A Walk For Stanley

A Walk For Stanley began as a three-day solo walk made in July 2018 to acknowledge my personal debt to the 20th century British painter Stanley Spencer, who inspired my mid-life return to art-making. Starting at the Stanley Spencer Gallery Cookham, the walk followed footpaths and tow paths for 39 miles to reach Sandham memorial Chapel, Burghclere, purpose-built to house Spencer's WW1 memorial paintings. I made the walk in 2018 to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice. This was a personal pilgrimage and followed five disciplines: - to carry a canteen of water from the Thames at Cookham and improvise a ritual with it on arrival at Sandham Memorial Chapel - to make a drawing every two-miles of the journey, at the stopping points marked on my OS map - to shoot two films (16 shots) on my Kodak Brownie 127 - to share the journey's progress via Instagram #AWalkForStanley - to keep a record of every bird species seen or heard on the journey, in the order of first occurrence Following the walk I generated a set of woodcut prints, written reflections and poems, which together with the drawings, bird sightings and photographs were woven together into a narrative to form an artists book 'A Walk For Stanley'. The book was designed in collaboration with book designer Jane Glennie of Peculiarity Press and published in July 2019 as a limited edition of 300 books. https://peculiaritypress.com/awalkforstanley