(Excerpts from “A Visual Journey” 1998)
….”This was the first real starting point where the people writhe under a politically threatening sky that is bearing down on them and where policies of destructive rationalisation in Education and Health rips souls out of their usual fabric in time and place. Some ascend but most descend in anger, frustration and agony, scratching at the descending clouds of their perceived destruction – (horizontal to the picture plane). The palette is liberally blue but tempered by the Acra Violet to bring contrast to the writhing bodies! Why are they naked? Simply because we are all at our most vulnerable when all of our veneers are torn away ! AND our first veneer of course is our clothes. These might have only been small ‘players’ in the veneers of this ‘society’ but this was hell on earth for about 8000 teachers and some 4000 nurses. After 27 years of teaching my beloved wife was dispensed with in 6 minutes and just on 12 months later her life was almost ‘thrown away’ in an orange plastic bag!....”