Interview
Vincent Deighan
FUN - Playfulness is the primary principle. Uninhibited exploration is the bedrock that cradles the fertility of all creativity. The point of it all is the point of a ball – the point of contact – constantly shifting in play.
OMΣN - The world is not inert. It is alive, prophetic, demonic, intelligent, proactive and reactive. When we play we are free. When we are free, we encounter the mystery and are bemused to decipher it. Shackled in our interpretation, we too become bound – and if we are not careful, if we listen too lightly and share too little in all the wrong places – we will forget how to play – and be played ourselves.
OLOGY - The mystery arises from primordial play, and we emerge to meet it, like a reflection in a haunted mirror. Subjectivity and Objectivity, irrationality, rationality, order, chaos, light, dark, colour, Self and Other. Phenomena rise and fall like lapping waves against the rock. Stones are old. The sands of time erode us. The fires forge silica to glass and we see ourselves for what we are and grasp nothing – fruit on the branch of a tree – a tree of the forest.
Vincent Deighan is the artist behind FUNOMΣNOLOGY. A way-ward trailblazer with an instinct for ecological collaboration. His portfolio spans performance art, installation art, songwriting, singing, drawing, painting, sculpting, videography, rug tufting, voice acting, film acting – as well as performing and recording music. He also apprentices in commercial comic book art creation and more recently artist/brand collaborations. His works are varied but chorded to one another by conscientiously crafted narratives.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“My dad is an artist with a long career in comics, so some of my earliest memories would probably count as an introduction to the art world - passing the Electrosketch between artist and writer as they battled it out, making rude drawings of one another for my amusement and inspiration. Growing up in a creative household, drawing and making art always felt second nature to me, and was always encouraged, supported and rewarded. I was taught from an early age to have fun exploring and expressing myself this way, but also how to bond and learn from others through making as well. Art school was something I had always wanted to do, but around the time I was applying, I discovered a budding musicality I hadn’t realized was in me. It scared me because I thought it would occupy the same space as art, that I would have to choose between them. But during my time in the painting and printmaking department at the Glasgow School of Art, they slowly began to reconcile. My work naturally shifted toward installation and performance art, where visual and auditory experiences intertwine. Music became an even bigger part of my life, and I spent a decade writing, recording, and performing in bands around Glasgow and London. Looking back, I can see that these two creative forces were never really in competition - they were always pushing me to explore further and express myself in a way that feels uniquely my own.”
What inspires you?
“This was actually one of the questions I was asked during my interview when applying to GSA. I remember feeling a bit perplexed, as though it were a trick question, and answering with complete sincerity, ‘Well... everything!’ It always makes me smile looking back on that, and I still stand by the idea that if you approach things from the right angle, inspiration can be found anywhere. That said, one thing I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older - and maybe it has something to do with feeling your mortality creeping in - is that my sources of inspiration have become more focused. I don’t feel struck by inspiration as often as I did in my teens or early 20s, but now I seek it out in a calmer, more deliberate way. Or, if I am struck, rather than the raw wonder and amazement of my youth, it’s more likely to come as a surge of panic-induced problem-solving. So maybe the calm, collected seeking is my response to a mad and chaotic world. At the risk of sounding like a mild-mannered muggins, I’d say nothing quite does it for me like a walk in the woods with my thoughts. It’s where I have some of my best ideas—a place that feels both grounding and expansive. It’s kind of religious, feeling rooted to all this intelligent ecology, and there’s space to breathe in the woods, an air rich with the breath of trees.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“Art, for me, is kind of how I process myself and the world around me - it feels almost biological, like it’s just part of how my body works. Because of that, the themes I explore can definitely vary, and my creative output feels like something alive - an extension of myself that meets an extension of someone else - like a big weird, revealing handshake. That said, I can probably boil it down to some fundamentals. I explore themes of self and other - where I stop, and where you begin. If there’s a message or a thread running through my work, I think it’s this: as idiosyncratic and liberated as we might be as individuals, we are always playing together. And that togetherness is a kind of spooky ecology - it reaches further and deeper than we can ever fully grasp. We only ever catch glimpses of how far off the mark we really are. So maybe, at its core, it's about identity and love. Identifying with otherness, but not othering yourself; to be comfortable being friends with the mystery, without needing to solve it. Does that make sense?”
How would you describe your work?
