The island of small joys
This work developed from a few small sketches into something that consumed all my creative energy for months.
It took on a life of its own and with each new sketch the meaning of the piece developed further.
I owe a great debt to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities with this work – cities adrift in time, space, memory and reality itself. I am sure this won’t be my last foray into psychogeography, nostalgia, place, pleasure, and unease.
The island is a vertiginous, and largely man-made landscape. It’s influences span continents and times – an English parish church, the bottle kilns of the Potteries and rows of terraced houses sit alongside side tall Mediterranean cypresses.
This is no idyll though, there are factories, workshops, the remnants of lost industry. Time is also unclear, buildings lie in ruin, and tall ships sit on the shoulder of the island.
At the water’s edge the rocks give way to gentle waves, paths have been worn through the grass. A single boathouse gives onto the water, hinting at again links beyond the sea.
At it’s higher altitudes the ramshackle town gives way to a fortress – a high, buttressed curtain wall has but a single entry point. Within the walls a spiral stair leads to the shade of a massive tree.
There are liminal spaces – where leisure and industry give way to nature run wild, abundance fenced off from view and trespass, at the edges of human interest.
I leave it up to the viewer to consider where the populace may be at this point in time. Who lives here, who owns there. Are the inhabitants nostalgic for what they have lost, and do they protect what remains.
The island of small joys – original linocut print
‘Insula parva gaudia’ or the Island of small joys, original lino cut art print
(print only)
The island of small joys is available as an open-edition linocut print from the print shop.