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Statement

I am currently showing on this website a series of acrylic on canvas paintings of Indian street scenes inspired by recent research and filming visits to Kolkata and elsewhere in India.

The vibrant and exuberant life experienced on the streets of Kolkata is at the heart of this series of paintings that I've been working on over the last year.  I came across the phrase 'My India is Great' inscribed alongside the equally powerfully expressed warning of 'DANGER' on the rear of a city bus and this features in the title work of the series.  Others like 'The Drum Maker', fast food 'Kalia Chat' and 'Trumpet Seller' all demonstrate in visual terms the well justified pride that street sellers take in what they make and sell.  'The Festival Musicians' in another painting are animating the streets with sound.

I've been to India several times in recent years and, following on from the city scapes, I'm beginning to work on subjects in a boat building yard which constructs enormous bulk carriers on the banks of the Hooghly River.  I got to know this location and the people working there while filming a documentary film with my daughter, Dr Laura Bear, who is an anthropologist at the London School of Economics.  Together we have now completed four films concerned with social and economic issues affecting the lives of people who live and work around the Hooghly River in East Bengal.

These maritime subjects link with my other continuing interest in working boats throughout the world.  In my travels I've experienced at first hand the boats that fishermen and other seagoing people use in their daily lives.  Examples of these works in coloured pencil, in acrylic on paper and on canvas can also be seen on this website.  These include a series of drawings and prints of the fishing boats that come ashore on the beach in Hastings on the English South Coast and also paintings of fishing and seaweed collecting boats all around the Atlantic coast in Europe and the North coast of France.

Biography