“You mean other than a weird, revealing handshake? I suppose it depends on what I'm making and who I’m making it for. This goes back to what I was saying about identity and love - I take on a lot of commissions and apprentice work, often out of financial necessity, but even when I’m working to a brief, I’m always making it partly for myself. Because of my background in music, I often collaborate with bands and musicians, creating cover art and visuals. This branch of my work leans more toward illustration, and ideas tend to emerge collaboratively - playing with subject, colour, and composition until it clicks. Then there’s the more contemporary fine art side of things. A lot of my exhibition pieces have been performance-heavy - costume, singing, masks, props, prayers - lots of ceremony and gommy pageantry.
Another defining feature of my exhibition work is interactivity. Every piece invites the audience in, whether it involves breaking bread, throwing food, solving clues, crawling through tunnels, or putting headphones on, it’s always participatory. I’ve also dabbled in film, painting, textile art, and sculpture, so because the form is always changing, I think it’s easier to describe my work in broad strokes - playful, psychedelic, a bit weird, but always fun. Another fundamental branch of what I do is songwriting. Despite spending years playing in bands and gigging, most of my writing has remained pretty private. It’s where I’m at my most introspective and spontaneous - a shifting, rearranging collection of songs that feels like a diary I keep losing pages of. Sometimes, those pages come back, magically edited, speaking to me, showing me things I hadn't considered. It’s something I want to do more with, to share more of. It’s on my horizon. I don’t want to die with songs un-sung.”
Which artists influence you most?
“This is such a hard question, for a few reasons. First, there’s the issue of apples and oranges - how do you compare artists working in completely different styles and mediums, especially when you’re a mixed-media artist yourself with eclectic taste? I’d struggle to even pick a favorite among comic book artists, from Moebius to Geof Darrow, David Mazzucchelli, Rafael Grampá, Frank Miller, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Frank Quitely. Then there are artists like James Jean, Jamie Hewlett, and Alasdair Gray… and how do you even begin to compare David Choe with David Hockney or David Lynch? Or a Butoh dancer like Gaudo Dushin to Hayao Miyazaki? Joseph Beuys to Hundertwasser? And that’s just the visual artists. If we start on music - Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Nina Simone, Mimi Fariña, Carole King, Pitu, Alice Phoebe Lou, Zoë Bestel, The Rubberbandits - it’s impossible to distil into a neat list. By the time you’re 30, you’ve had decades of creative influences stacking up, and if you keep seeking inspiration, that list only grows. But here’s the sappy truth - for me, the artists who have influenced me the most aren’t just the famous ones. They’re the people you’ve probably never heard of - my friends, my family. The people I write songs with, share studios with, play games with, have deep and rambling conversations with. The people I lean on, and the people who lean on me. So yeah, it’s a really hard question. And I guess that’s an unsatisfying, rambling answer; but it’s an honest one.”
“Another defining feature of my exhibition work is interactivity. Every piece invites the audience in, whether it involves breaking bread, throwing food, solving clues, crawling through tunnels, or putting headphones on, it’s always participatory.”
What is your creative process like?
“It’s sort of like trying to find a gap in the hedge. The maze doesn’t play by ordinary rules - its pathways don’t lead out because they were never meant to. But beyond the hedgerows, I can hear the world. I can see the sun tickling the waxy green leaves with warm dapples of scattered yellow overhead. I can smell the coast and hear voices and birds intertwining in playful glossolalia, just out of reach. So I search for a gap in the hedge. And when I find one, it’s never big enough to see what’s on the other side—not wide enough to slip through. But it’s thrilling. Light slices past thorns and gnarled branches, carrying warmth and scents and sounds from beyond. I push and fight and struggle for it, throwing myself into the thicket. And with every scrape and snag, I get a clearer picture of what I’m moving toward - until suddenly, I’ve popped out the other side, somewhere better than I was before. There, I can revel for a moment, have an encounter with something utterly magical - something alive, something that knows me as well as I know it. Then it sprouts wings and tells me it has to go. And I let it, because I know we’ll meet again. The maze is a little brighter, a little bigger. But it’s still the maze. So I press on, back into the narrow corridors, searching for the next glint of light, the next melody cutting through the leaves. I suppose that’s it - I need to be alone, and I need to walk. Walk through my thoughts, walk through the maze. Whether it’s dusk darting through the city or dawn trekking through the woods, I need that time to travel.
