EUGINE COCKSHAFT - British Heroes

(2B pencil on 141mm x 118mm paper)

 "They're not flag-waving wannabes, or finger-pointing-blamemongers. They're true British Heroes! They were born with spines of steel, have spunk by the bucketload, and their upper-lips aren't just stiff, they're rock-solid! They're the type who'll kick those mad-dogs aside and proudly march, bare-arsed, into the midday sun!"

And, without even looking, you can bet there's a conspiracy theory similar to it!

Miss Penman - Needlework Teacher

(HB pencil on 107mm x 75mm card)

 

It's not often that memories are brought to the surface when doing dreamscape works, but it can sometimes happen, as it has done here.

 

When I started on this piece, the vague shape of the main subject became quickly apparent at the foundation stage. At first, I thought it might be some hooded figure on a smartphone but, as I focused on it more, it developed into someone surprisingly familiar to me. A distant memory from 1983 of a needlework teacher called Miss Penman, casting an expert eye over something I'd made in her class. It may not show her exactly how she was (it is a memory, after all), but there's no doubt that it's her. It dominated the rest of the image which became nothing more than dream construct around her, similar to The Wizard's Cloak piece that I did, but it's a good example of how memories and dreams can coincide.

 

And I wonder what happened to Miss Penman after she left Thornhill High School....