Title
Long fast roads
Soft edges
And the unemployment
of it all
Details
380 x 278mm
2025, Charcoal, soft pastel on paper
Process
This drawing is one of six exhibited in Poems for Independence at Braemar Gallery in 2025 as a series of visual 'poems for Indy' - a gentle way of personifying 'independence' and what it means to me.
The series shares a scaffold of line work that brings to mind sheet music or architectural working drawings, providing a recurring structure to experiment with text and gestural marks.
This particular work is about driving. I nearly called it 'Fast cars', but really it's about the freedom of driving out West (or South, or wherever you want) for a long way, for the first time.
References
"The unemployment of it all' is a misremembered line from a Les Murray poem 'The Instrument', which I wish I had remembered correctly, because it might have been a much better title.
Why write poetry? For the weird unemployment.
For the painless headaches, that must be tapped to strike
down along your writing arm at the accumulated moment.
(Extract) Les Murray, Conscious and Verbal (Manchester: Carcanet, 1999)