Then comes the signal, the struggle, the arrival. A communion with the spark of creativity itself - but also with people. Sharing myself, sharing my work. The big weird, revealing handshake. It’s utterly mundane and simultaneously spiritual. Of course, the process changes depending on what I’m working on. If I’m creating album art, I’ll listen through the music a million times, write out all the lyrics, take notes on how each song makes me feel, what I think it might be about - the striking images it stirs up. Then I sketch, gather references, experiment with different layouts, going back and forth with the musicians. If I’m writing songs myself, I have to be just that - alone in the hedge growth. Sometimes, I’ll get cut up pretty badly squeezing through tight spots. Other times, I’ll become a fountain, and it will all pour out, drenching everything around me. The hedges drink it up, growing fuller and wilder.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“I don’t know if I have a definitive answer to that - it’s probably deeper and more multifaceted than I realize, or maybe I’m not even close. But let’s see - I guess artists are both the revelation on the other side of the hedge and the snagging thorns that catch you along the way. We explore, experiment, play, and uncover things about ourselves and the world around us. In that sense, we scout ahead, or dig deep, or fly high - we lead the way to places people don’t always know to look. But more than that, there are so many different artists doing so many different things. Some entertain, some challenge, some comfort, and through all of that, we inspire hope, curiosity, and boldness - the will to explore, to dare, to see, to question.
At the same time, we’re also the thorn in the side of society, pressing against its structures and norms, refusing to let things settle too comfortably. Earlier, I spoke about art as a biological process, an extension of the body. Maybe artists are like the fingertips of society, reaching out to touch the unknown. Or like taste buds, sensing the flavors of experience - sweetness, bitterness, the full spectrum. Or maybe we’re closer to emotions themselves, the waves that move through a culture, making it feel. But then, is that so different from what scientists do? Or inventors? Or shamans? Or writers? Or Chefs? Maybe artists just take a different path to the same destination. Or maybe we’re more janitorial, sweeping up the mess of culture, rearranging the furniture of thought so people can see the room differently. Or morticians, dressing up dead ideas so we can say our goodbyes properly. Or fishermen, casting our lines into the murky deep, hoping to pull up something nourishing, something that will sustain us for just one more meal. Sometimes what we reel in is beautiful, sometimes it’s ugly, sometimes it has too many eyes, but either way, we bring it to the table and lay it out, say grace and have something to chew on.
If I had to distil it to one core role, I’d say it’s to disturb complacency. To shake people awake - whether with a sharp reminder of beauty and wonder or a harrowing confrontation with what they fear most. Art puts you face to face with something, and through that, we grow. As for how that role is evolving, I think that question is tied to the evolution of humanity itself. What does it mean to become more mechanistic? For machines to become more human? To grow more disconnected from the earth? To drift away from religion? I don’t know. But I have a feeling it’s not a job that will become redundant anytime soon, because I think it’s part of being - an echo of the same creative urge that births each of us. The emergent order we find in evolution, rising from chaos, is the same force that drives us to make art. So maybe that’s it - maybe art is a feedback loop, a moment when the universal forces of creation become self-conscious, fractal versions of themselves - like condensed droplets mirroring the mist. And maybe artists are the loose ends of exposed wires, shorting in the electric mystery.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“The first exhibition where I truly felt I had found my voice was BATHTISM - a performance piece that took the form of a public initiation into a magical relationship with a part of myself that seemed to hold its own autonomy. With sanity hanging delicately in the balance, an intuitive faith I have come to call Funomenology flowered around this ceremony. Drawing inspiration from bath-time nostalgia, shamanic trials, and my own baptism, this pseudo-ritual culminated after a three-week vow of silence. What emerged - only to be immediately dispelled - was a chaotic tapestry of hymns, prayers, riddles, nudity, fruit, masks, reflections, an opening parade, and a showering crescendo of moulted skins and dirty bathwater. BATHTISM became the progenitor of an ongoing series of works that reimagine the religious sacraments and symbolism of my upbringing - repurposing them to serve, for better or worse, the metabolic processes of a new deity. One with lesser notoriety, but greater personal sovereignty and responsibility.
