'Cover Me: 7'

‘Cover Me Series’ of 24 drawings 2008 ‘Cover Me : 7 Height 101.5cm x Width 167.5cm There are seven similar drawings in this format and size In the latest ‘Cover Me Series’ of drawings I concentrate on the front line victims, co-opted into the service of war through structures of power. The TV screen, as purveyor of drama and unreality presents us with scenes of heroes and villains in unfamiliar terrains as part of our daily diet. Current battlefields become one with false notions and legends of former times displayed in early American film. The avenging cowboy with moral certainty and undaunted grit on trusty warhorse has become an international cipher, which hangs on through the history of the 20th century and continues to distort present day understanding. Updating the transport from horse to tank I draw the present in battle with the past. Our mythic ‘man with the gun’ as cure for all ills becomes at once comic and pathetic when caught in the close turmoil of steel and flesh. Where separate drawings meet at uneven edges a staggered, broken series of half images results in the cracks, a lack of continuity, problems, borders, rifts and uneasy crossings. Emulating the drawings of early adolescence, which contain a budding awareness of the figurative but without a total understanding, I create postures, which seem to move but are rigid, formulaic and innocent. An endless repetition of stationary forms emerges, moving off the edges of the uneven surface in every direction but always outwards like ripples in a pool, an intimation of the same regurgitated grievances and accounting, which pattern the centuries. I choose restricted materials, suggestive of restrained circumstances. Pencil images on transparent Khadi papers joined together with seams and creases are infinitely vulnerable, disposable and fragile as life. The slowly moving pattern skimming the flatness of the plane suggests wallpaper and expanses of interior space rather than exterior terrain. By mapping the wall and covering the cracks we skim the surface of our mental perception and are able to find comedy in the situation.