9.45 Dan Fern
9.45 Dan Fern
10.30 Anna Bhushan
Break 11.15
10.30 Anna Bhushan
12.00 John Vernon Lord
11.45 Vincent Larkin
Lunch
1.00
12.00 John Vernon Lord
2.15
Mireille Fauchon
2.00 Mat Osmond
2.15
Mireille Fauchon
Close 4.45
Question Time 4.00
Break 3.45
3.00 Max Porter
do you use any rules or constraints to help you approach a project?
– anna bhushan: There was one ongoing body of work that I made over four or five years in which I only used red, black and white paint. The work was all produced on the same type, size and format of paper. This helped because in terms of the content and intention of the work there were no constraints at all. I approached it very intuitively and freely. I had no outcome or context in mind and was often surprised by what appeared on the page. The material constraints anchored me. – – max porter: My professional and personal circumstances dictate when I can work. Right now and when I was writing Grief, it’s after I’ve put my little children to bed and cooked dinner. I have to prioritise editing and reading submissions, so it is very rare indeed for me to do my own work in anything other than snatched moments these days. I always work from a sketchbook and I often start with drawings which I later translate into prose or poetry. I tend to work with fragments. I send myself emails and text messages. I write things on the back of receipts and keep them in my wallet. Once a month I go through the emails, deleting everything which isn’t useful, and I type up the notes from my wallet-scraps. Things flutter about until I have a structure. I am always waiting for an appealing vessel to put the fragments in. – – mireille fauchon: I don’t approach projects with anything as restricting as constraints, although I know this can work
Close 4.45
Question Time 4.00
Break 3.45
3.00 Max Porter
Dan Fern
Dan Fern is an award-winning designer, graphic artist and influential teacher. Trained at Manchester College of Art and the Royal College of Art, Dan has worked extensively across all areas of visual communications, including stamps for the Royal Mail, posters for the London Underground and a poster commemorating the 100th anniversary of the deathof Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. His graphic works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona and the Smithsonian Institute in New York, as well as being in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Dan has regularly exhibited non-commissioned works in galleries in London and overseas, and has recently worked in collaboration with musicians to produce video pieces; his work has been performed at the Bath International Music Festival, London’s South Bank Centre and the Hamburg Philharmonie. In September 2010 he was commissioned by the Royal Opera House to produce largescale multimedia installations for the Deloitte Ignite Festival. Dan began teaching part-time at the RCA in the 1970s, and was made its first Professor of Graphic Art and Design in 1994. In 2000, together with Sean Gregory of the Guildhall School, he set up ‘MAP/making’ ( MAP = Music, Art and Performance ), an annual programme of collaborative student workshops leading to live multimedia performances at leading music festivals and concert venues, most recently at the Barbican Centre in London. Having retired as Head of the School of Communications at the RCA in 2010, Dan retains his connection with education as a PhD supervisor, project manager and lecturer. In July 2014 he was made a Fellow of the University of Applied Sciences in Munich following a successful period as a Guest Professor there.
Sapet Series
do you use any rules or constraints to help you approach a project?
