2024 Drawings

Surrounded by rumpled sheets, I succumb to fright. Somewhere deep down, I believe that I will never die. But nightmares shred that illusion; for a few brief moments on waking, I can’t tell up from down, and am riven with mortal dread. Until it passes, and I am comforted once more by the charming ordinariness of existence.

Après Moi le Deluge

The ground is all but gone, but here on this tiny patch of rock, my treasures are gathered. This must mean something, this gold coin. I am the last man standing, wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. Rain sweeps across the indifferent, murmuring sea. I am full of faith.

Apparition

Perhaps when the line between dreams and reality vanishes, we see things as they really are. The fragile structures of meaning are swept away. In that liminal moment we realise that the waking mind is just a trick. Once the terror has passed, there is nothing but freedom left.

The Unthinkable

All that does not bear thinking about is pushed into the realm of the invisible, where it eternally coalesces, and re-forms, and re-groups.
A man in a bath gazes fearfully into the dark. In this moment even perspective cannot be trusted; the bath is tilted forwards as if he might tip out and land sprawled at our feet.

Let us cling to our beliefs. It never, ever pays to think the unthinkable.

The World is Too Much with Us

In a small, tragic moment a beetle struggles upside down in a bowl of water. The title is from an 1802 poem by Wordsworth about our mad enchantment with getting and spending, which blinds us to the natural world.

The blue of the bowl, the delicate detail of the beetle’s legs, the sparkling water and soft moss; how wonderful that we can admire beauty in the face of sadness. Perhaps this superpower is both the key to our survival and our fatal flaw.

Leavings

It seems crazy to put a gun in a drawing. Guns are too laden with symbolism, they are too ubiquitous in our entertainments, our histories, our abuses. A gun is the ultimate fantasy, able to pierce the fabric of life itself.

This gun lies forgotten in a tiny corner of the world, dropped into a stream with scintillating reflections. A dragonfly rests briefly on it. No sense can be made of such madness.

Fly-By-Night

Maybe because we are longer-lived, we seem to value less the creatures and plants that exist briefly. A flower may only bloom for a few days, a moth may only live a week or two. Life is purest gold. Perhaps it’s we who are fly-by-night, robbing and pillaging and making off with the proceeds – but where to?

Lunch

My hunger wrestles inside my guts with the sight of an enormous spider making its way across my lunch. Disgust wins out. Like the spider, we are simply animals with survival instincts, except we dress up our impulses in far-fetched explanations. The spider is such a beautiful, fantastical creature. If only my revulsion could be overcome!