“I grew up cycling wherever I wanted to go”
Jake Bullough, a young gun from Ireland who recently opened an exhibition of his paintings and charcoal portraits and also launched his first ever book, talks to Punekar about his cycle journey from Ireland to India, the people in the portraits and the travel journal that now is his debut book.
Where were you born and brought up?
I was born and brought up in Ireland in the rurals between the mountains. I grew up cycling everywhere I went so that’s where the cycling thing comes from. I cycled everywhere right from nearby shops to school and meeting friends etc. At 17 I went to a college in Limerick to pursue Art and Design but I gave it up in three months because I did not like the way they taught there. They had too many rules about how to do this and how not to do things, so I just gave it a miss. After that I went travelling to Spain. It has been ten years now that I have been travelling. I do keep going back home to Ireland every now and then. I travel for a few months and then go back to the U.K. and pick up a job for a while to support my next travel plan.
Are you currently working in Pune?
I have been here for about ten months out of which I spent four months in Egypt and the Himalayas. I did go back to the U.K. as well. I have been here for most of the time but I did not pick up a job because I have been working on my portraits, book and paintings since I have arrived. Pune is my base right now, but I am going to China next month. I will not be cycling there because I don’t have enough time left on hand. I haven’t even decided what I am going to be doing there, but I am hopeful of picking up some kind of a project there.
Why do you like to do this – out of pure interest?
It is not a hobby for me; yes it is out of pure interest that I like to travel so much. I am still at the initial phase of my career so I work in a place for a few months and then save money for my next journey. I need to do this to maintain my kind of lifestyle. I have worked in various places to support myself. I have these phases during which I am having a good time, living the good life and then for about five or six months I go into saving mode for my next journey. I pick up around four to five jobs and work for sixteen to twenty hours a day. There will be a time when I will be able to do it full time but as of now I can’t entirely support this lifestyle of writing and art. I have boring mundane jobs sometimes.
Is funding available from Ireland for such projects?
Yes, there is funding available in Ireland for such projects but it is a long, long process and I cannot claim funding for my project because I have to live in Ireland for a while which is never the case with me. I cannot live in India and ask them to pay for my project! (laughs)
I am looking at this exhibition as a basis for my funding application – if I have to apply anywhere I can now show them what exactly is the nature of my project. So yes I am looking at applying for funding in the future.
Are you looking forward to raising funds from your current exhibition?
Yes, definitely. It will also be a good start for my career I hope. This will be a project I can present to people to better explain what I do and why I do it. So a lot of things depend on this exhibition. So far it has been going on well. I am happy with the kind of response I have received since the inauguration. It’s just been two days and two of my paintings have already been sold. I won’t have to go back to the UK and raise money for my next trip; I can use the money generated from this exhibition.
Where are you planning your next trip?
I am going to China next month and I hope to pick up a project there so that is on my travel plan as of now and after that, if I have to, then I will go back to the U.K.
I am interested in lots of different things, so I might get a job and gain hands-on experience in some new field.
How long did you have to work before you set out on this particular project?
I was working for about five months. Like I said, I go through extremes where I am enjoying life all the time and then I get to work and pick up two / three jobs at a time and work for like sixteen-twenty hours a day and that works just fine for me because I know that I am doing this in order to finance my next trip. I need to do this to support my lifestyle.
I hope eventually I won’t have to be doing that.
How long have you been writing the book?
It’s been on and off for about the past eight months. On and off, because I was working on the art and the book simultaneously and because I like to have a bit of change in-between. Working on the book everyday would not have been a good idea because you are thinking and writing but the next day when I was doing my art I could just let my mind wander.
I kept going here and there but I have had intense periods of working so, on an average, this whole project that I have put up on exhibition here has taken about 10 months. So in the past 10 months I put together the paintings, the drawings (charcoal portraits), the book and the film. (Jake has made a short 10-minute film that features excerpts of his journey from Ireland to Pune, India).
The charcoal portraits are about the people you met on the trip. Are the colour paintings related to your trip as well?
I call those paintings semi-abstract because they are based on landscapes that I was passing through during my journey. What I found was that when you are cycling for about 10-12 hours a day, after a few weeks or a couple of months your imagination takes over and you literally run out of things to think about. You have a blank mind and nothing else is happening. A boring road stretches ahead of you and that’s all that you have. You are looking at the colours in the rocks and various shapes and trees on mountains and various shades and shapes appear in front of your eyes.
