Sunday, 4 August 2019

Winds of Change...

I’ve just returned from our annual family holiday to Filey in North Yorkshire, and made a few drawings in my sketchbook of the remains of the lookout posts that were built on the cliffs during WW2 that have since collapsed and slid down onto the beach as the cliff has eroded.
I wrote about the drawings I made there last year of the same giant concrete form, commenting that they had a Brexit type symbolic quality to them: these remnants of our past history looking out to sea in a Canute-like fashion...
One year on and things are even worse as the nation just continues to tear itself in two. Leave. Remain. Leave. Remain. There is a horrible sort of unending stasis that is driving everyone, including me, insane with the futility of it all. I mean, Boris f**king Johnson. FFS! Come on!
This year the beach was very foggy and the waves very stormy at times. This drawing of my son on the rocks, his back to us after a row, I found very poignant in a way. He is about to start secondary school in September, so this is a difficult transitory period for him and we are all struggling to keep him, and ourselves, afloat as he, and all of us, battle with his learning difficulties and ADHD. We are hoping his new school will offer him the fresh start he needs.
I thought these drawings, and the ones I made last year, could be developed into some collagraph prints. After last year, I had planned to develop these motifs further in relation to Brexit etc, and with the help of a friend even began to look into some funding opportunities. However, I eventually shied away from it back to the late night highways and lorry parks, feeling it was too complicated to deal with with my family and work commitments…the prints could still be a good idea though.

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