“More than 50 years have passed between the makings of the lithograph “Source” and the painting “Boys Garden City”. The painting was only completed in late 2022 and, in some ways, the lithograph contains the beginnings (the source?) of the painting.
In 1916 my father’s mother gave him to another woman when he was only days old, but before he reached the age of five, he was passed on again into the care of Dr Barnardos. Boys Garden City was the name of the ‘model’ home in Essex where he spent the latter part of his boyhood.
My father died at the age of 39 when I was only 12 years old, and I am more than twice his age now. There are some direct references in the painting to his short life; but in the process of making it, over a long period of time, it was a way of relating to someone that I hardly knew and who had experiences I can only fathom. It is both a homage and a reaching out to try to make connections.”
