Some of the small abstracts I have on a panel – shown in one of the photos that will be posted soon.
The Tempest” is one of my favourite plays and I wanted to explore this and a number of Shakespeare’s other plays from a painter’s point of view. His people could be from the present and not just characters from a play written centuries ago. Lines in the play are very pertinent to our current lives and are also an inspiration for visual elements. “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep” give rise to the dream/nightmare drawings — storms, goddesses, witches, and sinking galleons — which are only revealed when the pages in “The Tempest” book are turned.
The exhibition includes charcoal drawings juxtaposed with the abstractions seen in both the panels and the books. My process for much of the work begins with “floating” inks in water and then exploring the organic shapes that are created. The shapes inspire thoughts and ideas which link to the themes of the play and which I then develop in the books and paintings. In the case of “The Tempest” the colours and shapes that emerged with the ink suggested the tropical and strange world of the Bermudas to which Shakespeare refers in the play.