One mountainside looked like it was on fire so that is what I have depicted in the red paintings. I try to capture the actual shapes and the contours and then I change them and that is the idea behind these paintings. There are the ones which I did when I first got here. I was so inspired and I had so many images in my head so I had to get them down. Some of them took me two weeks because I wasn’t coming close to what I wanted to get down. I also carried a journal on the way in which I wrote short descriptions of what I thought about a certain image.
Did you plan to make the journal a travelogue?
The journal is now the book. It has everything: what happened around me as well as inside me, my thoughts, the people I met, etc. You could call it a travelogue, but I have not split the book into days so it has certain continuity.
There are also about 14 of my charcoal portraits in the book to accompany the writing. The only people I met were the people I met on the journey and the book describes how and why I met the person, why I drew the person and what my experience with the person was. Over four months, I met nearly hundreds of people a day so this book just gives a glimpse of the people, both good and bad, I met on the journey.
Which one do you hold close to your heart, out of the people you met?
There is a charcoal drawing of a lady’s back. The subject is a girl I got to know quite well. I will never forget her and the experience…..actually I don’t like to talk too much about her, however it is there in the book. I will always remember her, but I thought of doing her back because I loved the picture of her back and I also wanted to show the intimacy of the moment. I did not want to draw her face because drawing the back keeps it personal; it is still just between me and her.
Did you draw all these from memory or did you have pictures for references?
The moment is well captured in my memory and I had photographs for references on proportion. Sometimes I have also used sketches from my journal that I used to sketch for future reference. The proportions were not difficult to get but what I was really trying to convey through the drawings is the image of the person.
Tell us a little about the book.
I have done travel writing for travel magazines and books, but this is my first attempt at a fully-fledged book. It is a learning process.
While I was writing this book I wrote the first three chapters and then I took a break for a month and a half. Then I wrote the chapters four to fourteen which is the entire book and went back to reading the chapters I had written previously and I was shocked because it felt like some 10-year-old writing. So even over the period of writing this book I have learned so much. The style developed on its own.
The book isn’t meant to win any literary awards; it is just for enjoyable reading. I am trying to put across my experiences because certain people have these assumptions about people from an area. In a way, the book goes out to tell one and all that all people round the world are people of flesh and bone just like you and me.
The people in India will enjoy this book but the main people I had in my mind were young people between 16 and 35, a lot of whom are obsessed with their careers and money. I am not saying this is wrong, it is ok to be worried about your career but people tend to become narrow-minded when they have a routine day in and day out. This book is just to open up their mind and say that this is what the world looks like out there. I know so many kinds of people that have a racist attitude just because they don’t have the knowledge or the exposure to these things. Hopefully I can get my point across to these people especially.
Has this been your longest journey or the first of its kind?
Yes! I have done other trips but none as long as this one. Most of them have been for about 45 days and I have done them on the motorbike at times. I have done a few a cycle trips in Europe which were enjoyable but not book material. To meet people you really have to slow your pace down which is not possible on a motorbike but it is on a bicycle.
How many days did you take to plan this trip?
A week! (Just a week?) Yes! If you have to simplify it, I just bought a bike and cycled down the road. I bought a few supplies, some clothes, a road map and I was off.
And of course you need to get your passport and visas in place. The trip to the embassies was a little difficult.
Did you have a hard time explaining why you were on a bicycle when trying to get a visa?
Yes it was difficult because most people were shocked and asked why I would choose to do this. Many even suggested that I take a bus and travel because it is far easier. When I was in Pakistan I was given peace escorts for the nine days that I was there and that didn’t really allow me to explore the city too well. I understand that they wanted to ensure my welfare and if something were to happen to me it would be an international event, but I felt claustrophobic with them with me all the time. And at times where it became really hard I managed to bluff my way out somehow (laughs). No it wasn’t like that, just a few letters and phone calls were enough.
The exhibition of Jake’s paintings is being held at: -
India Art Gallery,
Patrakar Nagar,
Off Senapati Bapat Road
Date: Until the 30th of March 2009.
Jake’s Website: http://www.jakebullough.com/
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- Bakery Review: L.J. Bangalore Iyengar Bakery - April 18th, 2009
