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The ICCM Journal | Autumn 2020 | V88 No. 3
vamping the van What does an artist do in lockdown? She vamps her van!
My wife’s van was the perfect canvas to thank the UK’s keyworkers during COVID19 lockdown. I imagine the broader public think of keyworkers as nurses, doctors and carers, but for me, any thank you needed to include funeral teams and cemetery/crematoria workers. As always, you are ‘on the front line’, but it’s that hidden front line isn’t it? Not on our van. I wanted you there for everyone to see and acknowledge. The community feedback and conversations I’ve had whilst working on the van have been incredible. Deeply moving and humbling. A nurse on the COVID ward at our local County hospital thanked me. Having received so much verbal abuse they’d been advised not to wear their uniforms in public. “Your work reminds me that people actually do care” she said. The pictures also brought a funeral director I know to tears. “It helps”, he said. He’d been finding it hard not being able to care for families in the manner he wanted to. A prison officer thanked me for including her job. Families who’ve walked by raise awareness with their kids. Dog walkers tell me it makes them happy to see it. A woman who works at a medical supplies company told me it’s
really helped her because of the abuse she receives. Bus drivers drive past and give me a thumbs up when they see themselves illustrated there. A local firefighter walked past and told me that if the rainy weather halted things, that I should drive up to the fire station. He’d move the truck out and I could keep working there indoors. It seems to have struck a chord with people. I started this as my way of saying thank you. It became so much more. It’s felt good and right. In July I added the brewery that responded to a certain ‘test’ drive to Barnard Castle. With a surname like Brew it would be rude not to right? I also included Sir Tom and Her Majesty The Queen granting his Knighthood. So, again, I thank you. I thank you for being there. I thank you for putting on the ‘black armour’ every day under the most difficult of circumstances. I thank you for caring and I thank you for everything you’ve done for the families, who didn’t know that they needed you…. …until they did.
