The Artist Watches

Some years ago I was in Oxford with Peter. He must have had an appointment somewhere because I was alone for a few hours enjoying a book-buying spree in the city centre. While sauntering along minding my own business I saw three people strolling toward me, a man and two women. Age hard to guess, but he looked to be in his thirties or early forties, and one of the women was older, though not so that you’d notice. The three were arm in arm, him in the middle, and they were laughing and clearly enjoying themselves. They were beautifully dressed, the man in one of those generously cut heavy woollen overcoats that cost as much as a small car, the women in understated shirtwaist dresses under long, swinging cardigans. A smattering of discreet jewellery. Fantastic, glossy hair, all three of them. Definitely not British. I think I heard Italian as they passed, but my heart was drumming in my ears and so everything sounded as if I were underwater.

I stood transfixed, turning to watch them, book-filled carrier bags around my feet. He was half a head taller than his companions. They looked as though they owned the day. Magnificent. His beauty was heartstopping.

I followed them. Oh, not for very long – I’m not a stalker – but I just wanted to drink in more.  Hurtling down a side street I managed to loop round and get ahead of them, and by dint of pretending that I was waiting for someone – I even checked my watch to appear more convincing – I stood where I could get a better look.

The subterfuge was unnecessary. They were absorbed in the moment and in each other. I could have been in a Mickey Mouse costume and they wouldn’t have noticed. Looking at his broad back as he and his companions disappeared into the Oxford crowds I thought faintly, where the fuck do you go to get that hair, that skin, those teeth, that mesmerisingly deep voice, height, physical ease and presence? I felt like a hamster watching a puma walk past.

His face has never left me, etched sharply by whatever chemistry surged through my brain at the sight of him. Here he is, at the top of this post, reinvented as Bertilak de Hautdesert.

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Print N0. 7: Gawain Arrives at Fair Castle

Work has begun on the seventh print in the Gawain and the Green Knight series. Titled Gawain Arrives at Fair Castle, much of the poem’s narrative takes place within the walls of Bertilak de Hautdesert’s sumptuous home. Here Gawain will find rest and succour and be treated as an honoured guest, though his stay is made awkward by the seemingly amorous attentions of Lady Hautdesert. All is not quite as it appears, though he won’t find out until after he’s left the castle what deceptions have been practiced on him.

Here’s a clean drawing laid out ready for me to start in with the colour.

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Fair Castle is reinvented here as a gold and enamelled Byzantine citadel. The steep ascent spirals the crag on which Fair Castle perches, and Gawain’s horse, Gringolet, looks uneasy at the prospect of climbing it.

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Pollarded trees reference the tattoos of the Green Knight seen in an earlier image.

Above, detail from The Green Knight Arrives.

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