I do find it interesting the way in which I suddenly find that I have a new project. It is not that I plan things this way. All of a sudden I discover that I have been working at it for a little time, but didn’t realise that it was a “project”.
Several weeks ago I mentioned that I had been to a “wassailing” ceremony, organised by my step-son. On these occasions ceremonies that have quite a long history in England mark the turning of the year.* It is all good clean fun, and I didn’t think a great deal about it. Or rather, I didn’t think that I had been thinking about it. Obviously something must have been seething away in my subconscious, because over the past few days I have been producing a set of drawings derived from that experience. There is still a good deal of indeterminacy about the form in which anything might finally be produced, but I do know that I have not finished with it yet.
There is an emerging idea behind all of this, namely, that it will have something to do with identity. This is a topic that has been on my mind a great deal recently, in the light of British withdrawal from the European Union. I have some intuition that these traditional symbols of English national identity can actually be read in a light that is highly subversive of the kind of nationalism that drove British withdrawal from the EU. It’s all good clean fun, and I look to see its development over the next few weeks.
*Although there is some disagreement, I gather, about exactly what is the appropriate date, but never mind.