108 Lives

I made ​​a decision in January 2007 to make a set of paintings of 108 possible 'lives' or Ways of Life that I may have lived before. So, as automatically as possible, I wrote a list of possible previous lives on the computer, printed it out, and cut out each "life" so that each one was just on a small slip of paper and put all the slips in a bowl. I decided to link nine 'lives' together in each watercolour to make a total of 12 paintings. I stretched the paper in advance, closed my eyes and picked out the first slip of paper. It was a 'shoemaker'. I come from a family of shoemakers, my great grandfather started a business which my father inherited. I was a bit surprised this turned up first. So the shoemaker was the first 'life' to be painted. Having established that one, I picked a second 'life' and added it to the first image. I continued building up the painting until all the first nine 'lives' were interlocked. I followed the same method for the second painting. From the third painting onwards, still without looking, I picked all nine 'lives' at the same time before beginning the painting. It was intriguing to see relationships form and to sort out a way of bringing disparate subjects together. Usually there was a 'life' that appeared to dominate or embrace the others. At the bottom of each painting , written in pencil, is the title, a list of the nine 'lives', signature and date.