From ‘Friendship’ by David Whyte

4-page manuscript book, written out in Chinese ink with gouache illustration on handmade paper with eggshell coloured endpapers and an off-white Khadi card cover with a light-blue paper jacket. Completed in June 2020

I had been working fairly intensively during the lockdown period arising as a result of the Covid 19 crisis and as a contrast wanted to make a series of pieces that I could complete in a single day.

I have made several treatments using this text from one of David Whyte’s essays that has a particular personal significance due to our long friendship, dating back to the time when our two sons were born in 1985.

Meanwhile, I had been looking once again at the treatment of Matthew’s Gospel by Rudolf Koch, made in 1921, where he uses massed writing to particular effect. I wanted to find something of the same freedom and spontaneity in my own work by close packing the lines of text, though it is hard to escape the disciplined habits of a lifetime!