– anna bhushan: There was one ongoing body of work that I made over four or five years in which I only used red, black and white paint. The work was all produced on the same type, size and format of paper. This helped because in terms of the content and intention of the work there were no constraints at all. I approached it very intuitively and freely. I had no outcome or context in mind and was often surprised by what appeared on the page. The material constraints anchored me. – – max porter: My professional and personal circumstances dictate when I can work. Right now and when I was writing Grief, it’s after I’ve put my little children to bed and cooked dinner. I have to prioritise editing and reading submissions, so it is very rare indeed for me to do my own work in anything other than snatched moments these days. I always work from a sketchbook and I often start with drawings which I later translate into prose or poetry. I tend to work with fragments. I send myself emails and text messages. I write things on the back of receipts and keep them in my wallet. Once a month I go through the emails, deleting everything which isn’t useful, and I type up the notes from my wallet-scraps. Things flutter about until I have a structure. I am always waiting for an appealing vessel to put the fragments in. – – mireille fauchon: I don’t approach projects with anything as restricting as constraints, although I know this can work
Close 4.45
Question Time 4.00
Break 3.45
3.00 Max Porter
John Vernon Lord
John Vernon Lord has made extensive contributions to the world of illustration, poetry, narrative and education, and has written and illustrated many children’s books, including the classic The Giant Jam Sandwich, which has been in print for over 43 years. His books have been translated into many languages. Lord has illustrated The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear, Aesop’s Fables, the Folio Society’s Myths and Legends of the British Isles, Icelandic Sagas, and Epics of the Middle Ages. In addition he has illustrated many classics of children’s literature including Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, and The Hunting of the Snark, published by Artists’ Choice Editions. John’s book Drawing Upon Drawing (not to be confused by Drawn to Drawing) was published by the University of Brighton in 2007 and includes 396 of John’s images alongside essays about illustration. This book was aimed at students. Lord’s illustrated edition of Finnegan’s Wake was published by the Folio Society in March 2014 and a monograph on his work Drawn to Drawing was published by Nobrow the following April. Lord taught for many years as professor of Illustration at Brighton University, has lectured on the art of illustration for 55 years and is considered pre-eminent in the field.
Anna Livia Plurabelle ‘For I feel I could near to faint away. Into the deeps. Annamores leep.’
do you use any rules or constraints to help you approach a project?
– anna bhushan: There was one ongoing body of work that I made over four or five years in which I only used red, black and white paint. The work was all produced on the same type, size and format of paper. This helped because in terms of the content and intention of the work there were no constraints at all. I approached it very intuitively and freely. I had no outcome or context in mind and was often surprised by what appeared on the page. The material constraints anchored me. – – max porter: My professional and personal circumstances dictate when I can work. Right now and when I was writing Grief, it’s after I’ve put my little children to bed and cooked dinner. I have to prioritise editing and reading submissions, so it is very rare indeed for me to do my own work in anything other than snatched moments these days. I always work from a sketchbook and I often start with drawings which I later translate into prose or poetry. I tend to work with fragments. I send myself emails and text messages. I write things on the back of receipts and keep them in my wallet. Once a month I go through the emails, deleting everything which isn’t useful, and I type up the notes from my wallet-scraps. Things flutter about until I have a structure. I am always waiting for an appealing vessel to put the fragments in. – – mireille fauchon: I don’t approach projects with anything as restricting as constraints, although I know this can work
Close 4.45
Question Time 4.00
Break 3.45
3.00 Max Porter
Anna Bhushan
Anna Bhushan is a painter, illustrator and educator based in Wales. Anna studied Illustration at The University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art where she won the Quentin Blake prize for Narrative Illustration. She has exhibited her paintings internationally and her work has been published by Random House, The Folio Society, John Murray, The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Guardian. Since 2008, Anna has been teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate Illustration courses and is currently a lecturer and researcher at Cardiff School of Art and Design. In December Anna co-curated the 5th International Illustration Research Symposium and exhibition that took place in Bangalore, South India. In 2014 Anna was awarded a Student Led Teaching Fellowship.
Cave of Wonders, a collaborative project with Kanitta Meechubot
do you use any rules or constraints to help you approach a project?
