All the Hollow Men series

The Hollow Man

Oil on canvas 51 x 77cm (2024)

INFLUENCES

The Wicker Man film (1973).
Apocalypse Now film (1979).
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899).
T.S. Eliot’s poem the Hollow Men (1925).
C.S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength (1945).

Found a wicker torso.
A carapace for clothes.
A liberty tie
A dusty hat.
Festooned with ivy.

Do they live these hollow men?
Crumbling simulacra shams.
Oh what horror!
And when Death comes
It does so as a whimper.

MAMMON

Oil on canvas 56 x 72cm (2024)

Influences

The Queen of Spades, a short story by Pushkin. (1962).
A story of greed and gambling, a reference to the Count of St Germain with a supernatural twist.

Scent: Bois des Iles by Chanel, created by Ernest Beaux 1926, inspired by the opera the Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky, in turn inspired by the short story by Pushkin.

A buttoned up man
atop a wooden torso.
Horn in hand,
but where’s the spark?
Patched in portrait face.
No mouth.
Mere puppetry
Now only greed prevails.

Up in Smoke

Oil on canvas 56 x 72cm (2024)

INFLUENCES

The Prince by Machiavelli. (1961). The Prince was based on Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI.

Purple, papal,
bullish prose.
Sated, certainty.
Keys long forgotten.
Burnt by fire.
Consumed in smoke.