Other Works Inspired by Literature

​In a previous post I discussed the ‘Fictional Artefacts’ series, but these are not the only pieces that are based in some way on literature. I have also done smaller directly inspired by or related to either novels or poetry, beginning with the work below, ‘The Wasteland’, which was inspired by the TS Eliot poem. The work consists of 5 parts, each one inspired by, related to a quoting a section of the poem. The quotes are, for the most part, literal and exact, apart from the last part, which inserts Hong Kong and Shanghai into the list of major world cities to reflect geo-political change since the time the poem was written.

​The next piece was inspired by two writers: Dante and Larkin. ‘Escaping the Fires’ is a three part work on paper that is meant as an attack on the manipulation of people by fear. It uses the layout of Dante’s circles of Hell as part of its overall design and then contrasts that with lines from Larkin’s two poems ‘Church Going’ and ‘Aubade’ dealing with superstition and religion.

​The next piece is related to Seamus Heaney’s ‘Lovers on Aran’, quoting some of the lines as part of the image. I was aiming for something map-like visually and was thinking about identity and whether it is a thing in itself, or contingent on something else (the ‘Roots’ series explores the same sort of ideas and probably had its start here).

​‘Fear Machine’ was inspired by Jamie Delano’s ‘Hellblazer’. I wanted to use imagery that looked vaguely organic and insect-like while at the same time appearing machine-like. The quote refers to fear of something inside the self

​The final piece I will look at in this post was inspired by and named after the Dylan Thomas poem ‘The Force That through the Green Fuse’. My aim was to create something vaguely natural and plant-like, but also with a hint of something ‘wrong’, which I tried to create through the bleached-out and ‘diseased’ colours, as well as the figure shape emerging from the background.