Deceit and Lies

This Week I’ve Been Looking at Honesty…

I remember being cold and wet in the military when I was 16. Everything fell apart. Whatever limited skills I had managed to acquire faded into the fog of exhaustion.

When the Platoon Sergeant came around to check if we had eaten that morning, I lied.

He asked for proof.

I panicked and told him I had buried it.

He saw through me. I spent the next hour running up and down a hill, rifle above my head.

(Slight exaggeration, but you get the point.)

What fascinates me now is that he wasn’t there to punish me—he was just checking if I was okay, making sure I was looking after myself.

But fear got the better of me. The fear that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t belong. I lied to protect myself and, in doing so, I cut myself off from the very thing I needed—a better life, one with food in my stomach.

We all lie. It’s a skill we learn early.

But why? And what does honesty even mean?

Why Did I Lie When I Was Younger?

Maybe it wasn’t lying—not really. As a child, reality and imagination weren’t separate worlds.

Imaginary friends appeared like shifting light, unbound by anyone else’s rules.

And when eyes closed in the dark, color and form didn’t vanish—swirling patterns, half-formed figures, entire scenes bloomed behind the eyelids, sometimes comforting, sometimes unsettling, but always alive.

There was no sense of “invention”; things simply existed.

But lessons arrived quickly. Adults insisted those visions were fantasy, that there was a “right” way to see.

So, the stories went underground. Over time, there were fewer lies—not because truth became clearer, but because personal truths were buried.

One of the hardest parts of growing up is being told that the things you saw weren’t real.

One of the hardest parts of becoming an adult is realizing that they were.

Yet, the colors and visions rarely disappear entirely.

They linger in a borderland, that raw, unfiltered place where imagination and reality coexist.

Some creative practices aim to capture this borderland—through paintings, installations, or performances that invite participants to explore the interplay of freedom and control, shifting their perspectives physically, emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually.

But it’s never straightforward.

People learn to “be reasonable,” to fit in.

That pressure suffocates the wildness once taken for granted. Sometimes, a turning point emerges—a crisis, or a slow realization.

It becomes clear that the world doesn’t benefit from more conformity; it needs untamed vision, the kind that was buried.

And in moments like that, there’s a glimmer of how vivid one’s inner world can be when allowed to breathe.

Are We Aspiring for Truth or Agreement?

As time goes on, truth and agreement start to feel interchangeable.

Many learn that “truth” is simply the answer most people accept.

This is consensus reality—a neatly packaged version of the world that prioritizes conformity over genuine exploration.

• Educational Structures: Designed for order and predictability. Creativity outside the norm is often marginalized.

• Marginalized Creativity: Unorthodox ideas can be dismissed as impractical or rebellious.

• Art as Institution: Critics, academies, and markets set benchmarks for success, steering many artists toward consensus-friendly work.

In consumer-driven societies, consensus smooths operations, turning individuals into predictable workers and shoppers.

Personal honesty—subjective, raw insight—tends to be filtered out for the sake of efficiency.

Still, a subtle discord creeps in.

There may be moments where lived experience clashes with the narrative offered by school, media, or peers.

Such dissonance begs the question:

Is the dominant truth truly “real,” or just the most popular story?

What Happens When Our Truths Don’t Align?

Even honest communication leads to conflict. Two people can witness the same event and recount it in wholly different ways.

Are they lying?

Probably not.

Each is relaying a perspective formed by upbringing, emotion, culture.

This contrast illustrates the gap between objective truth (supposedly unchanging) and personal honesty (deeply subjective).

Miscommunication is all but guaranteed.

Different styles of expression—whether blunt or diplomatic—can distort what’s heard.

When honest people disagree, consensus reality often treats this as “noise,” favoring a single neat version of events.

But life doesn’t operate in neat lines.

From politics to personal relationships to creative practice, misunderstanding weaves through everything.

Instead of erasing these differences, what if we embraced them?

Movements like Dada thrived on chaos and contradiction, forcing viewers to confront the unexpected.

In large-scale installations or experimental projects, the notion that multiple perspectives might all be valid becomes a powerful statement against the uniformity imposed by systems.

How Do Systems Control Truth?

Consensus reality finds its strongest ally in institutions—governments, corporations, schools, media—each acting as a gatekeeper of what knowledge is valid and who has authority to share it.

• Science: Ideally open-ended, yet often directed by funding and politics.

