Lamentation

Lamentation is the first piece in this mini-arc with my Acid Renaissance series of artwork, four figures pulling at their own hair as they walk away (from Omelas?) - sorrowful, grieving, in despair?

I’m always reluctant to tie pieces directly into my personal life, firstly because I’m a relatively private person, but also because the drawings often carry various layers of meaning, but it seems appropriate to note that this was the first piece of artwork I made after my late mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

That said, I don’t feel that my personal grief is the primary reason for this drawing - it’s too much of a collective display of sorrow, rather than a person and individual one.

Some of it may come from the collective experience of isolation caused by the Covid-19 lockdowns - trauma experienced individually, but also shared collectively.

It’s not deliberately a piece about life under lockdown — I’d be very reticent to deliberately do any artwork about that subject in the near future — but these things do leak out.

The drawing depicts despair experienced collectively, a fall from grace, an expulsion from Eden.

Regardless of the origin of the theme, the experiences of lockdown, of sickness and death caused by it, probably make this more relatable to an imagined viewer than it might have done back in the first few months of last year.