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VICTIMS - IMAGES OF FEAR & COMPASSION (1980-1983)

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A full catalogue of the 'Victims - images of fear and compassion' series is available to download here.

A extract from a letter sent to the Bishop of Ely, April 1985

'… About 18 months ago, I completed a series of paintings the intention of which is to express a mixture of fear and compassion which I assume to be a feeling common to outrage, in which implied or actual violence is a constant state. I found the subject of implied violence to be more poignant than the depiction of actual violence, with more chance of avoiding sensationalism in favour of images promoting a quieter, more reflective response.

I must quickly explain that I do not wish to sell the paintings, but to lend them for exhibition in a particular environment. While painting them, my mind returned repeatedly to the holocaust of more than forty years ago as a cataclysmic example of man’s fearful ability to dehumanise others of his kind. The paintings are not meant, however, to be pro-Jewish nor anti-German; it is implying that the magnitude of those horrendous events served as a thematic key for a subject which has, unhappily, wider implications.

You may well think by now that it all sounds very dark and tragic. You would be right. I make no excuse for expressing the grimmer aspects of our condition, but I would like to use the results in a positive and regenerative way.

My reason for choosing Ely … the sight of almost all of the stone figures having been decapitated or defaced struck an obvious chord for me … it would be in keeping for the work to be shown in an English church, rather than a synagogue. …'




"nieutytutowani" (partial image) 1983 oil on cotton 183x203cm


"Nikt" ("No-one") 1983 Oil on linen 101x91cm

"Dosyc" ("Enough") 1983 Oil on linen 58x51cm

"Pieta" ("Pity") 1983 Oil on linen 38x30cm


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