Prayer?

Earlier this week I visited the UK’s largest independent contemporary art, craft and design gallery, The Biscuit Factory, to deliver fresh work and to collect unsold work that had been on display. I am always greeted with a warm welcome from curator Sam Knowles and the staff at The Biscuit Factory and Monday was no different. The Biscuit Factory have sold both landscape and figurative work of mine in the past so I have tried to give them a good mix of both genres with the latest batch of paintings and original prints.

I rarely explain individual works preferring the image to do all the “talking” but there’s one work  for which I do want to provide some background information. A few years ago my eldest daughter’s health was suffering very badly and at that time no-one seemed able to diagnose the cause. Eventually it was established that she was suffering from the chronic condition Ulcerative Colitis. It was an extremely worrying time for everyone and during a weekend away with friends my wife, Mel, and I found ourselves in a small chapel in North Wales. The light streaming through the windows was dramatic. As with many old buildings the chapel was quite cool in the shadows but Mel found warmth in the pews bathed in sunlight. I looked at Mel and guessed that she was  in prayer for our daughter, Lucy…for I certainly had been. The image of Mel sat in this beautiful light praying for our girl (well, young woman in her 20’s!) was so powerful for me that I wanted to produce a piece of work based on it.  On return to my studio I decided to produce an etching. Initially I did not want the work to be just about Lucy and Mel so I purposely etched it as a mirror image (back to front) to sort of separate it from my emotions. Once I’d printed off the edition I realised that this really wasn’t possible and I ended up titling the etching “Prayer For Lucy”. With this realisation came the desire to paint a version of the image I’d seen in the chapel and I produced the oil on canvas, “Prayer”…this time the “right” way round. This painting is now available at The Biscuit Factory…along with other works…please see below:

For inquiries about these works please see link https://www.thebiscuitfactory.com/pages/contact-us