Processes Units 1 and 2
Much of my recent work has drawn inspiration from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. The work is an allegory, and that format has helped me approach sensitive material obliquely. The central character of the work, Christian, travels on a journey, a pilgrimage, and meets many dangers and characters, all named according to the threat they pose or the characteristics they represent.
A sketch of an incident on the bus in Peckham, drawn into the Pilgrim's Progress allegory and with an incongruous image of a city in a desert visible through the bus window.
Discussed at greater length in my Art Work.
I began the Pilgrim's Progress series with some small sketches above - graphite and crayon on paper - of a man leaving a city in the desert which (in the case of the image above left was being bombed by aircraft. I have abandoned the aircraft images in the more recent work, as too sensitive and, arguably, partisan. I discuss in my Critical Reflection the question of whether or not we, as artists, have the right to be partisan, or indeed a duty not to be partisan - a topic which is considered extensively by Sontag (2003)
Early pencil sketches (graphite on paper) from my notebook of Christian and Giant Despair
I have begun to carve a wooden sculpture of Christian the pilgrim, caught by Giant Despair. The sculpture will be painted and will have the City of Destruction, abandoned by Christian, in the background. The three sketches above, in graphite on paper, are early thoughts of how the carving might evolve.
​
I have found a reasonably substantial piece of yew, the unusual shape of which has dictated the form I am able to create, and I have bought some old wood carving chisels.
​
I have been interested to see how working in three dimensions, in a hard wood of very particular and uneven shape, changes how I view my subject matter and its treatment. The (most recent) sketch, immediately above, reflects some of the challenges posed by the shape of the wood.
​
The current state of my carving (above and right) of Christian caught by Giant Despair - yew circa 60 x 20 x 20
I have been looking for an appropriate image of despair, both for the Giant and Christian. This is one of Otto Dix's prints from his series The War. I am contemplating borrowing that expression, although at the moment it feels closer to anguish than despair.
Web page - Unknown Medieval artists, dates unknown
Geoffrey Chaucer's Parlement of Foules poem (1381)was the inspiration for my UN Security Council Meeting picture. I wanted to recreate what is, in that poem, a choatic cacophony of voices, angry, in some instances funny because non-sensical and, in outcome, ineffective.
​
These are images of birds from medieval manuscripts. The different artistic styles, some childlike but all with unusual and in many instances surprisingly accurate (ornithologically) features, appealed to me.
​
There are fifteen sitting members of the UN Security Council and so I needed fifteen birds, not all of which were chosen from this sheet.
Small preliminary sketch for We are Making a New World Again
Graphite and crayon on paper 10 x 12 cm
The genesis of this work was the photograph of a destroyed row of buildings in the Middle East (see below), which appeared on the front of the free daily newspaper I read on the bus each day. The extent of the destruction reminded me of images from the First World War, including Paul Nash's painting We are Making a New World, depicting the devastated landscape of the trenches. That painting had what appears to be a bright sunrise as its backdrop, and that in turn brought to mind Samuel Palmer's preliminary black and white (pen and ink) drawing The Bright Cloud, and the subsequent painting in which that cloud appears. I wanted to combine the two. I took a photograph of the newspaper image, enlarged it so that the printing process (akin to Ben-Day dots) is visible and attached the blown up image to an oil painting of a cloud which appeared over my house one day.
The newspaper image to which I refer above Metro newspaper 2024
Paul Nash - We are Making a New World - 1918, Imperial War Museums
Samuel Palmer - pen and ink drawing for The Bright Cloud - 1834
Photograph, South West London 2024
This is one of hundreds of photographs I have taken on my phone, of people, objects, landscapes and other scenes which I found of interest for some reason and might return to one day, to use, as here, in a painting.
We are Making a New World Again
Oil on canvas, collage, copper rivets 80 x 90 cm
The final work is above. I have darkened the sky to something close to black, in part to enhance the brightness of the cloud, in part to reflect the black in the depths of the destroyed building below. The cloud carries perhaps an ambiguity. It could simply be a bright cloud, a sign (at least within Samuel Palmer's image) of hope - Palmer's cloud sat over the path being taken by Joseph and Mary in his final painting - or it could be the aftermath of an explosion which has caused the damage below it. I don't mind the ambiguity.
​
The image at the base of the picture, enlarged from a small print as mentioned above, has been attached to the canvas with copper rivets. That was, in part, a pragmatic solution to two failed earlier attempts to glue the image to the canvas - but I have worked with copper rivets before and I like both the softness of the metal, its colour, and in this instance its utilitarian history of repair.
​