Slavery

Size H48in W36in (H122cm W91cm)

Dated: 2-07-98

Medium: Acrylic on reinforced hardboard

Price: £600 or $840

We are all slaves to Something or Someone or Illness or Success or Drugs or Power or Anti-establishment or war.....

This picture was inspired by my wife's illness, see below. There is nothing more constraining than a nose ring. Ask any bull. I wanted to show a human constrained painfully by a chain and guarded by a wolf. This wolf-dog image is from a photograph of a failed wolf kept as a pet on a farm in Tuscany.

As I painted, alternate links in the chain became penises trapped by the chain links. How you interpret the painting depends very much on who and what you are. It will probably mean something different to a woman than it does to a man.

I was recently enslaved by my wife's near terminal illness precipitated by an aparently safe anti-depresive drug. The drug, flupenthixol dihydrochloride drained her sodium and potassium to hypercritical levels resulting in a major ceisure and coma lasting nearly 3 days when the outcome i.e. death or survival could not be predicted. This painting expresses some of the trauma of that event. She was saved by incredibly efficient diagnostic techniques and treatment in the Emergency Admissions Unit of Stepping Hill Hospital. It took 2 years for her to recover fully even then she has suffered some permanent memory loss but has thankfully recovered her humour, spirit and all of her other faculties

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