Timewyrm
DESCRIPTION
'Timewyrm' is available in the following formats:
A5 Greetings Card
A4 Unframed/Framed Print
Limited Edition in a series of 100. Epson archival pigment print on German rag, 310gsm. Signed by the artist.
Original. For the discerning collector of Dark Surrealist Art. With signed Certificate of Authenticity.
PRODUCTION
The open prints are done at the Southside Rehabilitation Association (SRA) Copyshop, a local charity rehabilitating adults recovering from mental health issues into the workplace. Every sale of a card or print therefore benefits SRA.
The limited edition/giclee prints are from Chris Clack's Dulwich Printing Services, a well-established local fine art printer that I have worked with for the past 10 years.
SHIPPING FOR FRAMES & MOUNTS IN EU
If you're interested in purchasing a mounted or framed reproduction of my artwork, kindly reach out to me directly. Please provide the specific details of the artwork you desire, specify whether you prefer a framed or mounted version, and include your shipping information, including your home address.
Timewyrm, 1986
‘Timewyrm’ was the first, full artwork that I created, way back in 1986, nearly 37 years ago, although like many secondary school students no doubt, I’d been doodling in the margins of my schoolbooks and subject folders throughout my ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level years – that’s high school studies for any American readers.
It was originally called ‘Between the Mountains and the Sea’, reflecting the mountains in the top left of the picture and the ‘sea’ at the bottom before I changed the name to the shorter title of ‘Timewyrm’.
I drew this at the beginning my first year at Trinity and All Saints College, a teacher-training college in Leeds, which is in northern England where I had been accepted to study a degree in History with Primary Education - although this actually changed a year later to History with Public Media, when I found out I couldn’t wear army trousers to my teaching placements – that’s how seriously I took my studies.
Looking back, with the hindsight I now have, ‘Timewyrm’ seems to me to be a picture of opposing forces ‘Timewyrm’ marks an end and a beginning. The end of the relative innocence and security that I enjoyed at home and the beginning of an unravelling of that. Before moving to Leeds, life up to that point had been a structured and protected one. Like so many others, leaving a rural home life and beginning an urban one as a student in a city was on the one hand a liberating experience but ultimately corrosive and destructive.
Opposing forces in ‘Timewyrm’:
rural and natural versus urban and artificial - the grass and flowers, water and fish (lower left) and the angular and broken constructs (mid-right)
good versus bad - the cross and the snake ( mid-right)
Purity and innocence versus impurity and corruption - the fairies playing with a ball in the air (top-left) and the demons with their fangs and teeth and the egg surrounded by spermatozoa (bottom-left and mid-bottom)
Some of the imagery hints at my love of fantasy – the castles, dragon, fairies and sword: I was an avid reader and had obviously worked my way through the Narnia Chronicles, Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and many other books as well as adventuring with family and friends in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons.
Finally, the ‘Timewyrm’ itself (top-right) looks like an ammonite, which is the emblem of my hometown – Whitby in North Yorkshire. This creature seems to be sewing threads which are attached or giving rise to all that is going on below – a sort of knitter of life and fate. Interestingly this somehow echoes the belief in the Nornes of Nordic mythology who live beneath the land of the living and weave the past, present and future of mankind.