The above is an original draft design for a poster, introducing pictopoiesis to the world in a physical form (wall-hanging or otherwise such as collected in a folder) that is readily (and relatively inexpensively) obtainable in the world. The poster design is a way of combining the written poem and the painting into one form. I have countless iterations of this poster in mind, and it is something capable of evolution, of being able to “say” much more concerning my whole body of work, looking back over the years.
It is like a circle is being completed; I remember the seminal years in (primary/secondary?) school when we were given a poem to illustrate. I was unable at the time to rationalise how the poem felt to me, as being its more significant and vital content, distinct from and integral with the words that made it up. It has taken me more than fifty years, becoming a lifetime, to rationalise this artistically. Those childhood works of text and picture, to which I refer above are stored in the chapel and are part of my archive. I never imagined such a long journey of artistic endeavour to get to the place I am now, coining pictopoiesis (some ten years ago now) in the process of its discovery.
The idea of a herbarium is also infused into the design of the poster – something that has a biographical significance, according to my early studies and activity as a botanist, as during my degree I compiled a herbarium which I have kept safely at The Chapel.