– anna bhushan: There was one ongoing body of work that I made over four or five years in which I only used red, black and white paint. The work was all produced on the same type, size and format of paper. This helped because in terms of the content and intention of the work there were no constraints at all. I approached it very intuitively and freely. I had no outcome or context in mind and was often surprised by what appeared on the page. The material constraints anchored me. – – max porter: My professional and personal circumstances dictate when I can work. Right now and when I was writing Grief, it’s after I’ve put my little children to bed and cooked dinner. I have to prioritise editing and reading submissions, so it is very rare indeed for me to do my own work in anything other than snatched moments these days. I always work from a sketchbook and I often start with drawings which I later translate into prose or poetry. I tend to work with fragments. I send myself emails and text messages. I write things on the back of receipts and keep them in my wallet. Once a month I go through the emails, deleting everything which isn’t useful, and I type up the notes from my wallet-scraps. Things flutter about until I have a structure. I am always waiting for an appealing vessel to put the fragments in. – – mireille fauchon: I don’t approach projects with anything as restricting as constraints, although I know this can work
Close 4.45
Question Time 4.00
Break 3.45
3.00 Max Porter
Max Porter
Max Porter trained as an art historian at the Courtauld Institute, specialising in psychoanalysis and feminism. In 2012 he joined Granta Books and Portobello Books as Commissioning Editor where his authors include Ben Marcus, Eleanor Catton, Norman Rush, Rebecca Solnit, Sarah Moss, Colin McAdam and Masha Gessen. Max edited Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries which won the Man Booker Prize in 2013. Previously, he was a bookseller for seven years, opening and managing two new branches of Daunt Books in London and winning the Young Bookseller of the Year award. He sits on the English PEN Writers in Translation Committee. Max is a writer and his book Grief is the Thing With Feathers will be published In September 2015 by Faber and Faber. It will be published in France, Germany, Holland and America in 2016. The book is described as “part polyphonic fable, part poem, part essay on mourning” and tells the story of a family visited by Ted Hughes’ Crow.
Max Porter’s desk at home
do you use any rules or constraints to help you approach a project?
– anna bhushan: There was one ongoing body of work that I made over four or five years in which I only used red, black and white paint. The work was all produced on the same type, size and format of paper. This helped because in terms of the content and intention of the work there were no constraints at all. I approached it very intuitively and freely. I had no outcome or context in mind and was often surprised by what appeared on the page. The material constraints anchored me. – – max porter: My professional and personal circumstances dictate when I can work. Right now and when I was writing Grief, it’s after I’ve put my little children to bed and cooked dinner. I have to prioritise editing and reading submissions, so it is very rare indeed for me to do my own work in anything other than snatched moments these days. I always work from a sketchbook and I often start with drawings which I later translate into prose or poetry. I tend to work with fragments. I send myself emails and text messages. I write things on the back of receipts and keep them in my wallet. Once a month I go through the emails, deleting everything which isn’t useful, and I type up the notes from my wallet-scraps. Things flutter about until I have a structure. I am always waiting for an appealing vessel to put the fragments in. – – mireille fauchon: I don’t approach projects with anything as restricting as constraints, although I know this can work
Close 4.45
Question Time 4.00
Break 3.45
3.00 Max Porter
Mireille Fauchon
Mireille Fauchon was born in South London, she graduated with a BA in Graphic Design from Camberwell College of Arts in 2005 and then from The Royal College of Art with an MA in Communication Art & Design in 2008. An edition of The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope illustrated by Mireille was published in 2011 by Four Corners books. Mireille now lives and works in East London. Her clients have included Ambit magazine, World of Interiors Magazine, The Idler Magazine and V&A Friday late and Mireille has collaborated with the Pound Shop. Mireille teaches on the BA Illustration Course at U.C.A.
Chaise with Shadow
Vincent Larkin
do you use any rules or constraints to help you
Vincent Larkin is an artist who, despite being born in Melapproach a project? bourne, Australia has lived most of his life in the UK. His practice is based around the idea of the uncomfortable narrative; the–overlaps diversions in the way we tell story of body of work annaand bhushan : There was onetheongoing ourselves. In the pursuit of this he works with the form of the that I made over four or five years in which I only used red, book, printed media, web-based media and sometimes song. blackgained and white paint. TheIllustration work was In 2014 Vincent an MA in Authorial fromall produced on the Falmouthsame College of Art. Since thenformat his work of has paper. been exhibited type, size and This helped because at the Bookartbookshop in London, and featured as part of the in terms of the Display content intention of the work there Tate Britain’s Source Spotlight for and the Pattern, Graphics & Print month. to this Vincent was Iinvolved in illustratwere Previous no constraints at all. approached it very intuitively ing fortnightly Spanish-language articles dealing with philosoand freely. I had no outcome or context in mind and was phy and history for Pictograma Magazine. Vincent has Recently often surprised what on the page. The matecompleted a residency at the by Victoria andappeared Albert museum.
