn’t meant to be. Yet still I dreamed and ultimately headed to London where, unfortunately, I discovered the ‘other story’ would inspire a deep sense of anxiety and melancholy within.
A darkness began to take hold while I was an undergrad in Nottingham. At first, I put it down to feelings of anger towards the world the more its workings became apparent. However, I would discover it to be more existential – an elusive melancholy fused with a return of anxiety far more debilitating than what I had experienced in my teens; a feeling I can only describe as a terrifying sensation of the infinite. By the time I got to London I was considerably depressed and introverted, which did not make good bedfellows for one aiming to succeed in the arts! It was a very alienating experience, and I contemplated suicide many times. Medication and therapy were not much help, although eventually I was able to overcome the worst of the anxiety, mainly by exposing myself to it, in this case wide open spaces after developing agoraphobia, which was exhausting. I began counselling while studying a master’s at Saint Martins, which dredged up a lot of past experiences that were tough to reconcile with personal aims in the present. While all of this was going on I had to try to live: pay rent, get a job, pay off my student debts etc. Needless to say, networking a fashionable scene in a place like London, while constantly dragging around a huge weight inside my head, was near impossible. In short, I realised I was living in a world that I felt wholly disconnected from, disinterested in, and have no place in. Contemporary art felt like a giant cliché, I didn’t identify with any of it – a view only compounded by indifference and repeated rejection (such is the arts). Much like a teen booted out of home, I remained a directionless failure. Still, for whatever reason, the only light amid all this was being creative and I suppose it would be such glimmer with a sense of self-reliance that gradually evolved into dub spectrum.
The ensuing experimental, melancholic and disenchanted years embodied a process of ‘unlearning’ after graduating from university, which eventually led to a return to my roots. I ran a couple of studios in Exeter that I mostly supported through an assortment of jobs including night shifts in a care home for adults with autism and learning disabilities to working for mental health home treatment teams and teaching English at a language school. The single-minded determination to be an abstract painter gradually evolved into working with the figure (with a particular interest in Matisse), which led to a specific interest in landscapes after reading Eastern philosophy and the work of Jung in tandem with the aforementioned exposure to open spaces. I came to see landscapes as a metaphor expressing the terrifying beauty of the infinite: the awe and dread of Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum that laid the foundation for Jung’s idea of the numinous. I took part in solo and group exhibitions in both the UK and abroad. However, I found gallery shows were rather dull, so I eventually ended up situating work in different locations – be it cities from Plymouth, Bristol, London and Paris to rural areas around Devon (in hindsight, I realise this formed as much a part of my confrontation with the infinite as an artistic engagement with it). Painting would eventually fade into the background as writing became the primary focus of my creative endeavours, culminating in my first novel written in various cafes, followed by a two-month road trip through Morocco, Spain and Portugal. I then wrote my first book of poetry while living on Dartmoor, mountain-biking through its glorious woodland, before moving again.
I became fascinated with the folk tradition and coastal landscapes of Cornwall after moving from Dunsford to Falmouth in 2020 to study boatbuilding. No idea why I wanted to pursue this – I’ve sailed maybe a handful of times in my life! I think I was drawn to boats as an object and liked the idea of working with them sculpturally. I quickly discovered I’m no mariner and switched to studying a personal training qualification supporting myself through a mixture of jobs in cafes, pubs, psychiatric wards and a homeless hostel. I completed the course despite fracturing my ankle after taking up surf-skating, which was shortly followed by the death of my grandfather (amid the lockdown insanity). On my fourth attempt, I passed my driving test in Camborne. I then headed back east to Devon, relocating to Exmouth, where I attained an exercise referral qualification while working as an Activities Coordinator for a mental health charity before going to work for the NHS at a crisis house helping people experiencing psychological distress. From Exmouth, I moved to the village of Tedburn St. Mary where I developed an interest in lens-based media and mythical symbolism of the sun, trees and water. Now in Teignmouth, I focus primarily on writing fiction and poetry alongside photography and film that incorporates an embodied experience amid nature with poetry and haiku.
I am not a fan of labels; less so of our current culture regarding mental health diagnoses being worn as a badge of honour – as inextricably bound to one’s identity to the point of resisting any chance for growth or renewal. I think it mirrors the macro of an End of History scenario: a linear society that has succumbed to the soft-totalitarianism of Big Tech. Nevertheless, all the years of therapy, medication, the introversion and the preference for solitude and creativity over human interaction speaks to one who suffers from depression. It often seems like we’re in the winter of humanity: unconsciously consuming ourselves into nihility in the pursuit of something unimaginatively meaningless – like a bad dream. However, this is not to be confused with unhappiness or fatalism. I consider melancholy to be a heartfelt sensitivity to beauty rather than something to feel sorry about, hence the world is a significant source of joy as much as despair. It is an essentially romantic view: dark satanic mills, in all their destruction of nature and human relationships, have simply been replaced by server farms and data centres. All the above, coupled with my love of underground dance music, helped coin the term dub spectrum which is a DIY ethos that is best summed up by the philosophy of William Blake: ‘I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.’ A new journey begins with a return to the fields.
2026
dub spectrum
unityofkana(at)gmail(dot)com