Entangled and Trapped........

Some Bic Biro line drawing from my Silbury Hill surrounding bushes photos. In the past the last image would be converted into a perpex engraving.

First stage playing with the image.

Looking at the composition of the original photograph and trying to line up the layers.

The main drawing, which is not quite right, bottom left corner needs to given more depth. The back ground needs to be brought out, but the linear line make this difficult as I would want a hazy background. Probably a sandpapered surface to give it a different texture.

Title, I like the word Entangled as it gives a feeling of a complex mess and Trapped, am I repeating myself?

Painting the Strands

The BBC had a good, short TV series about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This was a great show as it was concise and enjoyable showing how radical these painters were at the time and tackling issues e.g. the effects of industrialisation and social understanding that were not the standard art fare, which I remember as being held up as one of the main points of the French Impressions.

This stood out again, when I watched another programme about Edouard Manet. Another figure from my past as Manet along with another series of lectures about the development of Modern American Art were the first lectures of my Degree years. This was one of the first times, that I had people instructing about art face to face. As we usually had a TV programme to discuss rather than seeing some one stood up in front of us.

Manet too looked to the past and the art of Spain rather than the academic classicism of French painting. Yet, there has always been links to the previous artists, Turner's work is obliviously impressionistic, but he has been looked on as a separate part of art history and not some part of the chain.


This painting by Holman Hunt of the Lady of Shalott is in the Manchester Art Gallery. It is a fantastic picture, but is much smaller than than you would think. I remember my father reciting part of the poem to me before I ever saw this picture. I like the way the body is twisting and the hair swirling high into the air.




These painters have been a more prominent part of my artistic heritage that I seem to be aware. It was the article about Martin Scorsese restoration of the film of the Red Shoes in the paper on Saturday that again set my thoughts weaving the past together. One of the reasons is the main character of Moira Shearer with her red hair reminds me of the various red haired models in the PRB's paintings.

Powell & Pressburger who made the film is one of my favourite, even though I found ballet difficult to enjoy. This film is fantastic as it shows the extend that art can drive you and the choices you have to make at times. It is both ravishing in colour and a great story told with simplicity.

The title was used for a Kate Bush album, which links the story back to to the original Hans Christian Anderson's tale and the film. Kate Bush's work is unusual and looking back avant garde or what might be termed 'Art Rock', although, this is subject to debate. Musically, I have always like the idea of the concept album with a group of songs linking together to create a 'bigger' piece of work.

One of the lessons I learnt was how PRB and later 19 th Century painters placed symbols into the image and layered the meanings. As the North West has a lot of Art Galleries as the benefits of rich industrialists during the Victorian age donated a lot of art to these galleries and imbibe the mind with their genre. It is only later that I feel the links of the chains back into the past and how it has affect my own ideas and vision.