LARK ASCENDING AND A DOCKSIDE BROTHEL

This canvas shows a small portion of the wall of a derelict dockside pub/brothel in Merseyside.  It is not nearly finished, but I have had to lay it aside as I can't come to terms with what to do next.

The bricks and cill are modelled in low relief - they feel and look exactly like the real thing - and the stained printed fabric has been draped as if hanging limply out of a broken upstairs window.  The window and frame need to be finished, and my intention is to seal the fabric behind varnish.

What has this to do with the historical narratives associated with this scene?  Does my faux-mortar, and my faux-grime empathise with all that this window stands for, or does it mock it?

My crisis of confidence in this work, and an important reason for laying it aside, was that on Radio 3 (which I always listen to when painting), they played Ralph Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending which, having first been played in 1920, makes it exactly contemporary with this dockside establishment's heyday.   Initially I felt the juxtaposition of painting and music was grotesque: a seedy brothel and a pastoral romance.  However, it soon dawned on me that the two pieces empathise, for they are both unashamedly romantic.  Vaughan Williams' piece recalls a peaceful world whose permanent end was announced by the outbreak of war in 1914; mine recalls an industrial world whose most grotesque manifestations were the two industrialised world wars.  Vaughan Williams was only able to represent his pastoral scene because he was totally separated from it - in time, and socially.  It is the same for me: maybe I empathise with my Mersey scene because I am separated from it by time, and I was socially never a part of it.

Until I have sorted these things out, the painting remains unfinished.

POSTSCRIPT published 30 March:  At my recent talk at the Anise Gallery (see following post) I showed this photo.  Joe Robson suggested that a suggestion of the dark and shabby interior of the room would help to bring meaning to the picture.