Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

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Limited Edition Reproduction of 100 Only

Have you ever used the term – higgledy piggledy?

Well that’s what sprang to mind when I was thinking about how to best describe my creative approach, my methodology. If I were asked to explain how I go about collating the ideas for each new painting ‘higgledy piggledy’ is the perfect description. I have no pre-defined work method. It‘s all haphazard, unbridled anarchy, a sort of self-controlled chaos.

And this painting is typical – it’s a bit of a hotchpotch.

I’ve brought together bits from earlier paintings, stuff I find and like and images I’ve saved thinking, I know one day I’ll use that. And like any good recipe, I just put all the ingredients in a bowl (in my head) and mix ‘em together and this is the result.

The ideas for this painting started out with a photograph in a book. A book on, of all things, grasses and the photo was of Blue Wheat Grass, which is native to Tierra del Fuego.

As grasses grow, it’s a very attractive grass. But I eventually ditched the notion of using it. So, it didn’t end up on the finished canvas but, nonetheless, deserves a mention being part of the process of deciding what to use and what to reject.

The chocolate cup cake, self-designed beer coaster, iced doughnut and strawberry milk are not native to a small South American archipelago. But they are native to my imagination. And they, along with the baked beans, assorted fruit, tin-toy race car and female drowning in a swimming pool did get used, albeit in a higgledy-piggledy fashion.

Proof, if ever needed, that – ‘Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction.’ I must also mention U.K. cartoonist Hunt Emerson who’s work I’ve always had a fondness for.