Gravity and Levity 6

Carnival was originally the period before lent when food was used up before it went off. It allowed indulgences before the long fast and means 'giving up meat’ or more literally "raising flesh”.
The ‘Carnival’ body of work started with an internal image of my ancestors in a pile of bodies and a
sense of unexpressed pent up emotion. A legacy that feels trapped, enclosed and unable to move or grow. As the work progressed the heads were gone and the figures became more and more liberated, dynamic, rising into the air and moving into new, apparently impossible positions and contortions.
In Carnival I am exploring curious internal bodily sensations; simultaneous levity and gravity, simultaneous stillness and movement, simultaneous life and death.

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My earliest influence was my uncle, who was a painter. His house was full of dark, mysterious images, like the blue shoe in a dark forest and the Apollo Lunar module depicted with foil chewing gum wrappers. My father took me to the main London galleries, but Uncle Michael's paintings were a daily influence that stayed with me.