Next in the series was MY PRIVATES - an agoraphobic artwork inspired by the sacrament of confession. A cocoon-like sanctum, stitched together from old bedding and curtains - the protective shrouds that shield us from the overwhelming world outside - tempts visitors inside. Within - a grove of glowing fruit trees bolsters the heavy tent. Each hollowed fruit cradles a tiny handwritten scroll, whispering a secret: some humorous, some shocking, all revealing. The physical exposure of BATHTISM could hardly have prepared me for the psychological nakedness of MY PRIVATES. Nor could mere liberation of the body have anticipated the quiet metamorphosis that emerged from this chrysalis, allowing the soft glow of fruit hung low to fade into my past.
Then there was FIRST SUPPER - a reimagining of the Eucharist and an expansion of the idea of Holy Communion. Created for Playzone - a group exhibition of sensory artworks in the Corn Exchange Building as part of the Edinburgh Art Fair - this interactive, performative sculpture puzzle anthropomorphized interpreted personalities from a selection of locally foraged medicinal herbs. These herbs were planted in the heads of crumbling clay archetypes inspired by Jungian psychology. At the heart of the installation stood Klu - a blue-nosed, mossy mute charged with tending these amnesic statues, playfully prompting the audience and overseeing the unfolding experience. Visitors were invited to read what the archetypes had to say for themselves and follow a trail of clues to uncover their dual identities - both as medicinal plants and as symbolic reflections of human nature. In helping the archetypes on their journey of self-discovery, participants often found themselves deepening their own. Together, they brewed a Potion of Individuation, a shared sacrament for anyone willing to seek it.
Lastly, there was SKEPTICKLE - a hay-feverish and idiosyncratic take on the ritual of Confirmation. SKEPTICKLE took the form of a massive, partially sunken skep-like mound, nestled at the center of a wildflower-meadow-labyrinth in Franconia Sculpture Park. Beyond the burrowed entrance, ascending stepping stones encircled the body of a dead birch tree, its roots anchored in the underworld while its limbs reached toward a skylight at the structure’s peak. The path spiraled upward to a window revealing the entrance to a secret garden - an overgrown sanctuary of crumbling statues, remnants of the archetypes. The only remaining head of these silent idols had been sewn with seed from the meadow, meant to bloom and reclaim its form over time.
SKEPTICKLE was designed to come to life over the years, slowly merging with the wildflower meadow, offering quiet refuge to anyone willing to traverse the underworld. But before its first spring, it was consumed in flames. The fire, combined with flight restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, prevented my return to perform a site-specific interactive play. And so, instead of growing wild, SKEPTICKLE became something else - a ritual of loss, a story half-told, a ghost of its intended self. For now, this series has drawn to a gestation. I have imitated and expressed, in art, versions of all the sacraments I experienced growing up in the church - honouring a core, processing what it has meant to me, what it continues to mean, and making sure the baby hasn’t been thrown out with the bathwater. My most recent exhibition of note broke away from the series of sacraments and was for Visual Art Scotland’s Centenary Show, Now & Then.
The piece I exhibited, The Laden Land, is a large-scale textile work created for Jack Calum Richardson’s debut album, I Care Not. It tells the story of a kingdom in turmoil - a horizontal triptych and vertical diptych depicting a land on the brink. In the lower half, we see the state within its crumbling walls. On the far left, a grotesque circus of political figures lingers outside the bereaved king’s tent. On the far right, a mob of drunken revelers spills from a tavern, blind to the unravelling fate of their world. Between them, front and center, stands Brother Death - burning at the stake for the crime of luring the Queen and the plague-stricken to the prophetic Valley of the Sun. By royal decree, the kingdom’s entire fleet has been sent to search for this fabled valley, but none have returned. All are lost to the perils of the sea. Above, the execution fires feed the storm clouds, merging into the furious gaze of Sister God. Her left eye, enshrouded in smoke, strikes lightning upon the sea - her wrath made manifest. Her right eye rains tears upon the wreckage of lost ships - grief inescapable. Her third eye, Death’s wheel of fortune, looms at the heart of the composition, embodying the Valley of the Sun itself - an elusive glen formed by the parting branches of the last tree. On the precipice of this unravelling world, the prince - heir to the throne and last hope for his people - reaches for resolution. But in their desperation, the kingdom has overlooked a cruel fate: their scapegoat and their salvation are entwined. When the last tree falls, so too will their future.”