rial constraints anchored me. – – maxisporter : My professional and personal circumstances Catrin Morgan a lecturer on the MA Illustration: Authorial Practice and BA Illustration Falmouth BA Illustration dictate when I atcan work.and Right now and when I was writat Norwich University of the Arts. She completed an MA in ing Grief, it’s after I’ve put my little children to bed and Communication Art and Design at the RCA in 2008. Her first cooked dinner. Ia have to prioritise editing and reading subbook, Phantom Settlements, collaborative project with Mireille Fauchon was published in June 2011. Catrin’s pracmissions, so it is very rare indeed for me to do my own tice explores the relationship between text and image with work in anything than snatched moments these days. a particular interest in creating other work governed by underlying frameworks, rules and hidden meanings. Most of her projects I always work from a sketchbook and I often start with are conceived in relation to the book. In 2010 Catrin returned to drawings which I later translate into prose or poetry. I tend the RCA to undertake a PhD entitled The Taxonomy of Decepto work with fragments. tion, a project closely connected with her illustrations for Ben Marcus’ novel Themyself Age of Wire and String, and I write things on I send emails and commissioned text messages. published by Granta Books in 2013. In 2011 she received a scholthetheback ofElizabeth receipts and keep in my arship from Queen Scholarship Trustthem in support of wallet. Once a her research. month I go through the emails, deleting everything which isn’t useful, and I type up the notes from my wallet-scraps. Things flutter about until I have a structure. I am always waiting for an appealing vessel to put the fragments in. – – mireille fauchon: I don’t approach projects with anything as restricting as constraints, although I know this can work Catrin Morgan
Close 4.45
Question Time 4.00
Break 3.45
3.00 Max Porter
Mat Osmond
Mat Osmond is a writer and illustrator who works on the MA Illustration: Authorial Practice at Falmouth University, where he is part of the Research into Art and the Natural Environment (R.A.N.E.) research group. His most recent paper, Us and Them: Ecocide, Empathy and the Graphic Ecofable, is being published this Spring in the Green Connections issue of the Exeter-based Politics of Place journal, and in Issue 7 of the Dark Mountain Journal. Mat’s own practice takes the form of an ongoing series of chap-books of illustrated narrative poetry, self-published as Strandline Books, and by third party anthologies. Recent examples of this work can be seen here: http://shop.dark-mountain. net Mat is currently preparing a paper on the collaborative friendship between the poet Ted Hughes and the printmaker (and sculptor) Leonard Baskin, which produced a series of books of illustrated poetry, including the now iconic Crow, and Cave Birds. What this work might tell us about what it means to ‘respond to ecological crisis’ by making art is the question propelling that enquiry. Special thanks to:
Anna Kingsley, Christina Hardie, Tom Woodward, Jane Roe, Rachel Martin, Steve Braund, Mat Osmond, John Kyrycz, John Kilburn, Yasmeen Kahn, Emily Juniper, Phyllida Bluemel, Esme Barnaville, Melanie Whelan, Jenny Sjodin, Judy Willoughby, Violeta Noy Millat, Ines Amaral, Becky Chan, Cherise Ward, Daniel Arnold, Bob Walley, Sayra Beegum, Lucy Kerr, Felicity Tattersall, Charlie Sherratt, Bev and Irene at the Provedore and all of the MA Illustration: Authorial Practice students who have contributed to the forum.
do you use any rules or constraints to help you approach a project?
