Sleeper

2017

121 × 185.5 cm / 47 ¾ × 73 ″

EV of 16

Format prints: edition variable

Medium reduction woodcut

Series Lunar Voyage

Available work

EV6/16

EV7/16

This has to be the clunkiest image in the Lunar Voyage series. I wanted to somehow show the traveller/dreamer in his hypnagogoic state imaginging family back home, almost like thought bubbles and cartoons coming out of his head. The Martian in Nicolas Rogue’s The Man who Fell to Earth kept having visions of his family back home dying of thirst. Here my anti-hero is surrounded by a Pearl and Dean wall-paper, which I remember so vividly from my childhood when going to the movies.

The carpet below him; where he sees an earlier version of his voyage, leaving a pre-lapsarian eden; was inspired by Roger Livesey’s characters camera obscura in a Matter of Life and Death. Looking back on this wood-cut two years on I realise that I used colours (browns, aubergines, umbres, mustard yellows) that strangely hot-wire me back to my childhood back in the 70s. In this image everything is in his head; the dreams, the spaceship, memories of loved-ones, and what’s more all of this comes from my head. Like the cyclical nature of the composition my dreams are his dreams and his dreams are my dreams.

This image of the voyager dreaming of home in his pod on the moon was fed by memories of my 70’s childhood: the avocado greens, browns and orange-russet colours of wallpapers, kitchen cupboards, tiles and bathroom furnishings. The Pearl and Dean intro, with jabbering music to the small ads at the cinema in careering spacey lozenges of transparent squares. My dad’s synthetic mix trousers slightly flared, a bit embarrassing for his kids and his pink shirts and ever so polished clickety shoes. The earth he left behind as a rug beneath his feet and dreams of Life on earth in the virtual windows above - TH