Still life with lovers

I’m returning here to the drawings I did back in 2019 in Eric Gaskell’s class. Back then, I used one as the basis for a linocut at a workshop of Eric’s that then got accepted for that year's Rugby Open exhibition. 

This particular arrangement has a convex mirror behind the skull and glass(es). In the original drawing there’s an outline of two people seated in the background. I quite liked having people there, but it seemed a bit purposeless. I felt I either had to make that part of the background more explicit or more uncanny. I had been reading a book about Edvard Munch and it was still lying at the side of the bed with one of the versions of the Kiss on the cover. That was what was needed, but not the naked one. The clothed version gave a more contrasty image. It carries its own uncanny baggage, too. Which I like.

I felt I needed to break up the black to the right of the lovers, so I just improvised something while channelling my inner Munch. The result ended up more like the Scream than I’d consciously intended, but I like it. It adds a level of anxiety that completes the whole, I think.