Normington Print

This painting began its life as a spontaneous drawing, a process I use to try to extract themes from the unconscious. Having crystallised the main elements it became clear to me that I'd managed to find representations for all manner of things that had been on my mind at that time: the absurdity of being a slave to one's biology, the pressures and burdens of making a home for oneself, the paradoxes of war being legitimised by recourse to religious narratives, the manner in which one generation claims the right to predetermine the ideology of the following generation. But most of all the image is about the way in which we normalise a common sense view of the world based on our emotional needs, despite the constant intrusions of things that contradict that picture, things that science has shown to be true. I see this as connected to a process of growing up; over time we trade the ideas that made us feel secure for better knowledge once we are emotionally capable of doing so... and it always remains to be seen to what extent we are capable.