Spotlight - Small Worlds
Small Worlds - an image three years in the making!
Okay, so three years, what’s the deal? Why so long, Gray?
Well, since you asked.
Small worlds was started way back at the end of 2019. It was the culmination of a few things I’d been working on. I’d spent several months prior to this mostly working in ink. I had a number of ink images complete - ranging from the surreal to more the straight laced. Usually, when I’m lost in the process of creating an image, ideas begin to form for future pieces; however, they are often dancing right on the edge of conscious thought and I’m mostly unaware of them, like a radio playing quietly in another room, largely unnoticed until a particular tune floats the airwaves. I’ve always found that thinking directly about an image, at least in those very early stages, rarely leads me anywhere. What works best for me is if I just let vague ideas swirl around in the back of my mind, a bit like a half remembered dream. At some point the ideas crystallise and I have enough of a notion of where I’m going to start the piece.
So that’s how Small Worlds began - the culmination of a series of ink images, and a semi formed idea that I wanted to create an ink image of a bookshelf superimposed with fantastical imagery. This imagery would represent the worlds contained within the books. It would also be a representation of my relationship to a shelf of well loved books; the anticipation of a marvellous journey just waiting to be embarked upon. It would also touch on another theme I’m very interested in, and that is of the private realities we experience when we interact with everyday objects. The image may have turned out very different if I had a deep fear or loathing for the written word, for example. And if books left absolutely no impression on me, then I guess all I would have been able to draw would be the shared reality - just a shelf of books devoid of any imaginative superimposition.
Eventually, around one hundred hours later, I finished the inks and put the piece away. Phew. That wallpaper was a bitch to freehand!
Enter covid, lockdown, converting our then two bedroom place into a space where me and my partner could both work, and all the general uncertainty that went with that period. Projects were put on hold, rearranged or forgotten and priorities shifted.
Throughout that time, Small Worlds continued to play on my mind. The reason is that, unlike most of my other ink work, I thought the image would work well in colour. Having moved from London to Yorkshire at the backend of the lockdown period, I now had the required mental and physical space to pick up multiple projects - Small Worlds being one of them.
There was one more reason that I was interested in painting Small Worlds which is to do with the relationship between ink and colour. You see, Small Worlds is about books. When we read books, there is a tendency for the text to almost disappear, allowing imagination to take centre stage. Sure, the words are right there on the page, but you ‘see’ the world the author is describing in your mind’s eye, not the ink on the page. So:
The first version of Small Worlds, the ink version, is a standalone piece and represents the written word of the author.
In the second version of Small Worlds, the colour version, colour becomes a representation of the imagination of the reader.
The combined versions create a relationship between the ink and colour, representing the coming together of the author’s written word (version one) and the imagination of the reader (version two). As in a novel, the ink, which is ever present throughout the coloured Small Worlds, takes a back seat and acts as a framework in which to ‘read’ the image. For me, Small Worlds, in this final state, transforms into the experience of reading a page of a book.
So there you have it. Three years. I hope you like it. If you don’t care for books, maybe not. The final version, a beautiful Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag fine art paper is available to buy in our shop.
Small Worlds Print
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag fine art paper.
