Love in an Age of Pestilence: Barrier Methods

This is the first of three prints I’ve entered for Rugby Open 2020. The deadline was yesterday, so I’m posting them each here separately over the next couple of days.

The challenge has been how to talk about the world today without, on the one hand, being sentimental and mawkish, or on the other, browbeating the viewer. Or both. I hope I’m getting there with these prints.

I’ve done three images on the theme of “Love in an Age of Pestilence.” There is of course the danger that if the judges don’t like the idea, all three are out. But I really wanted to give these a go. I feel that two things will get us through this mess. Love and humour. So this is me shining my tiny light into the void. We shall see. We shall see.

This one is subtitled, “Barrier Methods.” It’s a kind of fugue on my Meditations prints, but bigger. I didn’t look at the Sistine Chapel fresco, because I wanted it to reflect my faulty memory. And my hands. Well, both are my left hand, wearing rubber gloves from under the sink. I knew it was God’s right hand and Adam’s left, but I wanted a degree of equality between the two. So two right hands. This is not God and Adam here. It’s Everywoman and Everyman.

I plumped for woodcut here to give the swirling effect of the world of bugs we live in. And I wanted the fight of cutting the hands. Symbolic of the act of reaching out. The wood is from an old packing case that was dumped on the drive. Giving these things a second life brings me joy.