– anna bhushan: There was one ongoing body of work that I made over four or five years in which I only used red, black and white paint. The work was all produced on the same type, size and format of paper. This helped because in terms of the content and intention of the work there were no constraints at all. I approached it very intuitively and freely. I had no outcome or context in mind and was often surprised by what appeared on the page. The material constraints anchored me. – – max porter: My professional and personal circumstances dictate when I can work. Right now and when I was writing Grief, it’s after I’ve put my little children to bed and cooked dinner. I have to prioritise editing and reading submissions, so it is very rare indeed for me to do my own work in anything other than snatched moments these days. I always work from a sketchbook and I often start with drawings which I later translate into prose or poetry. I tend to work with fragments. I send myself emails and text messages. I write things on the back of receipts and keep them in my wallet. Once a month I go through the emails, deleting everything which isn’t useful, and I type up the notes from my wallet-scraps. Things flutter about until I have a structure. I am always waiting for an appealing vessel to put the fragments in. – – mireille fauchon: I don’t approach projects with anything as restricting as constraints, although I know this can work
for some. I don’t like to predict my outcomes or commit to a way of working too early on. Naturally there are particular flavours which are prevalent throughout my work but I am always striving to find the correct process for the ideas I am exploring and the working process always begins for me with research. I like to immerse myself in the subject area. Often my work is about place; I have found out about a story or a local legend and I always feel compelled to visit it if I can, stand on the spot where things have been said to have happened, breathe the air and take in the atmosphere. I’m not naturally inclined to ‘work on location’ but prefer to reflect on my experiences later allowing them to be prejudiced by how I want to convey them. I also like to collect as many references as possible that communicate the tone, atmosphere and visual aesthetic I am trying to capture. Of course, this material varies depending on the project but I am inclined to watch films, find literature or theoretical texts, visit archives, collect visual ephemera and I also love a good chat which someone who knows more then me. – – dan fern: I’m certainly very disciplined in my practice. Before I start work, everything in the studio has to be in the right place: my paper and other materials in the right drawers in the plan chests, brushes and paint pots clean, and so on. At the end of the day I tidy up and put everything back in place. Although these days I’m mostly setting my own agenda as regards what projects I’m working on, my training and background in commercial graphics and illustration has largely stayed with me in how I go about these preparations. As for the work itself, one of
the artists I admire, the American painter Brice Marsden, said of his own work ‘the paintings are made in a highly subjective state within Spartan limitations’, and I think this chimes perfectly with my own approach. – – john vernon lord: A brief, a text, a context, the dimensions required for the artwork, and a deadline for completion are all constraints for the illustrator. But constraints should be seen as a challenge and a springboard rather than a restriction. As for rules, my main rule is to plan what every illustration in a book will contain before embarking on a single illustration. Approaching each illustration is a nightmare for me. Before I start I always worry about whether I have the technical resources to fulfil my ideas. further to that question, what environment or routine do you need to make work?
