In August 1994 Ana Fortun Garrido from Zaragoza, Spain took me on a train to Edinburgh and we stayed there through 1994-6. Poor as church mice we barely survived but I did manage to get these etchings done at a Edinburgh College of Art night class. During the day I did temp work in banks…the most miserable thing I ever done. This kept me sane for a while…
This was the last drawing I was to do until 1999! I slowly drifted into poetry rather than art as it was impossible on our low incomes to rent a studio and the flat was too small for drawing in. Ana was nanny to the director of the French Institute and his wife who very rich and they treated her as family and me as shit….at one point I had to paint a wendy house for their spoilt brat of a son. I resented that as I had to do it to survive. For them it was peanuts and done so Ana stayed in Edinburgh. Eventually I insisted we both moved back to Oxford and Ana resented that she didn’t go to Paris with them. In retrospect I wish she had….would have been best for both of us but in hindsight that is easy to see..
So art dies a slow lingering death…accelerated when back in the town of dreaming spires and as Ana pointed out on day we got back..trees inside walls..never outside….the City of Scheming Liars I call it…..ironically she still there…I believe.
The odd set of songs was an experiment. the plates must have been drawn in Edinburgh and printed there but the type was added in oxford at some point later.
