Context for Figures 2022-2023

How do two figures (or objects) relate or come together? What is the experience of being in relationship? These drawings and mono-prints attempt to explore various ways of two being together, via references to being held, holding, co-existing, overlapping or in opposition. They can be interpreted as two individuals- adult to adult, or adult and child, or, as two or more aspects of ourselves which opens up a more internal and often unfamiliar or even foreign, relationship. This refers back to the ambiguity and/or ambivalence in the introduction to my work.

I have not yet finished with the motifs of held, coupling or combined figures or that of ‘blind-spots’.

March 2025

Context for Pieta

The concept of being held and holding, and the resulting relationships it gives rise to has been a theme in my work for several years.

Whether it is figurative or non- figurative, 2-D or 3-D, the idea of this soothing and sometimes awkward relationship is an on-going challenge.

Both Michelangelo’s actual Pietas and da Vinci’s cartoon of The Virgin with St Ann have been primary informers in the development of my interpretations, which again introduce the tensions of ambiguity and ambivalence.

Context for The Soldier

During the 2020 Covid lock-down period, I returned to some earlier ideas I had worked on but had not managed to resolve, exploring the relationship and roles of the mouth and ear, of ‘the word’ and ‘hearing’.

Simultaneously, my professional and personal challenges of listening with a ‘psychoanalytic ear’ had made a significant impact over my years of working as a therapist.

The covid pandemic with its profound effects of isolation, a new ‘silence’ and the sudden cut-off experience served to expand my thinking around how we hear and what we hear and how and what we don’t hear. Also, around the same time, I made a difficult decision to retire earlier than I had initially planned.

A series of black and white, very formal (or classical) “Ears” emerged. They became over-life sized portraits of hearing.

These were followed by a desire to loosen up, but surprisingly, to continue with figurative imagery. Using quick monoprint sketches, then larger pieces of paper and water-colour pencils, I explored ‘life drawing’ all over again, with both single and combined figures.

The tragic unfolding of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in 2023 found myself focusing on a single male figure, and the beginnings of a winged but falling, figure and solitary soldier emerged. A lot of sketching gave way to a more generic European art historical nude. Additions of bandoliers and wings became part of the idea of external and internal wars - of idealization and disillusionment and of aggression and power and the fall from it. The works’ hard reds and blacks moved towards softer bruised sanguines and pinks.

This ‘Soldier’ series overlaps with my current 2025 works-in-progress focusing on the infantile experience.

March 2025