White crocuses with chinooks, oil and acrylic on cradled panel, 41 x 30 cm.
In early March chinook helicopters were doing war games/practicing/low flying around us for a couple of weeks. With what has been and currently still is going on between the US and Israel and the UK and Iran and the whole of that area, it felt very menacing. Being an old hippy I painted flowers – the crocuses I put under the front grass last autumn had come up and the white ones were especially beautiful.
One day in February I received 12 tiny hellebore plants in the post and spent the afternoon in my tiny greenhouse potting them up and the evening painting this event in watercolour in my A4 sketch book –
Potting up hellebores in the greenhouse, oil over acrylic on collaged canvas, 60 x 50 cm
The watercolour translated a little later into this painting of the winter garden, the winter gardener and the US bomber which is being allowed to use our airfields to reload these terrible weapons for an illegal and inhumane war. See, I am still against war.
Even if it’s a lie, oil on collaged canvas, 50 x 50 cm.
is it a bird? no it’s a B52 bomber taking off from the UK to go and bomb innocent civilians and commit war crimes, refuelled and refilled on a UK airfield. the person in the greenhouse looks up at the sound of it the daffodils and all the plants in the garden have runny weepy paint.