Statement
If I look at random objects or patterns they quickly begin to form some kind of narrative. Even if they are trees or soup ladles or merely smudges they begin to resemble something like the human form - or if not that some curious animal-human-divine hybrid. From drawing, without a particular plan, I have conjured up some mysterious silhouettes in a mythic landscape. Not easy to explain, but as the main fund of stories in my head is classical they do tend to have Greek or Roman titles. These titles are merely a kind of short hand to indicate the kind of transaction I think is going on between the figures - which I can only guess at after the event. If people see a narrative element in the pictures whatever stories they see could belong to any mythology. It is one long tale of journeys - there is almost always a hint of sea or sea shore - conquests, colonisations, waiting for gods - or Barbarians, aspirations, grotesqueries or forlorn inertia.
If anything sums up the atmosphere it is Pope's Essay on Man:
"Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being crudely wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;
....Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge ofTruth, in endless Error hurl'd:
The glory, jest and riddle of the world! "
Music is at the heart of all things for me - as the animating force of all imaginings and actions. Sometimes the horizon line will turn into a stave, or an amphora will look like a stringed instrument. Or a treble clef will creep in. Or I will take a simple shape through variations like playing with a musical theme.
There is, generally a strong element of monotype in my printing methods so very few are exactly alike.
Recent work has been more abstract - experiments with printing a base colour to the edge of the paper, embossing with deep bitten plates and collaging from an accumulated store of direct trace markings on tissue.