Artist Statement

The painting is a response to our Anglo Saxon heritage and the era of Penda. The motifs are interwoven with Anglo Saxon motif from the jewellery of the time. Ornate crafted gold was worn by the men in battle and the Saxon hoard discovered a few years ago confirms this.

However the work is more a celebration of art and technique used to craft rather than the glory of battle or the debatable rights or wrongs of battles fought, and won or lost of the time. Its about the art of the time and how it acts as a language enabling us to decode and understand more about the everyday society of the past.

I used green primarily and on the finished painting it is green but I experimented with other colours and these were the results below.

Initial Statement

The Face to Face project initiated the work. Each artist was responding to Penda and also the other artists participating.

My initial response was to Julie and Penda of Mercia and I kept generally with what I intended as follows.

My response is more about materials and process than subject.

The common thread I am taking through the project is ink. Julie used ink in her work in an informal abstract way, letting the ink guide the imagery, and the photographs taken, were of a random occurrence. The ink dictated the imagery. The photographs are also quite violent and perhaps reflect the violence of the times of Penda.

Also historically, ink is probably the main medium used to record the age of Penda.

My response is in ink and although it is an abstract, it has a strategy to it. The ink was allowed to mark the surface, led by my hand, but the thought process behind each motif is abstract. It was whatever suited or worked and one thing led to another, until it was complete. Initially, I thought that I would fill the whole page, but it became a finished piece before that happened.

Julies work operated on many levels for me as I produce generally abstract work, however, in my response, instead of a random amorphous piece of work I wanted something graphic or illustrated. I wanted a positive to the negative of the past. Adding to this, Julies colours have been inverted, red is green and black is the white paper. The artwork imagery itself, is peaceful not violent, and perhaps akin to what we now know as adult colouring, used to de stress you.

Other symbols like the 'green' of the land, fertility, growth, spring and the idea of motif, something used in historical embroideries and calligraphy to celebrate and to write histories.