‘Colour in Parenthesis’. Based on a visit to Mametz Wood on the Somme after reading David Jones’ account of the battle. Drawings (four images).
‘Colour in Parenthesis’ and ‘Torques of Equal Splendour’
These drawings are from a visit to Mametz Wood, the site of a battlefield on the Somme in 2017. David Jones, the London based, Welsh painter was wounded there in 1916 and wrote his long poem ‘In Parenthesis’, dwelling in the final pages on a vision that came to him before losing consciousness after being wounded. He imagines the ‘queen of the woods’ making wreaths of flowers for the dead combatants. I allude to these wreaths in the drawing and was struck by Jones’ reference to colour as a way of organising his chaotic experience. These appear across the bottom of my drawings in chronological succession as numerical page-numbers. It was raining when I visited the scene and so I drew from the car where it was difficult to distinguish Mametz Wood from the rivulets of rain on the windscreen.