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Awakening.2, 2025
The original 'Awakening' was drawn on half of an A4 sheet in 1987.
I had left home, a life in a village on the edge of the heather-clad North Yorkshire Moors, and was in my first year of university life.
Any leaving - of the womb, of childhood, of home - brings about an 'awakening' of sorts. Mine was a traumatic one as the coarse life of the city assaulted my spirit which had been cushioned by an innocent childhood. Now the book of life is open and the page is empty, waiting to be written.
The elements which will help to write the story: Nature, the city of men, sex, music, belief, whether in God, as represented by the Celtic triskel, in the New Age represented here by the UFOs or in hedonism. Death waits, in the form of a skull, watching over all.
In 2025, after advice from a professional artist, I reinterpreted the original in acrylic and a much larger format. So was born Awakening.2.
Awakening.2 saw its first public exposure at the Candid Gallery in Angel in June 2026 as part of the ‘Third Places, Non Places’ exhibition. This was the inaugural show of the newly-created EAR (Experimental Art Rising) Collective.