Night Gardener

I think living in this recently even more topsy turvy world has discombobulated so many artists who are attempting to be a barometer of our time.  Subliminally at first, my practice has led me to the decision that I try and focus on celebrating and re-conjuring/re-composing  the Edenic in my imagery whether in drawings, paintings or prints.  Living in the moment as much as possible and having access to forms of cultivated wilderness on our green island has fuelled the pictures I make.  Scenes of gardeners stooping over flowers, woodcuts and paintings of me and my family and friends staring out or into flower fields of colour; I hope there is a pain in this beauty, reflecting the pain in our existence- especially when we are lucky enough in the UK to have a society that by and large, despite so much provocation and agitation, supports our emotional kindness and environmental endeavours.  All this positivity here on our edge of Europe, against a backdrop of seemingly total chaos in what we read and hear about in the news.  The unravelling of any safety net to protect the poor, the dismantling of green policies and green jobs that have been propelling us towards net zero, the unleashing of oligarchic interests that now terrorise our earth,subsuming our planet and turning her lickety spit into a martian desert; these are all drivers for me in my own quiet protest.  I want to remind myself, despite my gloom, that our lives can be different from the paucity of the denuded imagination of the few that are rather effectively corralling and  controlling us.  - TH