– ab: I like to be in a very contained and private environment when I paint. There is only certain music I can listen to (old, melancholy and gentle) but often I prefer silence. Sometimes Radio 4, depending on the project but I draw the line at The Archers. I chain drink hot beverages and I usually have the heating on quite high. It feels like a nest and my mind goes very quiet. For a few years I worked in a big, shared, cold studio in Hackney, so that shows I can be outside of my comfort zone and still be creative, but it was more of a challenge. – – mf: I have a wonderful studio where I make sure to keep
everything I need to start working. As I am never sure of what exactly my outcomes are going to be I keep a comprehensive archive of materials ready, including a letterpress, a relief press and every kind of drawing or markmaking tool. When I’m in the throws of a project I like to surround myself with reference materials that I’ve collected and I have been known also to play films or music in keeping with the subject area I’m working on. – I like to arrive early as I am far more productive in the morning. Working at a leisurely pace has never yielded any good results for me, I prefer to work fast, generate a lot of work quickly and then reflect, edit, pin up the work and keep on going based on what I think is succeeding. I like to work in collections or in series, I think it takes the pressure away from trying to produce a ‘finished piece’. – – df: I’m lucky in that I have two studios, which I use in different ways. One, which is down in France, is an old stone building with concrete floors, and I use that to make large, often sculptural pieces; I can make as much noise and mess as I like, using drills, hammers, saws and so on. In London my studio’s at the top of our family home, so I tend to use that for more small-scale prints, drawings and paintings. It’s also where I work on laptops for film-editing and so on, so it needs to be clean and dust-free. These two studios are 1,000 miles apart, so being organised is also essential! – I don’t have any particular routine, except that I do work every day, and always have. In France, where work involves
being up in the mountains a lot of the time, I start very early in the morning. – I’ve been to Japan and China quite a few times and a lot of my favourite tools come from there: in particular brushes, of which I have lots, and one-piece scissors that you squeeze to make a cut, like small sheep-shears; but I also have some beautiful brass-and-steel fabric-cutting scissors from India and a collection of folding textile rulers, which are usually black with red numerals. All of these things are a delight to use, as well as being visually beautiful objects. – I like to listen to music while I’m working. What I listen to varies enormously, from classical music to contemporary sound pieces, but I particularly like electronic and ambient music, such as Stars of the Lid, Loscil and Tetsu Inoue. At the moment I’m playing a piece called ‘Atomos’ a lot, by an amazing ensemble called A Winged Victory For The Sullen. As for paper, I’ve been working for a long time on the reverse of linen-mounted maps; it’s a beautiful surface, and I like the gridded framework of the folds. Right at the moment I’m working on large sheets of Chinese calligraphy paper made from bamboo. I also collect material to work on in antique markets and second-hand bookshops for instance the reverse (blank) side of old prints and other ephemera: surfaces which have visible signs of previous use. I rarely use off-the-shelf papers in their own right; I prefer to paint that sort of factory-made paper white or off-white myself, using a wide, soft Japanese brush - it makes for a much more beautiful and responsive workingsurface. Over the past few years I’ve been working a lot
with pine tree roots, which I find high in the hills above the town in France where my studio is. Given that it’s a very wooded area it is surprisingly difficult to source the ones I need for my work; they have to be dead, of course, and they have to have been exposed, vertically, for long enough to be sun-baked: hard and silvery. – – jvl: I say “good morning” to my studio whenever I enter it first thing. I hate being interrupted when I am working. I love my 8-foot mahogany desk to work on (a Victorian solicitor’s clerk’s desk). If my desk is untidy and work is going well I will not tidy it, for to tidy it would merely break the flow of imagination. I am surrounded by shelves, cupboards and drawers where all my equipment is kept; much of it is within easy reach without getting off my swivel-chair on wheels. It is also packed wall to ceiling with CDs and books. My wife calls my studio “John’s toy box”. I try to honour a rule to have my pencil, brush or pen poised above the paper, ready to work, before 10am. To achieve this I have to get up reasonably early for I am a great procrastinator – drinking more coffee and walking round the garden inspecting the progress of the plants. Much of my thinking, building up of ideas and planning takes place in bed at night and on train journeys. I am a fan of BBC Radio 3 & 4. Somehow my mind seems to naturally block out the sound of the radio or the music on CDs when deep concentration is needed.
do you ever use mathematical or scientific structures to underpin your practice?
