By Richie Fawcett
Well, were all in the same boat arn’t we? So after a few days in a locked down building in the middle of D1 that’s exactly what I drew…a boat…actually it came out as a First World War dreadnaught battleship suspended in mid air by multicolored balloons. Its an image that sums up the situation in a way…symbolic in the sense that the old way we knew before has been lifted silently away from our reality and a new surreal reality has taken its place…impossibe to ever believe it would happen…just like the image is showing…a 50 thousand ton battle ship being lifted by a bunch of balloons from a children’s birthday party.
So that was the start of it…I quite liked this new found form of expression…of drawing something from my imagination…its a visual direction that takes me back to my childhood when I would sit at the back of the class and listen to my English teacher reading the far away tree by Enid Blyton and closing my eyes and seeing in my mind all the different world and people they met in their adventures.
Imagination, such a wonderful thing that’s sadly suppressed by the electronic tablets children are given way too early in my personal opinion, and the storytelling of old has been replaced with forced visuals of someone else’s interpretation of what something looks like…thats the power of the written word and imagination is created in those early years which is why its so important to read to your children. You never know, once upon a lockdown in the future it might well come in handy…and so to my next lockdown drawing…
I always love to draw texture and shadows. My usual style of work being the large scale detailed city scapes I’m quite well known for, that have taken a pause due to the fact I can’t get out and draw the views at the moment due to all the lockdowns so something inside me wanted to express this frustration…so I drew a hole in a wall – a concrete block for testing tank projectiles no less…then added a red puddle, as you do…it could be blood…or it could be tomato sauce…up to you…I don’t use color much in my work but I added a blue sky that could mean there is hope, or by looking through the reinforced concrete iron rods it could mean a metaphor for being in a prison where you can see plus sky but you can’t get out.
After I got all the bad old negative energy out of the way through the first two drawings I started to feel I needed to draw something completely different and this turned out to be a tiny Italian town on the top of a rocky outcrop and surrounded by trees in a deep forest…the image was again subconsciously isolation, however this is more positive as there is a community and the setting is very dreamy and romantic…not happy with just the drawing and wanting to make the picture com alive, I reused one of my old LED pictures that I have hanging in my gallery in the joining room. So before long I was cutting into the original to make the little lights come on in the houses and make the picture truly come to life…the result is not bad.
Whilst drawing the Italian Town with lights I was listening a lot to Pavarotti very loudly…I think the neighbors like Pavarotti now.
Actually by now I’m starting to feel ok about the situation and even quite happy with the new found direction my art has taken me. With this I drew the next picture which to me expresses the need for energy and again is another symbol of isolation, however there is hope in this one…an off shore oil platform symbolizing the need for energy and to hold fast and strong in a stormy sea. The storm will pass and the seas will be calm and the skies will be clear again…
So my next one will be a drawing of an island in the Greek Cycladies and a place that I have very happy memories, Santorini…I haven’t drawn it yet but when I do I’ll show you…this will be a full circle turn around from frustration and disbelief to positivity and felling ok about things enough to draw a happy place.
My daily blog , around the world in 80. cocktails and sketches will feature the drawings that I make in lockdown so check out the links keep up to date as I will be making a cocktail and sharing the recipe to go with each drawing.
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