Visited Edward Lear’s world for an exhibition at the Poetry Society to mark his 200th birthday. Discovered what an extraordinary life and wide world he travelled and painted.
I had forgotten how closely my street drawings follow his tradition of topographic art, and also, how innocent his nonsense is …,The Bug with a Fiddle
When asked if I’d contribute to the show by my friend, Andrew Baker, who organised the exhibition with his wife, Linda, I began to sketch ideas, until I’d fished out a book of his, with what I quickly and shame-facedly realised was a false memory of his work.Elvislookalikia Contesta
Lear suffered from terrible depressions and, perhaps because of that, there is no hint of darkness in his nonsense. Stephanie bought an Edwardian edition of his Book of Botanical Nonsense to give me for my birthday and I took it with me to Cologne to work from.DJ Sparrow
Cow knitting jumpers with a penguin
