This is a book that happened by accident.

I frequently make my work in series or sets. In some cases, I’ll happen on an idea and rather than think the idea to a singular conclusion and solitary artwork I will follow that process through, so that it becomes the actual work itself. In other circumstances I will have an idea that requires more than one artwork to express the idea behind it. One example of this was the project to record a political demonstration a day, every day, for a complete year and 365 drawings were the result. Consequently, because the main thrust of the idea was to document a year’s worth of protest through a year’s worth of drawings, the individual drawings could not be sold without breaking the inspiration behind the set’s title of ‘another year of discontent’. So, the drawings have stayed with me, unexhibited in their entirety (it’s difficult to convince a gallery to exhibit 365 drawings that they can only sell in one shot) and so, they rest with me, unsold since their making. There have been quite a few sets of my work that fall into that ‘unsold and now hidden away’ category…

A couple of years ago I was offered the opportunity to release a book of my work. But circumstances conspired and the proposed luxurious, weighty ‘coffee-table’ artist monograph, despite nearly a year of preparatory editorial work, went the way of so many offers from the well-meaning – and off into the Bermuda Triangle Civic Library.

However, as circumstances conspire to undermine, so do coincidence and synchronicity occasionally align to progress. Within a week or so of the disappointment of the non-event publishing deadline passing, I had a small conversation on twitter with a writer who was bemoaning the current royalty rates paid by established publishing houses to non-literary royalty level writers. As our chat progressed, I discovered the current possibility and ease of self-publishing and the environmental benefits of printing on demand (rather than potentially storing a stock of unsold books in an unknown author’s cellar or garage for an eternity). So, I researched the options available, then edited and released my first self-published art book. This book was for my recent Labyrinth drawings that had frustratingly remained unexhibited following their first planned outing being knocked on the head by the pandemic; the die was cast.

Then I thought on… wasn’t this a sort of connection to the punk days again? A DIY dog walk if you weren’t getting the biscuits from the hand that fed you. I thought of the other projects in the past that have never seen an exhibition wall in their entirety because of the financial constraints forced on both myself as a maker and the commercial galleries as exhibitor, and how they could now be realised and made both exhibitively and financially viable. I am now able to produce art works that follow and feed my prose poetry and present them as they were intended as a combined and complete entity. So now, the original work can be sold without detracting from the whole as the integrity of the series is maintained in the publication. The added advantage is that the pricing of the book (intentionally kept low through the book’s format and design) allows a far wider physical distribution of the art and writing.

Regarding this book’s design, everything about it is intentional. I wanted a small, easily carried book that could be enjoyed without the reader resembling an ancient priest wielding a mighty tome of wisdom to a mystery lectern. The size mirrors one of my favourite art books of another contemporary painter that is always a pleasure to take from the bookshelf – in no short measure due to its unimposing size. Also, I didn’t feel a coffee-table book was appropriate in a time when many people have barely got the living space for a dinner table, let alone an additional coffee table.

And it could be a softback book too… The hardback book was once a supposed mark of superior quality (and therefore associated authority) that gave a referential nod to the hand bound books of old – but now it is an unnecessary additional expense when most people are quite capable of looking after the books that they buy.

And mostly, people do not buy art books for the words, so I will keep the words to the bare minimum (my apologies for this introduction).

The other words in this book – the poem, like the drawings have meanings that are specific only to me. There is no definite or ‘correct’ interpretation because we all bring our own baggage on our respective journeys through our time here. Your interpretation of the words and drawings will always be out of my control and so they are as equally valid as my initial inspirations and intentions.

The aesthetic of the drawings is also driven by an old obsession that I’ve now managed to exorcise. In my late teens I was introduced to the heavy tonality of mezzotint etching; it was a process that I had always since hoped to use in my work, but the circumstances and opportunity never arose. I loved the visual warmth and depth of this medium, it’s textures and varieties of mark making, and the fact that it was presented on paper within its own unprinted framing. Now I can present a drawn interpretation of that medium with the use of compressed charcoal, conté pencil and plastic eraser. And coincidentally, like the process of etching, the output can be delivered to an audience affordably.

I hope you enjoy reading and looking at this book as much as I have enjoyed making it; you can find it on amazon.

This book is a thing that happened by accident.

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