Last year, I produced three paintings for Peace Painting following lockdown.
This was possible after my youngest son was given the life experiences we expected him to have, and got a new job, after a period of ten months’ destitution in 2019, then finally being awarded Universal Credit, and then employment.
With the support we had from City Of Lincoln Council to resolve those issues during lockdown, I could then refocus on my own practice, and these paintings came from lockdown photos around the city juxtaposed with older photos from Oslo, Norway – Visit Norway has the marketing tagline “Dream now, visit later”, which of course, was all anyone could do in 2020.
The view from The Viking Way at the top of South Common, Lincoln, almost mirrors the view from Ekebergparken, Oslo, from where Edvard Munch painted The Scream.
So I decided to juxtapose the two views to create an imagined landscape.
On another bike ride during lockdown, I went to search for evidence of the Lincolnshire Conchies. My eldest son was fortunate enough to work with actor Jim Broadbent when he was an extra in the film The Young Victoria, for scenes filmed at Lincoln Cathedral.
It was Jim Broadbent’s father Roy Broadbent, who led the Lincolnshire Conchies, and I sadly missed the play about them whilst dealing with austerity…
The second Peace Painting is from a bike ride to Holton-Cum-Beckering, of Lincolnshire fields, and Lincolnshire sky. The sky has no military ruining it. Only doves.
The woman is an Afghan refugee from a photograph where she is sewing facemasks during the current global pandemic. She is sewing with a golden thread.
The third painting is a field of white poppies – Papaver Somniferum – grown in fields in Lincolnshire for the pharmaceutical industry, juxtaposed with Lincolnshire skies being inhabited by two Syrian boys feeding a flock of doves.
All three are acrylic on canvas.
40 x 50cm
£5000 where sold.
