Until now this web address has functioned as the introduction to an online catalogue published in 2006 on the occasion of a 20 year retrospective. I am now in the process of building new sections onto the site and these will eventually cover the years 2007 to the present.

2013

Odyssey in progress - new works

In the 'Circe' episode of the Odyssey a group of men are sent inland by Odysseus to explore the island of Aeaea. This turns out to be the home of the sorceress Circe who enchants the sailors and turns them into swine (when Joyce came to write this chapter in Ulysses he made Circe the proprietor of a famous Dublin brothel). Odysseus has obtained an antidote to Circe's magic and is able to rescue his crew and get valuable help from her. I have used the colours and vernacular imagery from the tattooist's repertoire here, and the doppelganger composition of the playing card. The images are worked in thin acrylic on a pair of French 19th c. cotton drawers.

While work on the Death of the Collaborators is not yet fully resolved, several strong pieces have come out of that theme. Homer's metaphor for the slain handmaidens 'like birds caught in a net' is something that has evaded me visually. I think it has just been too tempting to try to create hybrids from the elements of woman & bird, fabric & feathers. In the end I think that collage (a medium I rarely use) may provide the best vehicle for this synthesis.