Unusually I began with an image in my mind that I wanted to represent. My Shadow, as it appeared to me in a dream. The Dream Shadow wore a longcoat or cloak and top hat. I began with the top hat.

As I understand it, The Shadow is the place where we deposit the aspects of ourselves we would rather not be conscious of. There are some who say The Shadow is an entity of itself who exists a posteriori, because there are aspects of ourselves that we deny, the a priori, to enable us to bury stuff. It can be The Fool or The Joker or The Devil but not The Trickster – that is a different facet/entity.

Top hat done I had the idea to use the masking tape like clay, tearing off small pieces and working on form. The process began to take over and the torn bits of tape began to control the form taking shape.

I grated compressed charcoal over it and spray fixed until liquid, painting with my fingers.

Removed tape.

Disliked the top hat.

Reworked the head.

I have found my basement filling up with furniture salvaged from the houses of my father and my uncle. The basement has two rooms. the one with the chairs is the light side as it has natural light coming in from stairs leading up to the garden. The room where I draw is the dark side with no natural light and only one bulb out of four currently working. Its like a cave. I pass by the light side on the way to draw and see the chairs in different light. They seem to be in conversation with each other (in the photo taken after the drawing was made, another chair has joined the group).

I used the masking tape, carbon, sprayfix method. Then I made another version using scraps of leftover tape and then a pencil to define the forms.

The idea was to try to capture the mood of the chairs in the room rather than my mood created by the chairs in the room. That is, to draw the chairs in room as they are, in the absence of a viewer.

I took a load of tape that id pulled off a previous drawing and pressed it onto the paper laying on a piece of cardboard ive been using because it produces this great striated effect that is as much there as it is absent. then I flipped the paper over and ran the carbon stick over it and then used sprayfix to stick another piece of paper on top. Then I used an hb to outline the shapes as they presented themselves to me. This caused the paper to tear in places.

I see a god (right) and goddess (left) with two humans maybe male and female. I see the goddess, lion headed, devouring the humans while the god looks on. Beneath and between is a god dog anticipating blood and bones.

Taking this as data from the unconscious, rather like in the way dreams work, I interpret it to be about how the ego needs to be devoured by the unconscious and by consciousness, that is to say, the Self or God in order to individuate. But also about how the Self needs and uses the ego to help the Self know itself.

Its great to be able to play with materials like this. The excitement of making an image out of mess and detritus, without intentionality, is for me a great thing.

More drawing sculptures combining paper, tape, carbon, sprayfix. Here a landscape in South of France, a stone rainbow at night at sea, a row of stone boulders by moonlight. I made the rainbow drawing channeling anger at seeing all those fucking I Love NHS rainbow pictures in windows while walking around white Tory ghettoes in Wandsworth. These people voted for a party that believes that society is a socialist idea and that believes in extreme individual responsibility, to whom the NHS is anathema. A party that believes there should be a minimal state covid response because it is your responsibility to not get it. But they get their little darlings to paint pretty rainbows with their nannies and au pairs while they pop to the shops in their 4xfucking4s. Venting.

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Here I started to use the masking tape torn from previous drawings as a modelling material, in the same way that I would use clay to model for architectural work, tearing off small pieces and applying them spontaneously to the paper laid on top of cardboard because I liked the texture. Then used the technique of shading and spraying with spray fix until liquid and finger painting with it until it sets – usually a matter of 3 or 4 seconds, cold on the finger tips and hard to breathe. I hold my breath while im doing the last part and then get out into fresh air. It reminds me of the noise and dust of the stone workshop. The urgency of it all forces spontaneity and gestural generality. I like this because I don’t know what the end result will look like until its fully dried, the air is clear, I peel off the tape and hold up to the light. The image on the left is back lit and on the right not. As with stone work its about the relationship between the material removed and the material left behind. I keep the blackened tape that is removed and re use in other drawing-sculptures. In this way the drawing becomes just material for an ongoing project – a small part of a much larger piece of work – with uncertain beginnings, uncertain sources and an uncertain end. Uncertainty is the antidote to Modernisms certainty arising in the Enlightenment, but also to the knowing irony of Post-Modernism. Certainty can stifle creativity and exclude the viewer. Uncertainty cultivates creativity and is inclusive of the viewer.

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Drawn after the BLM protestors toppled the Colston bronze and dumped in harbour. Here I imagined approaching the shore of an unknown island with indecipherable monuments to a fallen civilisation tumbling into the sea. I wanted it to be more chilling than Shelleys Ozymandias where the traveller is arriving centuries later. Here he/she is arriving in the immediate aftermath.

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I drew this after Trumps walk to St Johns Church on June 1st. I had a vision of what the fall of a civilisation might look like.

playing with this tape, carbon, spray technique drawing old sculpture from memory in dark, poorly lit basement like working in a darkroom. I developed the idea of making sculpture to draw, rather than drawings for sculpture during MA. I have never made drawings or maquettes for sculpture, preferring to work free and direct.

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Paper, masking tape, compressed charcoal, stanley blade, sprayfix.

In my mind were the BLM protests and the surveillance state with its militarised, politicised police force. How the Right decries the big state as socialist but happily deploys and imposes its force upon communities to attack, intimidate and antagonise. Started reading about the Defund The Police Movement. The rich don’t live in communities like the proletariat do. They live in gated ghettoes with private police to protect them. They are self-separated. The working-classes sustain their communities in spite of having no protection from the rich and whilst besieged by the police. They are excluded. The rich are by their nature anti-social. The poor are social as an act of resistance and as an expression of humanity.