I’ve wanted to work on etchings for a while so when I got the chance of making some with the help of an excellent printmaker at The Cork Printmakers I jumped on it. Later that that year I brought the etchings to Italy to paint into them.
On the way to Italy the gods saw fit to give me a good dose of food poisoning. “Fish Fingers”, say no more. I experienced the most intense fever dreams with chocolate stones and coloured forms changing shape before my eyes… I was mesmerised by them and sketched them over and over for weeks after. Eventually they appeared on these etchings. Fever dreams inspiring art is an interesting idea. Virginia Woolf thought it worth considering - On Being Ill
I finished 15 prints in this series. They were exhibited at John Martin Gallery as “The Prints Of Darkness” during the Mayfair Art Weekend last summer. This is No. 4 in the series. It is currently on show at William Yeoward in Chelsea. I love the way the blues work against this unflinching Indian green.
I hung out with this painting for a long time. It was worked on in three different studios as the world around it went into a spin. I started it in Berlin in 2019, later bringing it to a religious sculptors studio in Ireland. Then Covid chased us to a shed at the bottom of a tiny garden, where I finished it in May 2021. It's a painting about movement, pace, action, and contemplation. The title speaks volumes about the movement of mankind from …