I work with myth. I work with myths throughout history and with myths of
today. Roland Barthes has written that Myth is a type of speech..... a system of 
communication... a series of signs and
that the knowledge contained in a mythical concept is confused, made of yielding shapeless
associations ... a formless, unstable, nebulous condensation He suggests that the function
of myth ... is to be taken possession of - deciphered, read ... and the concept or meaning
held within the nebulous layers and signs are to be taken out/taken on - interpreted by
the viewer, reader or listener
So, in the cauldron of selected images, pieces of text, qualities of
surface, I mix a visual tale of signs and symbols which float up through time and engage
the present in a dialogue of suggested possibilities. I re-cycle the heroes of yesterday:
I adopt legends and relate them to our own world of 30 second commercials, instant tabloid
infamy; of soaps and sound bites. In a series of hand-rubbed woodcuts made over the last
three years, 5ft. x 4ft. in size, I have used folk and fairy story to reflect the
interdependence of humans and animals in the long history of domestic and working
situations. I use the tenuous existence of the three little pigs as metaphors for tenant
and landlord.
The 19th century population move from the countryside into the
manufacturing towns, when mechanisation replaced horse - power, was the beginning of the
changes in our whole concept of society and landscape. I comment humorously on the
subsequent human love affair with the automobile. Now the car is representative of the
status of the owner and metal and oil have replaced bone and blood. I examine the
traditional role of women as protector of hearth, family and child in the semi-starved
conditions of cottage husbandry before Grandma and Red Riding Hood were gobbled up by the
Factory wolf. Here, however the beast is not cut open to allow release and new life to the
victims, but keeps on swallowing. I reveal the plight of London work - house children
transported as slaves into the northern Textile Mills. Rewards in heaven, promised by the
powers of Government and Religion somehow did not seem enough.
Ancient stories of moral and mischief, survival and regeneration have been
shared around firesides as long as humans have inhabited the earth. Kinship and common
cause lent value to the tales. Joseph Cambell in his preface to Grimm’s Fairy Tales
writes that storytellers were masters of the human spirit, teaching a wisdom of death and
life. And the thesaurus of the myth motifs was their vocabulary. They brooded on the state
and ways of man, and through their brooding came to wisdom; then teaching, with the aid of
the picture language of the myth they worked changes in the pattern of their inherited
iconography. The universe of nature and the rules of religion fought side by side for
control of popular imagination. In the stone book of the cathedral structure the
caricature of the fore-man was carved 100 ft up in the vaulting as a workman’s'
secret joke; masons carved the mouse being chased by the cat around the lintel of stained
glass scenes from the Crucifixion. Life goes on.
In my prints time and change are represented by constructed panels of
Indian rag, rice or grain papers of rough and transparent quality. They are a mass of
inconsistency and blemish and an obvious product of the human hand. A variety of oil-
based inks of opacity, translucency and glaze are applied to draw the viewer into the
surface and through the other side. A harmony of blending lulls us into a false sense of
security as the abrupt and strident colour screams its disparity. Disintegration and
softening of objects or edges call to mind the decaying, crumbling textures of skin and
flesh, which is our human condition. A shocking or funny incident relieves the tension as
the eye is encouraged to float, meander, glide, or jump, or is pulled to an abrupt halt at
a focus of the reading. Hand- rubbed woodcuts and deeply bitten etchings provide a
complexity of images, attacked and cohered from all sides of the wood or metal. Collaged
and muti-layered they hide as much as they reveal. Nothing is stated; much is questioned.
My tale is slow in the telling.
In much of the world in recent years television has taken over the role of
narrator. Sitting in the corner in its box, it informs us of our needs. We identify with
stereotypes in dramas and sports programmes - the victim, the joker, the super star, the
villain. We emulate our heroes and desire their possessions. Participation in the
consumption of goods ensures our value in society. Without the means to join in we become
isolated individuals. In this area of conflict, where suggested need and unequal means
dance uneasily across the headlines of our daily lives, I seek to place my ideas. I work
in series in paintings, drawings and prints to cover the ground of argument and opinion in
the subjects of my concern. I quote from Gore Vidal in his article Gods and Greens, In my
lifetime and country I have watched governors manipulate opinion with the greatest of
ease. Certain races, arbitrary categories of human beings, political systems are demonised
and trivialised on a daily and unrelenting basis. These are the carefully crafted
subliminal opinionated messages that hiss through the airwaves and into the minds of
everyone from the first switching on of the cathode ray tube to the last T.V. supper when
the light goes out...
Consumer culture and T.V. have created a fragmented multi- imaged world
which has effaced the distinction between the real and the imaginary. This has been
likened by various philosophers to the Medieval fair or carnival where there is little
coherent sequence but a multitude of booths exhibiting and revealing sights and sounds of
the grotesque and extraordinary: the larger than life; the unbelievable and the wonderful.
We become viewers rather than participators. Life moves so fast we find difficulty in
keeping up with the changes. We feel inadequate in our roles and insecure in our sequence
and history. In repeating the concerns of Frankenstein’s monster, Who am I ? What was
I ? Whence did I come? What was my destination? - So we may ask ourselves today. Who are
we ? What are we ? Who is designing us ? Where are we going ?
The full title of Mary Shelley’s novel is Frankenstein: or the
Modern Prometheus,. Gore Vidal continues in his article, Prometheus stole fire from Heaven
so that we could not only cook dinner but one another. We create, we destroy. Balance is
always what we have needed So Prometheus, in defying the Gods in Greek Mythology, combines
the roles of father of technology, friend of mankind and supreme rebel. His triple roles
and inflicted suffering, hovering between the Heavens and the world of Human Beings,
render him defiant yet powerless. Unsure of his identity and place in the world he can
only live from one insecure day to the next. He says in Aeschylus play Prometheus Bound.
Aye, I caused mortals no longer to foresee their doom
I caused blind hopes to dwell within their breasts !
David Elliot writes in 1995 Doomsday is possible but not inevitable. In
a world in which nuclear and chemical pollution, global warming, AIDS and other epidemics
run out of control against a background of division and exploitation, between rich and
poor, north and south, waged and unemployed, housed and homeless, no culture can remain
insular. Our individual survival lies in the confrontation of these uncomfortable facts.
This is not ostensibly a statement of morality or ethics, mearly of self interest Within
the maelstrom of global politics and consumer fantasy we lose our sense of reality and
unreality. We ourselves are becoming composite creatures, made up of bits and pieces,
hiding behind stereotypical masks, with our multiple roles and many personalities. So, in
my latest work, the mirror, the dual being, the reversed and reflected object, the window
and the veil, are an attempt to confront the problem of the individual seeking itself in
the plethora of options. As Angela Carter writes in her novel The Passion of New Eve, I
sensed all the lure of that narcissistic loss of being, when the face leaks into the
looking- glass like water into sand.
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