– ab: Biology definitely plays a role, chemistry in terms of colour and I like to think about astrophysics sometimes. I wouldn’t say that this was in any way structured though. – – mp: Not really, but I have various preoccupations and fetishes: Triptychs, the Stages of the Cross, floor-plans, tree diagrams, toy cabinets, maps, instruction manuals, religious kitsch, etc. I also wrestle with a small handful of people. I think I can move on from Ted Hughes now. David Jones nags at me. Hildegard of Bingen, Barry MacSweeney, Telemachus, Eva Hesse, they will all pop up in whatever I do next. – – mf: I don’t feel mathematical or scientific structures are really relevant to my practice. My work is far more inspired by human experience, narratives inspired by local and personal histories that become fantastical through how they have been recorded, relayed and interpreted. I am far more likely to borrow or take inspiration from the language of archives, catalogues and collections and am interested in how such framings can influence our perceptions of what we are experiencing. – – df: As I mentioned earlier, I use grids a lot, sometimes as an invisible underlying framework, but more often as a visual device in their own right. Sometimes - as with a project I’ve been working on recently inspired by the Imperial Villa at Katsura, just outside of Kyoto in Japan, I carefully
researched the authentic proportions of the grids used in the architectural drawings. Frequently the landscape work I make involves research into areas such as geology, topography, cartography, history, language and so on. – – jvl: Yes I often use a strict grid structure as a compositional aid to my illustrations. I am always interested to know the central point of the area that I am drawing. I often use the diagonals of a rectangle to help give a dynamic to a composition. My work is a mixture of careful thinking and random intuition. have you ever smuggled something secret or subversive into any of your projects?
– ab: I often discover that hidden messages have been smuggled into my work, but they are primarily for me and possibly only evident to me. In the sense that I look back years later at a painting and see its secret subconscious subtext. I realize what it was about and I’m surprised that I didn’t notice at the time. This is not so much the case with commissioned illustration. There was one project that I did for Folio Books in which I tried to create a visual commentary on the text that I hoped could open up a new reading and challenge existing interpretations. It was a text that I felt very close to and quite strongly about. I don’t think they realized that is what I was doing so perhaps that made it subversive. – – mp: Yes. But such things should remain secret, between
the author and the editor and the text. – My novella is an extended investigation of personal things, not so much secret as buried, and I have hidden or tangled the components so as to be evident (or interesting) only to me, in relation to what I’ve read, what I’ve worked on, what angers me, what thrills me, etc. I’ve done the same thing with literary allusions, there are in-jokes, hidden critiques and false leads. One of the themes is of an annotated text, borrowed from Freud’s lost theory of Wild Analysis. Somewhere between remixed and vandalised, in this instance in a therapeutic context. My work, I hope, will always be a subjecting of the narrative kernel to this wild but ultimately loving process. – – mf: I’m really interested in telling stories that are open to interpretation. While my work is often inspired by stories from the everyday I am not a historian nor am I interested in striving for any kind of accuracy. I revel in the muddles that can occur through misunderstandings and misinterpretation and actively seek to perpetuate the confusion and provoke the ‘second look’. – – df: Not quite in the sense I suppose you mean; but as a freelance artist I always maintained a healthy disregard for the brief when I was commissioned to make work. Usually I was - not surprisingly - commissioned on the basis of something I’d already done - which invariably didn’t match what I actually wanted to do; so I’d find ways of interpreting the brief which enabled me to set my own agenda, and then leaving it so close to the deadline that it was too late
for the client to make changes. This is, of course, extremely bad advice for students and should be ignored... – jvl: Yes, secretive rather than subversive. Many of my illustrations are littered with personal imagery, which the general viewer would not be aware of. Many of the locations, buildings and objects included in them are ones that I am familiar with and they are sometimes populated with people I know. I once drew myself dead on my bed! I have drawn important keys accurately so that if I lost them I would be able to replace them from a locksmith. Because I was annoyed at the time I have even drawn (In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass) the famous ‘duck house’ which the Tory MP, Peter Viggers, claimed as parliamentary expenses in 2009. On the programme cover for Ditchling’s 700th anniversary Fair, I included a portrait of a former resident Eric Gill facing a dog, which is wagging its tail, – a reference to Eric Gill’s doubtful behaviour. I have also drawn one of my big toes in an illustration (hidden among the merchandise of a garden shop) when I nearly chopped it off by a rotary lawnmower, as well as inscribe a litigation number when my stepmother contested my father’s will.