The Beastly and Mr Beam

I am some degrees beyond excited. Indeed much closer to bursting-with-creativity like a dam about to haemorrhage a torrent. The sublime Jeffery Beam had agreed to be my collaborator on Beastly Passions. We discussed the poetry he might pen to accompany my images, which take as their theme the darker, Penny Dreadful realms of Staffordshire pottery groups, in which unspeakable doings such as murders by brutes and savagings at the sharp-ends of escaped menagerie beasts, were commemorated in naive imagery straight from the world of the Regency toy theatre. I had made a tiny, postcard-size drawing of ‘Tipu’s Tiger’ as a starting point, and Jeffery had been moved by it. He has since written a poem which has my mind spinning into delirium at the sheer, heartrending beauty of it. I cannot share it yet, or indeed any time soon, as this project won’t come to fruition until 2016. But here, to tantalise, a tiny fragment of what Jeffery has today presented to me: That terror could have a pelt so sheened and orange So like a tower at dusk on a precipitous cliff Ocean below rushing to otherwise From The Kiss: Tipu’s Tiger, by Jeffery Beam We are up and away, Mr Beam and I, and the creative riptide is tugging us far out to sea. We may be absent for some time, but we shall return with treasures.

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Below: preparatory sketch for Beastly Pleasures. Woman slain by an escaped tiger and her baby eaten.

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