The Marsh Spirit

Most of the time I have at least some idea who the characters that I photograph are. Not so in this case - I came up with the title of The Marsh Spirit after the event.

There are early sketches of this figure in my sketchbook towards the end of 2019, and I made the mask the model is wearing at around the same time, but nothing came of it. I bought the fern stencil that I used for the leaf marking on the model’s shoulder in late 2019 as well, knowing it would be part of this idea, just as my Acid Renaissance series was really starting to gain some steam. So it sounds like everything was quickly coming together.

It was probably the UK Covid lockdown that started in early 2020 that made this particular idea languish unrealised in my sketchbook until now.

However, nearly five years after the first lockdown started it has finally been photographed.

I think there might be a related series of photographs still to come, but I’m not sure yet.