Painting from 2011

Inception A railway bridge near the canal, this image became the start of the series. The area around the bridge is changing everyday. People rarely used this route, it's a little known short cut. At the time I started the painting, the little construction happening behind the bridge abruptly stopped. They started again in December.

There's a coconut climber who walks the streets around my parents house, his knife  hooked on his back. When he's drunk sometimes, he shouts things like 'I'm the king of the world,' in English. He got me looking at the coconut trees. The thick overnight growth of vines going up the trunk made it look as if it'd been ages since anyone had climbed it.

I made these two sketches after losing patience with several others I'd started and abandoned. Satisfied with the way my pencil captured the abstract quality I was seeing in the wild growth on the tree, I decided that I would combine the two sketches just the way I have positioned them here. 

I was looking for something frail. Frail but untamed and untidy.