The drawings should be viewed as a continuum, starting with number 1 and should be followed by the numbers until the end. They illustrate a journey through life analogous to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or Voltaire’s Candide.
All of the drawings are charcoal on paper bonded to canvas and plasticised over all for their protection.
ONE
The first 3 drawings belong to the period of growing up to maturity. They are about the miracle of sex, the mysteries of the birth of a new life, the inheritance of ancestral fears, superstition and witchcraft and, finally, the realisation of death and annihilation.
GENESIS
PRIMEVAL INHERITANCE
DEATH
TWO
The second group of 3 are about the carnality of our lives, beginning with the symbiotic relationship between Man and animals, the celebration of the beast we make use of and the emergence of the demonic qualities of the beast in Man, whose ultimate expression, the Devil, rules the domination by a tyrant over his fellow man.
CARNALITY
THE BEAST IN MAN
BESTIAL POWER
THREE
The third series begins with Man’s eternal question, “Where do I come from; where am I going?” The simple mysteries invented to give some answer to those questions: the emergence of a Messiah with a dominating truth and the deification and codification by theology. Thence to fanaticism, martyrdom and the entombment of dissent; the storm of laws and philosophies which overwhelm us to the point of being nullified as an individual by propaganda, and the terrible difficulty of finding one’s true personality in the labyrinth of the endless complexities in our world.
THE QUEST FOR TRUTH
DOGMATISM
THE LABYRINTH
FOUR
The fourth series begins with the fullness of existence, the classic good life of beauty, love and poetry: the dance of the poetic ideal. This is followed by three dances to more disillusioned and cynically realistic melodies. This is followed by a test of strength, the forging of weapons and the challenge of combat.
ARCADIA
DANCES
THE CHALLENGE
Then come the four drawings of War and the final return to the everlasting Carnival of Life and the eternal questioning of the poet.