A series of paintings and drawings featuring people facing life challenges.
We are two artists living in Tottenham, North London. I myself have suffered from epilepsy for most of my life and my wife has a brother with severe autism. From a personal point of view we have been dissatisfied for some time with the way that disability and illness are represented in art, when they are represented at all. A recent comission I had, to paint a friend who had undergone a mastectomy brought all this into focus and we decided to do a series of paintings and drawings on the theme of people who are facing challenges in their lives. We aim to depict them not as victims or as something to be shocked by, but as heroes and heroines of the everyday world. By doing so we feel that we might just do something to change the way they are seen, from being people who are in some way lacking to people who have been given something to overcome and who need acknowledgement and encouragement in their endeavours. Also, as believers in the magic of art, we hope that by our efforts we might just aid them in some small way by conferring prestige upon them in a way that photography, for example, cannot. To help us with our project we are seeking money to pay for our materials and studio rent for one year.