• Art: Should disrupt norms, but finds itself shaped by galleries, grants, and market forces.

• Predictability: Systems need control, so they encourage or reward those who conform.

Often, it’s not brute censorship but subtle self-censorship at play.

Creative individuals may learn to tailor projects toward buzzwords or “safe” topics to secure funding or approval from galleries and grant awarding bodies.

Over time, vast swaths of expression vanish simply because they can’t find support or validation in the mainstream framework.

Eventually, though, tensions surface.

As friction between experience and official narrative grows, suppressed perspectives start to seep through the cracks, challenging consensus from within.

Some forms of art—be it ephemeral street interventions or site-specific gallery work—highlight this exact tension, reminding viewers that entire realms of truth lie beyond institutional acceptance.

How Do We Reclaim Honesty in a World of Consensus?

Conformity offers approval, while resistance risks alienation.

But maybe the real challenge is to find a path that holds space for personal truths without outright rejecting the society we live in.

• Stay with Complexity: Resist collapsing everything into one answer; allow contradictions to remain visible.

• Art as a Reflective Space: Truly evocative art doesn’t smooth over dissonance; it refracts it. Think of how Dada or Ai Weiwei often highlight flaws in the very systems they engage.

• Unlearn Self-Censorship: Continually ask, What do I genuinely perceive? rather than What should I see?

This can be risky.

It challenges norms that keep systems functioning smoothly.

But it also creates the potential for more meaningful connections—with those who, likewise, sense there’s more to reality than the consensus allows.

Installations that guide viewers through unexpectedly disorienting environments, or paintings that fracture the familiar, can become catalysts for this introspection.

They reflect a belief that tension—between freedom and control, or between consensus and individual insight—can reveal deeper layers of truth.

What Can Tension Teach Us About Truth?

Tension is often treated as a problem to solve.

But maybe it’s the surest sign that something vital is happening—a convergence of incompatible perspectives, creating energy through friction.

When these perspectives collide, we find ourselves confronting ambiguity. It can be unsettling, but it also fuels creativity.

Think of Surrealism, which brought dream logic to the surface, or Trevor Paglen, whose photographs capture elusive edges of perception without insisting on a single interpretation.

Truth might actually thrive in such collisions.

Instead of existing as a fixed end state, truth emerges in dialogue, debate, and unresolved moments.

Creative fields—whether painting, installation, performance, or beyond—often thrive on that energy, transforming conflict into insight.

Tension can serve as a guide.

Each time it appears, there’s a choice: comply with the comfortable narrative or follow the instinct that says there’s more to see.

Embracing tension rather than avoiding it can be a step toward a more dynamic, living understanding of reality.

What I’m Making

If you’re interested in reality and truth, I’ll be sharing a new series this week about this topic. Trailer below.

russjones__

View more on Instagram

What I’m Preparing

There’s a giveaway on Thursday and some new mirrors coming out next week…

It’s taken me a lot longer to make these than I thought…

They are very, very cool. (No lies)

Also I’ve updated my website for all of you that love the deeper side of my work:

Enjoy

Poets Corner

Honesty

Honesty, the promise we, will hold above all fallacy.
The north star to our moral compass,
To judge the lying mouths among us,
Honesty. In truth we see,a verbally binding policy.
The black spot of a lie upon the tongue,
Erased by conscience guide who teaches right from wrong.
Words hold power to cause pain, joy, fear,
But truth, that is the value we holdd most dear.

- Rachael

Last week I didn’t include the poem below… 
This alongside last week’s essay on Dance inspired this week’s work on Honesty - There are no lies when we dance..

Dance

ONE two three ONE two three

An endlessly waltzing recurring refrain,
Swaying with notes of the
Flugelhorn's weep.

Summoning, half a step,
Half a cup, half a heart - empty,
Half a turn, half a mind,
Half full with memory.

Nights spent with you,
In Sketches of Spain.

- Thomas May

Final thoughts

“Reality rests at the threshold of comfort and chaos”

Ultimately, the question may not be how to remove tension but how to harness it. Tension sharpens awareness and opens unforeseen pathways, in art and life alike. The truths pursued aren’t static endpoints; they evolve in the push and pull of varied viewpoints.

Art highlights that genuine insights often emerge in spaces where contradictions remain unresolved. Perhaps the greatest honesty lies in recognizing how multiple realities can exist side by side—and trusting that the friction between them can reveal what a single, agreed-upon narrative never could.

Love you loads,

R