Mention in "Devon Today'

Following on from the ‘Allergy Series’ I began to think more about my changing allergies……

Chlorpheniramine Maleate

Materials = Acrylic, Oil and commercial paint mixed with cod liver oil, marker pens on canvas. (size 40″x30″)
Are the dots to remind me of all the Piriton and other drugs I have taken in my life? Has my life become a blister pack?

The language of illness is shrouded in generic Latin.

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Chlorpheniramine Maleate = Piriton – Illness = Profit = Wealth = Health

Chlorpheniramine Maleate
Materials = Acrylic, Oil and commercial paint mixed with cod liver oil, marker pens on canvas. (size 40″x30″)

These paintings were painted between January 2004 and July 2004 in Woolacombe.

Solo exhibition @ ‘The Queen’s Theatre’, Barnstaple. 23rd August 2004 – 19th September 2004.

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Original notes on project:

1978:

I once had a girlfriend called Anne who wore ‘Charlie’ perfume. Every time we came close I sneezed. This was not conducive to a passionate affair. Her ‘big’ permed hair and ‘page three’ figure was always out of reach, until we discovered I was allergic to her bottled smell….later we discovered I was allergic to latex.

2004:

I would like to apologies to Anne, who wore ‘Charlie’ perfume, for treating her so badly 26 years ago.

‘Death by Sushi’

Fish can kill me.

When I was very small (maybe 3 or 4 years old) my grandfather, who lost the sight of one eye from a bullet fired by a German sniper (fortunately not a very good one) during the Battle of the Somme in World War 1 , wiped my face with the corner of his apron, an apron he had used to wipe his filleting knife on. He was a grocery shopkeeper who specialized in wet fish.

I can remember the instantaneous pain and swelling in my eyes, the panic-driven breathlessness, the weeping blindness. The shouting, the accusations,my parent’s panic. My poor grandfather was only trying to clean the face of his grubby grandson. My parents were in fear of loosing their only child, the one who was given hours to live a few years earlier……saved by a young doctor who refused to let my parents watch me die and insisted I had a tracheotomy……..thirty or so years later the doctor was knighted and became Sir Michael……Now I have children of my own.