A pen and ink sketch of a tree drawn from the imagination, with a collaged sphere painted in gouache.
The sphere is meant to have a slightly otherworldly quality about it, as though it’s from a different dimension or reality.
A sketch of a person with a head in the form of a padlock. The person is carrying a walking stick in the form of a key.
I’ve used a padlock as a head in several works. I think that it probably signifies mental states of various kinds. States that need unlocking.
The key in this sketch probably acts as an aid or a crutch.
A digital sketch or painting that reflects my concerns about environmental issues, showing a watch sinking in a stormy sea.
The watch or clock is a metaphor for time (as usual). The watch is being buffeted by a stormy sea and is in the process of sinking. The sea is a metaphor for climate change, global warming and other environmental concerns, both generally and specifically as they apply to the sea. The fact that the clock or watch is sinking is a sign that we are running out of time. The clock is not just a metaphor for time, it is also a metaphor for civilisation and the technology on which we rely ( A clock being an elaborate piece of highly sophisticated engineering). The fact that it is impossible for a watch to float in the first place may be a factor to consider too.
The theme of this sketch reflects my interest in creating environmental art because of my concerns about the state of the planet due to climate change, environmental degradation and other aspects of environmentalism (which has been a concern of mine since the 1960s).
A digital sketch created for a print. It features a stylised insect drawn from my imagination.
The insect is drawn in a sketchy black and white style that is perhaps suggestive of images produced using traditional printmaking techniques such as woodcut, woodblock or linocut. It also reminds me of scraper board.
The black sky makes me think that it’s a nocturnal insect of some kind. It also looks a bit like a tortoise for some reason, with perhaps a bit of rhinoceros thrown in.
This sketch, drawn spontaneously in a sketchbook, contains obviously strong psychological symbolism. It shows a floating head on fire. Are the flames the hair? Or are they the person’s thoughts or state of mind?
It’s an image with associations to psychology, mental health, mental illness and wellbeing.
A surrealist sketch of a gigantic stone eye resting on the ground. A mysterious pipe-like cylinder extends upwards from the eye. A similar eye in the distance shows the pipe-like structure extending unfeasibly high into the air.
The image is almost definitely influenced by surrealist art, including the surrealism of Max Ernst and Rene Magritte.
I like to sit down with a sketchbook every so often and draw whatever comes into my head. Surreal objects with bird-like features are a recurring theme. These slightly surreal dancing teapots are a good example.
Dark Cone
Pencil drawing with ink additions on paper. June 2017
A pencil sketch from the imagination of a dark cone set in a featureless landscape.
The slightly blurred quality of the pencil marks in this drawing combined with the sharper and darker ink lines create an unsettling atmosphere in the image.
A small drawing from the imagination that is in one of my sketchbooks.
I sometimes sit down with a sketchbook when I have a few minutes to spare and just draw whatever comes into my head, unmediated. It’s a sort of subconscious, automatic drawing. I used to think that such sketches would be a good way to encourage the development of new concepts and motifs without too much conscious thought channelling my work down well trodden pathways. However, I soon found that it was actually a way of revealing to oneself one’s inner obsessive visions, as variations on the same themes inevitably lay themselves out on the page time after time. This particular sketch, I see from the notes beside it, was drawn in the gardens of Hatfield House, a stately home in Hertfordshire, while sitting next to the very fine wisteria that’s growing there. There seems to be no link between the two.
The colour in the image was added later, after scanning the sketch into my laptop.
This painting was an exercise in creating something from the subconscious without any preconceived idea about what I was about to create.
It turns out to be a slightly sinister landscape, in the centre of which there is something that may or may not be a living entity. Early on in the development of this sketch this object looked more like a strangely shaped rock, but the addition of colour to it removed it from the rest of the landscape and turned it into something separate from the landscape. The blue dot in the image, which is a collaged circle of coloured paper, gives the possibly living entity an air of sentience, as it seems to be contemplating a strange sun or moon in the sky.
A sketch of an idea for a sculpture, showing an umbrella mounted at the top of a conical structure that has short filaments protruding from it.
I have a fascination with umbrellas for some reason. I think it’s possibly due to a mixture of their slightly Heath Robinsonesque mechanical structure – the hinged flexible rods that are levered outwards to support a stretched fabric cover – and their pleasing form when in the open position. Not to mention their practicality. And the fact that they are, despite their mechanical intricacy, very much taken for granted and dismissed as objects of great mundanity.
My first ever published piece of artwork was an absurdist redesign of the umbrella, published in the Sunday Times in about 1974.
A sketchbook page of cattle grazing in a field.
The sketch was drawn in situ, using dip pen and ink.
Dip pen and ink is a favourite medium for sketching. Different nibs on different paper produce different results. I’ve got a supply of hundreds of nibs in case they ever go out of production!
A dandelion seed head in which the seeds have anthropomorphic human form.
The image is disturbingly ambiguous. Is the fact that one of the seeds is drifting away from the seed head a sign of freedom or simply a sign of fate? And what can be read into the fact that the humans in the anthropomorphic seeds have no heads?
Anthropomorphism is a common theme in my work.