Art Work - sketches and resolved works
Sketches in acrylic on paper showing the main protagonist of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (Christian, abbreviated to Chr.) leaving the City of Destruction and embarking on his pilgrimage. (Each image 80 x 50)
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Christian leaves the City of Destruction
Christian walks through the Valley of the Shadow of Death
Christian Caught by Giant Despair
Christian Caught in the Slough of Despond
Christian Imprisoned by Giant Despair in Doubting Castle
Bunyan too was imprisoned for his religious beliefs for 12 years from November 1660 to May 1672.
This picture combines both the incarceration of Christian and Bunyan himself.
Resolved works
Christian leaving the City of Destruction, bearing a heavy burden. The image is in part inspired by Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series (the desert scene and the horse) but the heavy load is taken from a newspaper image of a refugee carrying a red mattress. Oil on board -
60 x 30
Christian caught by Giant Despair - Oil on canvas 110 x 90
Christian Admonishes Sir Having Greedy on the no. 36 Bus (both 80 x 100)
Acrylic on paper (on the left) and oil on canvas with collage (on the right). The paintings reflect an incident on a bus journey from Vauxhall to Camberwell. The works blend a constructed image of a town in the Middle East taken (in the picture on the right) from that day's paper, with an incident the cause of which I have attributed to a character (Sir Having Greedy) from The Pilgrim's Progress.
I have no Preference - oil on canvas. 110 x 90
This work tests, tentatively, the boundary beyond which I consider material to be too raw or sensitive for me, and therefore my practice. By adopting a cartoon style and ironic dialogue I reach a point at which I am comfortable presenting the image.
UN Security Council Meeting - charcoal and gesso on canvas - 60 x 80.
An image inspired by Chaucer's Parlement of Foulys, another allegorical work in which birds meet and noisily debate a choice of mate.
Portrait of Simon Srebnik - taken from a still photograph from the documentary Shoah, by Claude Landesmann, 1985. Oil on canvas with an extruded acrylic sheet set into a frame made from a discarded pallet to create a three-dimensional work -
50 x 50 x 12.
The text, laser printed onto the acrylic sheet, is taken from the opening scene of Shoah. The story is almost unbearable. I have presented it as it was written by Landesmann, without any editing. The work is therefore essentially a homage to Simon Srebnik himself, one of only two survivors out of 400,000 Jews killed at Chelmno, but also to Landesmann for the extraordinary work which is Shoah.
Detail from Portrait of Simon Srebnik