Shandy Hall
Former home of Laurence Sterne, the author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
Paint her to your own mind (2016)
Commissioned by the Laurence Sterne Trust to produce a work for the Paint Her To Your Own Mind, Blank Page Project, to mark the 250th anniversary of the famous Blank Page first appearing in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.
“The invitation from Laurence Sterne has taken nearly 250 years to cross the nine miles of hills and flat arable land between Shandy Hall and my house. Thinking of Sterne’s constant good humour I decided to accept in the same spirit and wrote down 21 ideas for a novel response, finally choosing the one provisionally titled ‘3 Ages of Woman Beauty Pageant’ but which I now refer to as ‘Miss Coxworld.’ I knew I could employ Bacon’s ‘strangeness of proportion’ and Hogarth’s ‘serpentine line’ but instead I went for Melancholy, as I usually do, because Beauty is only half as good without it.”
MISS COXWORLD (2016), carbon pencil on paper, 17.5 x 11 cm
The Flourish of Liberty (2019)
Commissioned by the Laurence Sterne Trust to produce a work for the Flourish of Liberty exhibition, to respond to Sterne’s famous Flourish of Liberty Page in Tristram Shandy.
“After years of confinement, three ‘Flourishes of Liberty’ escape from a fig leaf.”
THREE FLOURISHES OF LIBERTY (2019), oil and coloured pencil on paper, 15.5 x 9.5 cm